Spiritual Physics of Leadership
When I refer to spiritual physics (a term I’m burrowing from Michael Neill) I’m pointing to universal laws that govern how we operate as human beings. I‘ve found that exploring these and seeing how they work does something to how we experience the world.
Understanding the invisible forces that we operate within, enhances our joy, flow and creativity.
It’s not that understanding them changes anything. It doesn’t. Just as understanding gravity does nothing to gravity. Gravity simply works the way it does. However, understanding gravity changes our experience of seeing an object fall to the ground, or seeing an astronaut float in space. We understand the invisible forces at play and so our experience is informed by our understanding. Similarly, understanding spiritual physics, does something to how we experience ourselves and our roles as leaders.
It doesn’t change the physics, but it informs how we engineer our leadership, mostly because it changes our experience of leading.
In this post, I’ll share the universal laws of spiritual physics through the lens of leadership.
I was first introduced to this concept in 2023, by Michael Neill, a transformative teacher, best selling author and speaker. During a 6-month program, Michael shared the three universal truths of Mind, Consciousness and Thought. These principles, originally taught by an enlightened Scottish welder named Sydney Banks, explain how we experience and create the world. And the deeper I see these universal truths, the more pleasant and joyful my experience seems to get. I’m not doing anything to try to change my experience, but somehow, my experience has changed. And, by continuing to look in this direction, my experience continues to transform, for the better.
This may sound a bit too spiritual for leadership, but rest assured there are reputable scientists researching these principles, and as AI and other technologies continue to advance, we are sure to gain additional insights into consciousness, wisdom and reality. For now, let’s use our own personal experiences as evidence that there’s something true in these principles, even if science is yet to empirically prove them.
Let’s start with the principle of Thought.
The principle of Thought is the infinite creative energy through which we create our reality.
Our personal thinking, that is what we are thinking moment to moment, comes from this formless energy. However, it is a product of the principle of Thought, not the principle itself. The principle of Thought, is the source of our personal thinking. This distinction is important because there’s a universality to this formless energy.
The truth of this principle is that we ALL think.
The content of our thinking comes and goes, moment-to-moment, and is unique person-to-person. My thoughts, beliefs, perspectives, mindset, habits are different from yours, but no matter what they may be, they are made of the same stuff, a formless creative energy Syd Banks called the principle of Thought. My coach, Michael Neill often uses the metaphor of Play-Doh to explain this distinction. Just like the principle of Thought, play-doh can be used to create many different objects. With my play-doh, I may create a scary world and you may create a world filed with love, but it’s all made of the same stuff — Play-Doh (aka Thought)! The universal principle of Thought, the formless, creative and neutral energy that we are born with, is the play-doh of our realities. Sydney Banks puts it eloquently when he writes:
“You’re only one thought away from happiness, you’re only one thought away from sadness. The secret lies in Thought. It’s the missing link that everybody in this world is looking for.”
Once we know that we are born with the universal capacity (and gift!) to think and that we experience our personal thinking through this capacity, everything we ever wanted is reachable, because we are simply one thought away from a whole new experience.
When it comes to our personal thinking, it’s helpful to see a few things about our personal thoughts:
Our personal thinking comes and goes - it is transient,
Our personal thinking can be used as a weapon or as a tool,
100% of our experience comes from our personal thinking, not circumstance, and
Our feelings tell us whether we’re using our thinking in a helpful way or not.
Next, let’s look at the principle of Mind.
The principle of Mind is the universal intelligence behind all life.
It is the impersonal formless energy that animates everything around us. It is the wisdom, creativity and insight that exists within every person. It is always available and accessible to us as innate intelligence. It does not have to be developed or cultivated, we are born with it.
We see the principle of Mind all around us in nature. When an acorn becomes an oak tree, it does so through the principle of Mind. When a flower turns towards the light and extends its roots deeper to absorb water, it’s doing so through the principle of Mind. We work the same way. We too are made of this intelligence.
It governs our heart rate, our breathing and our digestion - we don’t need to do anything for these things to happen, they are built into the design. I have three amazing kids, this intelligence made their little beating hearts, their perfect intricate ears, their beautifully designed hands and feet. Thank goodness I didn’t have to handle that.
When my kids were small and they fell, I would say “don’t worry, your body knows how to heal itself!”. I may wash out the wound, and place a bandage on it, but the healing is up to the innate intelligence. It works without my interference.
This is also true of our mind. It has innate intelligence built into it that we don’t often learn about. We are naturally creative, we have built-in direction and motivation, we have empathy and intuition, we are designed to understand things beyond our intellect, we are built to settle and we have the capacity for insights (new and fresh ideas).
In leadership we tend to look to knowledge to solve complex issues, but anything new that has ever been developed in this world did not come from knowledge. It came from our innate capacity for insight. It had knowledge in it, but it was insight, an eureka moment, that moved things into the unknown.
When Einstein developed the theory of relativity, he could not depend on knowledge. He had to depend on an ability beyond what was known, what he could see or what was understood. He described these as moments of ‘sudden insight’.
This capacity for insight, to understand things beyond what we already know, is the principle of Mind.
Lastly, the principle of Consciousness.
The principle of Consciousness is our innate ability to be aware of ourselves.
It animates our experience by bringing it to life. For example, we may say “I am sad”. Consciousness is the “I am” that knows it is “sad”.
Sydney Banks describes Consciousness as “what allows us to perceive and experience the world in the way that we do.”
When we rise in consciousness we see things at a broader and deeper level. We see more clearly and we understand more deeply. It is through this principle that leaders gain greater awareness of their emotions, their thoughts and their reactions. As this awareness increases and leaders ground themselves in the “I” that lies separate from fleeting thoughts and emotions, they tap into their innate resilience, empathy, connection and creativity.
“Mind, Consciousness, and Thought are the Three Principles of mental life. Without them, reality, experience, feelings, circumstances could not exist. There would be nothing to experience. The world you live in is created by these principles.” ~ Sydney Banks
Looking in this direction and understanding it at a deeper level transforms our experience of life and with it our experience of leadership.
We better understand when to engage and when to step back.
We know when to learn more and when to allow “sudden insight” to do the heavy lifting.
We know how to connect deeply and naturally foster trust and psychological safety.
We understand ourselves and hold things lightly.
We ground ourselves in a deeper truth beyond our success and failures, beyond our titles and bank accounts and rest in the “I” underneath the external facade.
We begin to realize that we are perfectly designed to navigate the world and that our leadership is most powerful when we have a lot less on our minds.
The 3 principles is our gateway to freedom, our path to joy and an invitation to be who we truly are.