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(SQP-Ep.004 ~ A Paradigm Shift for the Field of Psychology ~ w. Joe Bailey)
Editor Note: Minor edits have been made from the original audio recording for easier reading.

(opening intro music begins)

Intro Text: Welcome to the spiritual intelligence podcast, Awakening your inner power with Daniel Martinez Stahl, where we will explore, discover and integrate different aspects of our spiritual and human nature, so that we can all thrive and live life with more grace and ease, instead of struggle.

(Intro music fades away)

Daniel: So, welcome to the Spiritual Intelligence Podcast once again, this is Daniel Martinez Stahl and joining me today is Joe Bailey. Joe Bailey is someone that I met a number of years ago, he is someone that has a tremendous amount of experience speaking about our spiritual nature and bringing that conversation into different environments. Have it be a medical facilities or police forces, different first response forces, and as well as different environments. But I'll let him speak to that a little bit.

So, Joe, thank you so much for being part of our show. I am very excited to have this conversation with you and it would be wonderful if you could just give us a brief introduction as to who you are, for the listeners.

Joe: Well, thank you for having me today. I appreciate what you're trying to do, and so I'll just tell you a little bit about myself. I got into the field of psychology kind of, really, as an alternative to what I was originally planning to do. As a young man, I told you this before, I was an exchange student in Guatemala and I had an aunt who was a catholic nun, who had a big impact on, not just me, but our whole family. She was a very extraordinary, heroic person in Guatemala. She started the Monte Maria girls school in Guatemala City, that was her creation and she spent a lot of time working in small villages all over Guatemala. So, I got to hang out with her and it inspired me to want to get in this profession of helping people. I wanted to help alleviate the suffering of the world, as I saw my aunt doing, and my uncle who was a catholic priest in Bolivia.

And, so I went into the seminary after high school and thought that was what I was going to do, but I quickly became — it became clear to me that that was not going to work out for me, being in the seminar or becoming a catholic priest. So the next option for me was to study psychology or sociology or social work or something like that. But I fell in love with psychology and so I got a degree in that and then went to graduate school and became a clinical psychologist. But with this driving force and this idea of wanting to alleviate suffering in the world.

And so when I got into psychology, I thought it was all really very cognitive and it was all about physiology and going back in the past and there was no — spirituality was something completely separate from that. And so I always felt like there was something missing, you know, I would do my clinical psychology but then on the side, I would meditate and do yoga, and explore all these Eastern thoughts and esoteric philosophies and that type of thing. Because something was — the sole was missing in psychology, I felt. Even in humanistic psychology and Abraham Maslow, and people like that, it was very intellectual, that wasn't really — I don't know — I knew there was something missing. And I studied with some wonderful therapist who kind of pointed people to that but they didn't really understand the true nature of the mind. They didn't really understand that there wasn't really a duality between mind and Spirit. That mind and Spirit were one. In fact, the word psychology comes from the Greek word psyche, which means mind, soul or spirit — the study their of. So, psychology had lost its soul, in my opinion.

And so I was on the hunt. I was kind of knowing there was something more to human beings, and their behavior, and their feelings and their conditioning, and their habits, and their neurophysiology. There was something beyond that, that was the source of creativity, and a source of resilience, and a source of mental health, and feeling of connectedness. And so, I was always open. But, over time I was growing more and more burned out and stressed, because I wasn't really getting the results I wanted.

And my dear friend, Dr. Keith Blevins, kept telling me about this guy named Sydney Banks, who he said was going to transform psychology and make it a true psychology (I believe he meant to say make it into a true science, he speaks to this later). And I thought I was — by that time I was very cynical (chuckles a bit) and it's, "Oh God, here we go, Kieth is living in California," and I thought, "oh God." So he'd send me Sydney Banks tapes, and I listen to a little bit and I go, "this doesn't make any sense to me," and I'd just throw it away, throw it in the wastebasket.

But, he was persistent. And then back in 1980, he called me one more, and I got his wife on the phone with him, and he said, "Well, Syd's going to be giving a talk — Sydney Banks is going to give a talk at the medical school at the University of Miami, Med School, in Coral Gables, and why don't you come down? And by the way there’s this woman we want you to meet." (both begin laughing) And I was always searching for true love, the perfect love, as well as the true psychology, and so that was a good hook for me. And, so I went to Miami and that first day I met Michael my — she's my wife, for now 39 years, we just celebrated our 39th wedding anniversary...

Daniel: Congratulations.

Joe: ...so I fell in love with her at first sight, when I met her that day, and that evening I met Sydney Banks. And it was a very powerful life-changing event for me. I didn't really have a clue what I was getting into, but when I sat around — it was a very informal dinner we had and then after dinner we just sat around and all of a sudden Syd started speaking. And, everything he said went completely 180 degrees the opposite from what I have been trained in, as a clinical psychologist. And so, my brain was scrambling, it was — I wanted to argue with everything he was saying. But, penetrating deeper for me — it was almost like a heart-to-heart connection, with Syd — I felt that I could feel the truth of what he was saying, it was very ordinary, it was very simple, it was very logical, and I just felt kind of a lightheartedness come over me, in his presence. So it was, my heart, it took awhile for my brain to catch up with my heart, because I started changing from that first contact with Syd.

