Wishing you a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year filled with love! May you remember that you are enough exactly as you are and that peace and contentment are your true nature. They are your birthright. There is nothing extra you need to do to experience the essence of who you are. Knowing what direction to look in and letting go, relaxing, allowing and being open is all it takes. You can’t work at it.

I’m looking forward to the upcoming New Year Fresh Start Workshop that Barb Patterson and I are co-facilitating this weekend in Santa Monica! We have a few spaces left if you would like to join us.

I have been preparing for the workshop and reflecting on the theme of looking in the direction of true nature and what the implications of this are. Pointing people in the direction of seeing all of who they are so they understand their psychological functioning, and also see beyond that to the source of their experience, allows them to wake up more fully to the innate potential that lies within. A client said to me recently during an intensive, “I can see I am sitting on a gold mine!”

This potential cannot be put into words. It is beyond the comprehension of the intellect. That is why metaphors and stories are used to point to what you can only experience in your heart and not know with your mind. And you already know this because it is ordinary. It is right here, but you may not be noticing it and appreciating it. Our ideas and concepts of what we are looking for can get in the way of us seeing what is actually important.

I am fully aware that I can’t put what I am talking about into words and that writing itself is a concept. Having a degree in cultural geography based in postmodern feminist theory, I know that all thought is a concept. I can’t escape that, but like the French post-structural feminists who birthed l’écriture feminine and placed experience before form, I can do my best to use the form of my writing to point to what lies before the mainstream view of psychology that places your wellbeing and happiness outside of you.

Thought is form, and all psychological theory focuses on analyzing and/or managing the form of thought in order to find happiness. It is a discipline filled with strategies and techniques for self-management, but it does not look to the source of where healing and transformation naturally arise. Like all scientific disciplines it focuses on trying to measure and change what has already been created and as such it is incomplete.

That is where Sydney Banks was different. He provided a map for understanding the relationship between the form of thoughts and feelings, and he also pointed beyond the form to the formless nature of who we are. He shared an understanding that is inclusive. He rejected the materialism of modern psychology and instead included both the form and the formless potential that is inside each one of us in what he shared. It is in understanding both that we see the source of healing and well-being, and experience psychological freedom.

He used concepts like Health Realization and the Three Principles of Mind, Consciousness, and Thought to point people in the direction of their true nature. But he did not confuse the map with the territory. And from what I have heard, he regularly asked people to start again from scratch when they got too attached to their ideas and confused them with what he was pointing to — the formless intelligence from which all form arises.

Science is starting to look in this direction. Deepak Chopra and physicist Menas Kafatos speak to this in their book, You Are The Universe, and the series of articles they co-authored with others, From Quanta to Qualia: The Mystery of Reality (Part 1-4). They share how quantum physics dismantled the certainty of time, space, physical objects, and cause and effect, and paved the way for a paradigm shift in physics to a consciousness-based view of the universe. They point to consciousness as the fundamental building block from which everything arises and see the science that does not include consciousness as flawed.

This explains another story I have heard where Sydney Banks shared with a group of physicists why Einstein’s formula of E=mc² did not make sense to him as quantum physicists really started to recognize and struggle with the fundamental incompatibility of quantum mechanics and general relativity at the microscopic level.

I am not a physicist nor have I had an enlightenment experience, but what I do have is my day-to-day experience. This is my personal laboratory to experience where my authentic well-being is found? And to explore what my natural state is? And you have this too.

We have been so conditioned to look outside of ourselves for happiness and to use our intellect to solve problems that it can feel strange to simply allow a deeper experience of who you are to fill you up and to look in the direction of the unknown for solutions. But it is in opening up to and looking at the full picture of your human experience that includes both the form and formless that you will experience the freedom and peace of mind that is your true nature.

It is ordinary and natural. It includes both the thoughts and the space between the thoughts. It is what is. No strategy is required. There is nowhere to get to. No effort is needed to arrive. It is in the seeing of this that the heart opens and the mind relaxes.

May your 2019 be filled with your personal exploration of waking up to the fullness of who you are and with you sharing what you see with others!

Rohini Ross is excited to present The Soul-Centered Series: Psychology, Spirituality, and the Teachings of Sydney Banks with the original students of Sydney Banks in Santa Monica, CA. She is passionate about helping people wake up to their true nature. She is a transformative coach and trainer, and author of Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1). She has an international coaching practice helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of well-being, resiliency, and success. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, watch her Vlogs with her husband, Angus Ross, and subscribe to her weekly blog on her website, rohiniross.com.