And what he was pointing to was that — it was very revolutionary for me — was that we're not broken, that human beings have this essence or core of innate mental health. They have this core of resilience that is — can be covered up with an innocent misuse of the mind, but once we understand how our human experience is created, that we release the barriers to this innate resilience, this innate mental health, this well-being that is the source of insight, it's the source of unconditional love, it's a source of a sense of purpose and connectedness, it's kind of everything that I as a psychologist and a psychotherapist had ever been looking for, for my patients, and for myself.

And so, that was a hell of a day. (both begin laughing again) It really rocked my world, but I was falling in love and so that kind of covered up all of my misgivings, and it was the perfect storm for me to get past my intellect. Because I had a very — I was extremely intellectual — you know, so many thoughts, and theories, and concepts, and techniques, etcetera, and it penetrated that fortress of my thought system. And so, I didn't really know what I was going to do with it when I returned home, to my private practice, and started seeing my first client. I'm like, "How am I — how do I do this?" There was no form of therapy, there was no — it hadn't been translated into a way to help people. And so, I just kind of winged it, and I would begin to talk about what was happening with me and how I was starting to see that I was waking up in the moment, to seeing that I was creating my experience from my thinking in this moment.

Started seeing me and the act of creating a whole reality with this power of thought, and when I could see that I was creating a miserable reality, (chuckles a little) it kind of corrected itself. I could see, "Oh, I'm just stressing myself out over something that hasn't even happened yet, it's just my imagination." So, I began to see how I was misusing my mind, insight by insight, and then I would share that with my patients. And they would look at me and they would go, "Wow, that's so simple, why didn't you tell us that five years ago?" (both begin laughing) "It's so much easier than going back and digging through the past and doing all these other things," and I said, "You know, I wasn't quite sure if I really knew what I was doing."

But what really convinced me, in sharing the little tiny bit that I realized, was such powerful medicine with my clients. They just changed before my eyes, and I thought, "wow, there's something to this, this really is potent." And it was really my clients that convinced me, because I, as a therapist, I was getting what I always wanted. And prior to that, people would get relief because they would talk about their problems and someone understood and they felt empathy, and they would feel so much better after the session because they got it off their chest. But then they would go right back to the same way of thinking and recreating the problem. So it wasn't really changing anything, it was just a coping mechanism. It was a band-aid on a bleeding artery that kept bleeding. And so, I thought, "Ok, there's something here." So then I decided to engage in a one-year fellowship program in Miami, flying back and forth from Minneapolis to Miami, and studying about what's now known as the Three Principles Psychology.

And it transformed my practice and my client started getting well in six weeks instead of years of getting better coping mechanisms, and my practice exploded, and I ended up having to — with my colleague Chris Heath, who was another another therapist in the same private practice building, heard Roger Mills speak and she got it, it changed her too — and so together, the two of us started the Minneapolis Institute of Mental Health. Where we worked with thousands of patients and ended up training therapists there, and doing internships, and did research and so for 10 years we did that. She moved to Hawaii and started another institute in Hawaii, I got the short end of that straw. (begins chucking) So, I got the cold winters and she got Hawaii.

But, that was an amazing program and so we expand out from just — we saw that this wasn't just to help in counseling people, that this could be preventative. So we started working with school systems and teachers, and principals, and with business leaders, and with hospital systems and inner-city programs, working with poverty. We saw that this is a true understanding of how the human experience is created, whether it's about addiction and mental health issues, or about corporate success, or about creating a learning environment, which really fosters insight and is fun learning; as opposed to stressful, serious learning. We worked, as you said earlier in the introduction, with police, we trained many police officers in this, and community policing. And how it made their jobs so much easier to de-escalate violence and see how to be a peacemaker, rather than just a military force.

So, I began to see that this wasn't just a new technique. This was a paradigm shift for the field of psychology, and so Sydney Banks was my mentor, until he died many years later. And, me and many of my colleagues really helped usher in a new psychology that is practical, it's simple, and applicable to all walks of life; regardless of culture, religion, educational experience. So, that's what the Three Principles Psychology did for me.

And so, that was a — it gave me what I always hoped for when I decided I wanted to become a psychologist. A real way to help people, not just cope, but to transform; and that brought together the spiritual and psychological. Because as people begin to utilize the power of thought, and the power of mind, and the power of awareness or consciousness, in their daily life, they begin to feel a deep spiritual connection...

Daniel: To themselves and to everything that exists, yeah, I would agree.

Joe: To themselves and everything, yeah.

Daniel: So, I definitely want to continue this conversation and explore and expand on the aspect of Sydney Banks and what is most commonly referred to as the Three Principles. But before going there, I would love to — I would love to ask you a question that I've been using as kind of a starting point for these conversations, which is related to this subject, and as part of this podcast there's an underlying message of "awakening to our inner power," so I've been asking the different guest speakers, "What does inner power mean to you?"

Joe: Hm, we usually think of power as having power over something, and to me, connecting with the inner power is connecting to a power that is everything, it's the source of all life. And when I align with that power, I listen more clearly to this inner guidance that comes to us through insight, through what we call wisdom. It's always available to human beings, it's like a conscience that's in there, guiding us. And when we listen to that, we're connected to our spiritual essence, it's our inner guidance system. And for me, I was always trying to find happiness that if I could be successful enough and got respect from my colleagues, or if I could be financially successful, or if I could have a successful relationship – so, I was always looking outside to circumstances and things, "If I just got that all in order, I'd be happy, I'd feel fulfilled."

And I found through the Principles, that the fulfillment is there just by being aware of our connection to this deeper intelligence, that in the Three Principles we call Mind or Universal Mind. It's the energy and intelligence of all things. As I experience that in my life, as my mind gets settled with thought, as my thoughts settle, this awareness of this deeper essence comes to the surface. So, a troubled, anxious, depressed, worried, busy mind looking outside is like those little snow globes. It's like shaking it up to try to find an answer to what's in there. And setting it down, gravity naturally clears the globe and you can see what's in it.

And for me that's what spirituality is and what spiritual connection is — is that when my little mind settles, my thoughts settle, I feel connected to this oneness, to this essence of all things. And from there, I'm given common sense, and insight and wisdom, to see opportunities where I couldn't see before because my mind was too busy. I see potential in other people. I see their essence as well, my clients, I can see their essence, their resilience, their mental health and I work with that rather than trying to fix their problems. So, the power of that is — I feel like I'm riding a wave, rather than driving a wave-runner, (chuckles) a motorized wave runner. I'm riding a wave that's all powerful and the more I discover how to ride that wave, the more fun it is to ride that wave. But the wave's doing the work. I'm just riding the wave, I'm hanging ten, catching a wave.

Daniel: (begins to laugh) Nice. And so, as I mentioned before we started the interview, a number of our colleagues whom I've interviewed already as part of this podcast series, have been mentioning Sydney Banks and have been mentioning the Principles, and so I wanted to have this conversation. So, I really appreciate you giving your background as to how you kind of got into this field. And, I'll talk a little bit about my own experience as well.

The reason that I am creating this project is really to help people find a deeper understanding of what it means to be a spiritual being, in a very pragmatic and practical way because for me, it's not about seeking to elevate my vibration so that I can communicate with spirit all the time and that I can live in this you know airy-fairy world as some people refer to it as. For me it's really about: how do I improve the quality of my current life; how do I become a better parent or a better brother or a better friend; how do I manage my business more effectively; how do I communicate and interact with my employees in a way that empowers them and enables them to thrive, as opposed to restricts them and limits them.

So, that's a lot of why I wanted to create this podcast series, and also the membership program that's accompanying it. So, I would love to get your thoughts on — well first of all, just I guess, maybe a little bit more background on why — sorry I'm being pulled in this direction. So, going back to my own background. For me, what I found really appealing about the Three Principles, when I first came across them, was that it was a very simple, very accessible description of how I worked, how my mind works, and which is something that I've been searching for years with my studies in different fields of psychology, with hypnotherapy, with NLP, and so there was always this underlying question of, "How is this all working? What are the elements that are creating whatever issues I am facing, I am dealing with?”

And yes I can do exercises and techniques to help alleviate them, to help me kind of get past them, but it's not getting to the core — which is something that you mentioned with your own experience with your patients — it's not getting to the core of where this is coming from, what's driving it and what I found beautifully described, in the way that Sydney describes not only his own enlightenment experience, but also the way in which the Three Principles are described as the foundational and elementary aspects that create our experience of life. They are the energy, it's a manifestation of the formless energy into form, and so there's this beautiful synergy between our energetic self, our connection to Source, our connection to the intelligence of life, and also the fundamental reality that we are perceptually living in.

So, we are living in a world of form, this is our experience at the moment. And so, for me, the Principles were a way to give me a language that allows me to communicate more effectively between my spiritual self and my human self, and so that's something that I found really beautiful, and really powerful, within my own experience. And that's, again, a big part of what's driving my interest in creating this podcast series, is to help people find that within themselves.

And it's not about what we say, it's not about — it's not about learning anything, a process or a technique — it's really about going inside and finding our own experience for ourselves, and finding our own Truth for ourselves. And what the Principles have done for me is help me look in a direction where that's easier to do. And so that's kind of, I guess, my background and also for the listeners as well, and I've been kind of holding back on revealing this at the start. Partly because I wanted to kind of create an environment, openly and easily, without structure and without definitions.

But I also recognize that, especially with the people that are bringing into this podcast that come from the Three Principles world, and this podcast series is going to include people from all over the spiritual community, so it's going to be not just Three Principles-based. However, there are going to be people within the Three Principles community that I am going to bring in to help deepen and ground our experience. So these terms are going to be helpful. So, I would love to get your thoughts a little bit more on anything that I've said and where that leads you.

Joe: So, um. I'm not quite sure where to begin with that, but I'll just see where it goes here. I used to think, before I met Syd and before I learned the Principles, that spirituality was very important to me. I'd take my time every day to meditate, and I would write in my journal, and I would do my practices and all of that, and then I would get into my real life. You know, my job, my parenting, balancing my finances, etcetera. So, there was the real world and then there was my little escape from the real world, which was my spiritual practices.

And I would have a nice feeling from it, or the other way I would experience it is, I loved to be in nature. So I'd plan trips to go camping in the wilderness or whatever, and I could escape my reality and experience the oneness with nature, when I'm away from the challenges in my daily life in traffic and making a living, etcetera. And I would find that, "Oh, this is just so wonderful, oh gosh, it's such a great feeling," and I would connect to my essence. I would connect to my spirit. So, I thought it was about doing, I thought it was about doing something. And that there were spiritual experiences and then there's life. So, I had this duality, I had this dichotomy.

And with — beginning to get an understanding of how my human experience is created, the principles behind it. And “principles”, is a very intentional word, because until you understand the principles of something, all you have is guesswork. All you have is things that work that you discover accidentally, and you find something that works but you don't know why it works, you don't understand the principle behind it. So, like when Galileo discovered that the Earth is not the center of the universe, that we are actually a planet rotating around the Sun, it didn't just — it wasn't just a nice idea, it completely changed everything, in theology and the whole world view changed, with Galileo and Copernicus.

So, every time science and humanity has found a deeper sense of principles, those principles allow us to be more predictive and to evolve more readily. Once we understand the principle behind physics, behind chemistry, behind disease, behind all these things. So, what Sydney Banks brought to the world, really, he didn't just have a nice enlightening experience. In his experience, he came back with an understanding of the principles that create our human experience. Our human perceptual, psychological, emotional experience. And those principles have made psychology a true science. Psychology did not have its principals, didn't have its constants, its predictability. With an understanding of principles, you can begin to see the applicability to everything in the human experience.

So, initially, when Syd had his experience, it just attracted a few people who are "searchers" and spiritual searchers and all that, and it was a really nice thing and people were really impacted by him and listening to him. But then as those of us who are psychologists, social workers, people who are in the business of helping people, started to see the implications of this for our field, we started to see that this understanding — how our human experience is created through the principle of Mind, which is a universal energy of all things, an intelligence, we could call it God, the Creator, the Oneness, the Allness. There are many words for this invisible spiritual essence of all life. The principle of Thought, which is what we as human beings create our every perception, every emotion, every behavior, all experience — you cannot have an experience without thought being included, it's always there. We're living — we're like goldfish swimming in water, not knowing that — it's like a little cartoon that I sometime show in my seminars: two goldfish swimming along in the aquarium, and they run into an old goldfish and the old goldfish says, "Hey boys how's the water?" And that one looks at the other and they both go, "What's water?"

So, I felt that, when I heard Syd, I had been swimming in the world of thought my whole life, but I didn't see that it was everything. That every experience was connected to thought. You can't have one without it. I didn't see it as a constant. I would try to [change] my thinking, I would do affirmations, I would try to recondition my thinking through habit changing, through psychotherapy, through all kinds of practices. But I didn't — after I heard Syd that first weekend, I came home back to my busy life of being a dad, and a single parent, and running a private practice, and living in a big city and millions of people, driving through traffic.

I'm driving through traffic and getting all stressed out after this wonderful weekend of falling in love and meeting Syd Banks, and my life being transformed, and all of a sudden I was right back in it and I was just "errrrrrrrr". Just totally stressing out, driving to work, people were cutting me off, I was late, and "I have so many patients to see today, and what am I going to do about this one and that one," and all of a sudden, in the middle of it, it was like I woke up from a nightmare. And I realized, "Oh my God, this is all coming from my thinking; that's what he was saying." And as soon as I had that insight, it just (big and long relaxing sigh), all my thoughts just disappeared. My body relaxed and I took a deep breath, and all of a sudden I could just see all the beauty. It seemed like the traffic was flowing better, you know, I was in this totally different new reality, by recognizing thoughts in the moment.

And that's the third principle, that moment of awareness that I was thinking, we call that consciousness. I was conscious that I was creating my experience, I was aware of that, and that was my freedom. Now, five minutes later, I was all wrapped up in my thoughts again (chuckles) and they looked real, and it was like the traffic again. And then I had another insight, and I realized, "Oh my God, I just did it again." And since those days, my life has been: falling asleep to my thinking, getting caught up and habits or whatever, and sensing that through my feelings, and at some point waking up and having another insight, "Oh, it's my thinking."

And that sounds like, "Oh, that's so simple, it can't be that easy." That is so profound. By having an understanding that keeps waking up my awareness, so that I can reset, reboot this computer, to clear my mind and begin to see life fresh. And every time you see life fresh, in the moment, you're having a spiritual awakening. Every time. So that's the connection to the spiritual and psychological. When you begin to see your thinking in the moment, when you have those conscious moments where you're aware that what you're feeling stressed about, angry about, worried about, resentful about, isn't what you were thinking about that's creating it, it's that you're thinking that's creating it. And that's the lollapalooza insight. That you see that you're thinking is creating your experience.

Because that — it's just like a — I love to downhill ski, so I'm downhill skiing when I'm, when I can feel that I'm losing my balance, it's like my knowledge of skiing kicks in and I realize how to make the adjustment, without thinking about it, and then my balance comes back. So, gravity is pulling me down the hill, but kinesthetically being aware of that allows me to really enjoy skiing and get better, and better, and better at it. The same thing is true with living life, the more we understand that we're always living in a world of thought, 24/7, and that whatever we're thinking is giving us the perception and the reality that we’re living in, and that that's all powered by the universal spiritual intelligence called Mind. It's the gift of life to experience life through the power of the mind. And consciousness is just what we are given to give us a free will so that we don't live in the habitual, conditioned habits of ego. But we can be aware that we are caught up in our thinking, and that pulls the plug on the reality of the thoughts, that look real, until they don't (snaps fingers). And every time you can (snaps fingers) see that it's thought, it kind of clears. It doesn't mean that the trees aren't still there that I'm looking at, but how I'm experiencing it is (pause) what we would call mental health, a spiritual connection, serenity, oneness, peace of mind.

So for me, as a former want-to-be priest, being a psychologist, this is what brought spirituality and psychology together, as a whole, as not two things, as one thing. And that was what was missing in what I saw in the seminary, when I was going to be a priest. The hypocrisy and people were just messed up, and psychologically, they were depressed or they were lonely, or they felt empty. There were a few that really had a true spiritual connection, but they were far and few between. And I thought, well psychology was the answer, but then I met psychologists and they had no soul, they were just intellectual.

And so, this is truly a paradigm shift. It's truly revolutionary. Not just for the field of psychology, but for religion. Religions are now catching on to the Three Principles big-time. In the Jewish tradition, and the Angelical communities, and all these religious groups are now seeing how the Principles allow them to experience greater depths of spiritual ecstasy and experience. And it allows them to live in the world and be participants, in the world that we live in, and not have to cloister away into a monastery, or a group of people that think like you do. That you can live in the world but not be of it. So, that's a long answer to your question.

Daniel: Yeah, that's beautiful. One thing that I would love for you to expand a little bit more, and this is exactly the direction that that you were going in right now, is the conversation around — and you started to speak about it earlier — it's the conversation around connecting with yourself and connecting with life, in the day-to-day, as opposed to just when you're out in nature, or as opposed to just when you are meditating, or as opposed to just when you are practicing quote-unquote a spiritual practice. It's really about that — a deeper understanding of self that is available to us always, in any circumstance, in any environment, in any condition. I would love for you to speak more about that.

Joe: The understanding is so practical, so let me just give you an example that came to my mind. Years ago, my wife and I, we were on our 25th wedding anniversary and went to Rome. We flew into Rome and we were going to fly out of Paris, and travel in between. And, so we just had a wonderful, wonderful time. It was very romantic and very — it was just an unforgettable trip. But at the end of our trip, we got a hotel in Paris near the train, the subway, so that we could take the early subway and get out to the airport. It was a Sunday, to go out to de Gaulle and catch a plane to come back to America.

And so we got on the train as planned and it was supposed to go all to — nonstop to de Gaulle. Well, it stopped. And we said, "Well, how come it stopped?" And the guy next to me said, "Well this is the end of the road." "Well, we're supposed to go to de Gaulle and they said, "This train doesn't go to de Gaulle, (chuckles) you're on the wrong train." "Well, this is the ticket we bought and it said to de Gaulle." "Well, you're going to have to get off the train, it stops here."

So, it's seven in the morning and so I said, "Well, honey you stay here with the luggage, standing on the tracks and I'll try to find someone, on a Sunday morning, that speaks English (chuckles), so that we can get on the right train." So, I go up these stairs, and go to the ticket office. And they don't speak a word of English, and I don't speak much French, just a little bit, but it was very unhelpful. And so, I didn't know what to do. So, I was going to go back and see my wife. And I look back at the hallway that I had come up, and there wasn't just one stairway coming up, there were like a dozen stairways coming up, and I had no idea which one I had come out of. So I went down the first one and she wasn't there, then I went down the second one — I went through all 12, and she wasn't there.

I thought, "My God, what happened to her?" And I started to go into a panic. I used to have panic attacks in college, and I hadn't had a panic attack in years, or even high anxiety, since I learned the Principles. All of the sudden, I started thinking, "Oh my God, what if I lose my wife and I never see her again?" And all these thoughts, it was just a cyclone of thought going on in my head. I'm running up and down the stairs, running up and down the stairs, and retracing my steps and I still can't find her. And finally at one point I just shouted out, "God help me!!! I'm going to lose my mind, please help me find my wife." And I just kind of surrendered, you know. I had this moment of surrender, and I turn my head and there's a hole in the wall, like a concrete wall and there's like a three-by-three opening, and on the other side of the tracks, on the other side of the opening, on the other side of the tracks, is my wife standing there with our luggage.

So, in the moment I had this — complete insanity, totally having a panic attack, and then I realized that it was — I had just lost myself. I had lost my clarity and I called out to God, "Help me!" And in that moment my thoughts were released, and in that moment, I saw my wife. And that to me was a beautiful illustration of the power of letting go of through. Through a spiritual experience, the turning over, a surrender.

And, so in the meantime, my poor wife, she's been accosted by a beggar that grabs her by the arm and demanding money and — you don't know my wife, you wouldn't want to mess with her — she just says, "I'm going to throw you in those tracks if you don't leave me alone." Poor guy, he ran away. (both begin laughing) "She's a crazy woman! She's a crazy woman!" He knew not to mess with her.

I don't know why that example came to my mind but I think it — it's like we can get so wrapped up in our thoughts, that we can't see the obvious clarity of the solutions, in the moment. And that's the pragmatic (bad audio) -ness of spiritual connection. So, in that moment, when I surrendered, I had that spiritual oneness, that spiritual connection, and in that, I could see the solution. Right through the window, right there. I just didn't realize that I had come from the wrong side of the stairs, or tried to go down the wrong side.

That definition that Einstein gave, when insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. That was me running up and down the stairs expecting that I was going to find her. And that's what happens with us when we get trapped in our intellectual mind, in our habitual thinking, we don't see with wisdom, common sense and clarity, the solutions to all of our problems. So, this isn't just helpful being lost in an airport, or on your way to the airport, for running your business, for parenting an adolescent, for teaching a classroom.

The more human beings are realizing how their experience is created from the inside-out, through these Three Principles, these three powers of Mind, Thought and Consciousness, the more we see — my new book I'm interviewing lot's of people in every walk of life, showing how the Principals play out in marriages, how they play out as parents, how they play out in prisons, how they play out in police work, in racial tension, in poverty, in the highly stressed medical system that we work in...I've worked with many hospital systems, including the Mayo Clinic. Training their doctors in these Principles, their nurses in these Principals. I worked with the University of Minnesota Med School, trained people in all different areas of health care.

They are so practical, they are so easily accessible, because once you understand the principles of the mind, it removes the extraneous, erroneous thinking of the ego, of the intellect, that separates us from our spiritual and divine connection. And, I might not use that language in a clinical setting or working with a hospital. I [often] use the term of “resilience” with a lot of audiences, because it's more neutral, and everybody wants to be resilient. But resilience is not any different than having a spiritual connection. You are connected to your deeper intelligence, in a state of resilience. So, am I answering your question?

Daniel: Yes you did. There is an area that I found very helpful within this conversation — there's an area that I found very helpful for my own life, which is a recognition that that deeper sense of myself is always available to me, that — and something that I share with people myself, the people that I work with — is, helping them to connect with their own wisdom, helping them connect with their own spiritual intelligence, that is always with them, it's always a part of them, if you could speak to that a little bit.

Joe: Yeah, I love that, what you just said, because for me that's, that's the secret to mental health. Is that, when you know you have something that you can always count on. No matter what happens, no matter the circumstances, that there’s a constant, that is with you always, that no matter how lost you get in this game of life, you can always get your bearings back. And for me, having experienced the wisdom within, the source of new thinking and insight and creativity, knowing that that's always available once my mind calms down, once I get my bearings back. The answer is within, the answers are always within.

And when people don't know that, they try to get other experts to tell them what to think or what to do or a spiritual leader to tell them how to behave or think. People don't know that they have a direct hotline to the divine intelligence (chuckles) within them. Then they get lost in the search outside. But once you realize that you have it within you, you cannot be separate from God, you can't be separate from the divine, you can't be separate. You can't lose Mind, you can lose your awareness of Mind, of the divine, but you can never be separate from it. Because it is what breathes you, it is what thinks you, it is what gives you this experience of being alive.

And, I work a lot with alcoholics and drug addicts, people who have really hit bottom and have been through every treatment you can imagine. And they just lost all hope because they tried to work the steps or they have tried to take their Antabuse and they do all these things to try to stay sober. But once they regain their connection to knowing that their — "once my mind is quiet, I will know the next step, and the next step."

So for me, as a human being — and I'm a human being not just a psychologist, going through my own challenging life at times — when I get caught up and I (slaps hands together lightly) hit a wall, which is human. We all hit walls. We all come to the limits of our understanding, eventually. When we hit those walls, for me, I know, "Oh, this is great (rubbing his hands together in excitement and anticipation), I wonder what I'm going to learn this time." Because when I'm challenged to the limits of my present understanding, I create a circumstance that takes me higher, takes me to a higher level of understanding. So, instead of, "Oh no, I'm failing, oh, I thought I understood this, I don't. Oh, God, this is really real!" Instead of that, I see, "This is an opportunity for me to get an even deeper insight into my inner guidance, my inner wisdom, my inner intelligence.

And that, it's like an explorer that can go anywhere in the planet. Because they know to trust their compass, their GPS, and they know how to read a map. They are never going to be lost. They know how to get their bearings, they know how to get back on track. The Principles are like a God positioning system, a GPS, it directs us back to our deeper intelligence, and guides us back. And the more time that I've experienced that, the more grounded or solid that knowing gets. My knowing just gets so solid, that not much really shakes me anymore. Just — I get shaken too, momentarily, but I know, "Oh that's just my alarm clock going off, waking me up to go inside, to the truth, to my spiritual connection, to my wisdom."

And that's the role of our feelings. They're not bad, they're there to wake us up and reorient us back within, get reconnected to our deep inner intelligence, our wisdom, our spiritual connection. Those are all words to describe the same experience, your allness. You can't separate spiritual and psychological anymore. They're all the same thing. It's a non-duality, that's another big term these days, but this is the essence of non-duality. It unifies mind, soul and spirit as one thing. The true meaning of the word psychology: mind, soul, spirit. So this is a spiritual revelation and it's a scientific revelation, both the same.

Daniel: You mentioned your book, your most recent book that you're working on, or that you are sharing through your own podcast, as well. Could you speak a little bit more about that?

Joe: Sure, yeah, yeah. Last summer, as I was in lockdown and adjusting to it all, like everybody else. I had been trying to write another book called The Burnout Solution, which was for healthcare professionals, and I couldn't get a publisher for that. Nobody buys books on burnout, they said. And then I thought, I've interviewed lots of alcoholics and drug addicts, that have — their lives were transformed through the Principles and they found sobriety and serenity. So I thought I would write that.

I wanted to use my time during Covid to write the next book, because I've written five other books. So, my last book I wrote was called, Fearproof Your Life, and another publisher bought out the company who published Fearproof Your Life, and so I met with them and they invited me to an author's forum, all of us spoke. It was the self-help psychology authors. It's a big company. And everybody else spoke and they were all talking about techniques, you know, how to do your daily journal, or stand on your head or whatever. They all had their different approaches, and they were all real sweet, innocent people, and so they said, "What do you think Joe?" And so I just started talking and the whole room just got super quiet, and I thought, "This is going to be interesting," because I knew everything that I was saying was coming from a completely different paradigm; it wasn't an outside-in fix, it was an inside-out fix. At the end of it, they were all just really quiet and they all started clapping, and they said, "We want to go to the church of Joe." (begins laughing) I thought, "Oh, that went well."

And so the next day I got an email from the editor-in-chief there, and she says, "We want to publish your next book, whatever it is, we want to publish your next book." They were very taken with what the contrast with what I was saying vs. everybody and their techniques. They didn't know what I was saying but they knew it was true, and so they said, "We're in these turbulent times, with the pandemic and the political discord, and all that is going on in our world, you really need to to write a book about, “how do people keep their bearings during the time." And so I said, "Oh, I can do that, that sounds perfect." And they came up with the title of which is Thriving in the Eye of the Hurricane, Unlocking Our Innate Resilience in These Turbulent Times, is the subtitle.

And so for the last year I've been interviewing people whose lives have been transformed by understanding the Three Principles. So, I have — the second half of the book is about those interviews and people in healthcare and education. Lots of different walks of life, people working in inner cities, prisons, etcetera. And the first half of the book is about the historical context of the times we're in, it's called We're Living in Interesting Times. I go back and I look at all the scientific revolution breakthroughs, or not all of them but some of them, and talk about how often these discoveries were made during times of lock down.

Like Newton's theories came during the black plague, in London, and Cambridge was closed down so he spent a year just reflecting and writing and doing experiments, and he came up with all of his theories of gravitational theory. Classical physics was invented during that time. The Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, all of these transformational periods in history have been preceded by great challenge. So, I position the book that this is an opportunity for humanity to gain a deeper understanding of the mind. That this is the missing piece.

We've evolved to the point where we have so much stuff. We have so much, we can fly airplanes, we can go to the Moon, and if you are rich enough like Jeff Bezos you can actually make your own spaceship go on your own private little trip to Mars or wherever you want to go. So we have all this technology, but we're destroying the planet. Half the coral reefs in the world are destroyed already. We're at war, in so many ways, we're divided in our own nation, we're divided in so many ways. And so, all of this wealth, and all of this understanding that science has brought us, has painted us into a corner where the only way out is an evolution of the mind. An evolution of connecting to our true resilient spiritual nature. That is the only way we will come back together and be able to live in paradise. I mean, we could be living in Heaven on Earth here, if it wasn't for how we are using this (pointing to his head). So that's what this book is about. It's about how to live in the eye of the hurricane, being the metaphor for our spiritual essence. Peace that passes all understanding, that core of revelation, inside connectedness, is what the world needs now. So, that's why I wrote the book.

Daniel: Thank you for that, and I realize that our time is approaching the end. So, I just wanted to open up the opportunity for you to share anything, any last thoughts that you would like to to finish with.

Joe: Oh, the word that came to me when you said that is "hope", you know, I just feel so much hope. Even though I can see from watching the media and news, etcetera, I can see that we're — there's just a lot of uncertainty, confusion, unknown. But I know that we found the answer to how to transform all of that into a really beautiful world, and I don't know if you and I will see that in our lifetime, but I know the cat's out of the bag. The understanding is already out there, in the world, to so many people, but the Three Principles have really — our last conference we had 30 people from 38 different countries there (I don't think he meant to say 30 people).

With every religion, every nationality, you can imagine, and you can just see that it's just rippling out in a way that — because once people see someone who they know, who was really miserable or really unhappy and they change (snaps his fingers), it makes people curious, "What happened to you?" "Well, I started just realizing that it wasn't what I was thinking about, that was making me miserable, it was how I was using my power to think, I just didn't know I was creating my own problems, and now I see that the only problem I have is a thinking problem, and once I resolve that, my mind is clear to actually come up with great solutions."

And so I think that, just like, you come up with a better iPhone and you see a better iPhone, you want that iPhone, "Oh, I want that. Cool, something that's going to take that kind of video footage in your hand." When people see something that's working, they want it and are attracted to it. And so, this understanding has a life of its own getting out. We don't have to do a super marketing program or anything, it's mostly traveling by osmosis, in my estimation. I've seen that in prisons, I've seen that in communities, I've seen that in hospital systems, Just a few people, like when I worked at the Mayo Clinic, we maybe trained 150 physicians, department chairs, nursing directors. And at 6,000 employees, in one year, their burnout and stress rate went down 12%. Even though only a handful of people got an understanding. But because they were in a leadership role, the tones of the meetings changed, the interactions, the ability to solve problems, to come up with creative solutions, just rippled out, just rippled out with very little effort. And it's like the 100th monkey story, you know, you're probably familiar with that, you know, when enough people change, consciousness leaps. I just feel hope. I feel realistic hope for humanity. I just have a knowing about it. I just know it's gonna — we're all just gonna be fine. And that's what I'd leave you with.

Daniel: Thank you very much, very beautiful. If somebody wanted to reach out to you, and of course I'm going to have your contact details in the description of the episode, but is there a good way for people to connect with you or...

Joe: Just my website: JoeBaileyAndAssociates.com

Daniel: Perfect

Joe: ...is my website, that would be the best way. You know, I am doing a podcast about the new book. Every third week. We're doing the third one, it's going to be — interviewing two people, who had severe chronic pain and chronic fatigue syndrome, are going to be talking about how the Principles help them transform their physical illness into health. One of them was also recently living in Tel Aviv, in Israel, during the war and just how her understanding helped her go through that experience with resilience, instead of terror, and she lost lots of friends who were killed, etcetera. So, this is very practical, regardless of circumstances. That's what I am trying to demonstrate in the podcast.

Daniel: Beautiful, beautiful, and I'll of course have links to that in the description as well.

Joe: Great.

Daniel: So Joe, thank you so much for everything you've shared with us and...

Joe: Well, thank you Daniel...

Daniel: Absolutely

Joe: ...for the opportunity.

Daniel: Absolutely. You are very welcome. So, hopefully this won't be the last time we have a conversation.

Joe: I hope not too.

Daniel: (lightly laughing) And again, thank you very much for everything that you have shared.

Joe: Alright, well, it was really good to talk to you too Daniel. Bye bye.

Daniel: Bye, bye.

Joe: Bye

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Closing text: Thank you for listening. Hopefully, you've heard something new that invites you to reflect, to go within, and deepen your own understanding of life, and of our universal experience. If you enjoyed this conversation, please follow the podcast series on your favorite listening app, and share this episode with others that you feel would enjoy it as well. Until next time, may we all soar with inspiration, explore with passion and live with love. ❤️❤️❤️

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