What Is Inside-Out Thinking And Why Is It Important?

How understanding the 3 principles of mind, consciousness, and thought can change your life

It’s funny how some things never change. No matter how the economy is doing or what political party is in charge, creating lasting transformation takes new ways of thinking. A lot of people today are wanting to change their lives. They want more for themselves and their families. They want to be and feel healthier or find that someone they can settle down with. Change can happen and sometimes very quickly, but to do so it’s going to be necessary to think differently than you have in the past. Let’s take a look at a concept called inside-out thinking and explore some new ways to view your experience of life and what you think is reality. This is the first step into creating lasting change in your life. 

What makes up the human experience? Is it what we can feel, touch, and taste with our senses? The inside-out principle implies that mind, thought, and consciousness are the fundamental sources that make up the human experience. This inside-out concept had begun appearing in the literature under names ranging from “Psychology of Mind” to “Health Realization” to “The Three Principles of Mind, Consciousness, and Thought.” The two most influential practitioners of this concept were Richard Carlson, author of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, and Sydney Banks, a Scottish welder who had an enlightenment experience and was transformed from an uneducated worker in a pulp mill into a world-renowned guru and teacher. 

The Mind In the inside-out theory, the mind makes up the energy that runs through all things but in this case, it’s not the same as the brain, although mind energy is in our physical brains. It is what allows our hearts to beat, blood to flow, and mental activity to power our brains. The mind is not specific to you, it’s the simple human energy and intelligence that runs through us all. As long as you are living, the mind is an engine that allows you to have the next heartbeat, the next breath, and the next thought—it literally turns on our experience of life. 

Thought We create our individual experience of reality via the vehicle of thought. Thought is the missing link between the formless world of pure potentiality and the created world of form. Without a thought, you can’t have an experience. Without thought, we can’t have a self or a notion of who we are. We create the understanding of ourselves via our thoughts. If you have an experience of something, it has to be in your thinking. In Michael Neil’s book, The Inside-Out Revolution, he points out that without thought, there would be no distinction between what is real and what is not. Thought is both the creator and substance of our beliefs and is the raw material of our ideas and dreams. We tend to be unaware of how much of life itself is created and maintained by thought. Much of what appears to be solid and real is actually part of the illusion of our thinking. 

Consciousness is what brings our thinking to life and makes us aware of what we’re thinking. It allows us to feel our thinking. It’s kind of like the special effects department of the human system. Our thinking runs through our sensory system, giving us a super surround sound and high definition experience of our thoughts. If feels completely real and as if it’s coming from something other than our thinking. But it’s not. In order to feel anything, we have to be conscious. Consciousness is more powerful than the greatest Hollywood special effects team could ever be, because whatever we think, consciousness will bring to life in our body and make it feel absolutely real. The capacity to be aware and experience life is innate in human beings. It is a universal phenomenon. Our level of awareness in any given moment determines the quality of our experience. 
 

The human mind can be viewed as an old-fashioned film projector. In thought, we create a picture of life and project it out on to the screen of our experience. We live in a movie of our own making where the mind is the power source, thought is the film, and consciousness is the light source. One hundred percent of our experience is coming from the inside out rather than the outside in. This concept clears up a lot of misconceptions and frustrations people have when they feel like the world is happening to them, as opposed to coming from within them. When you grasp this concept you essentially stop feeling at the mercy of things outside yourself. Thought is just temporary energy and basically not real. It comes into the mind and then goes. While it’s there it can seem very real and compelling, but if you don’t do anything with it, it will pass. 

While most of us understand that thought is basically what we think about, we tend to be unaware of how much of life itself is created by thought. Much of what appears to be solid and real is actually part of the illusion of our thinking. Take icebergs for example. They appear solid but are actually made up of water. Just a small degree of fluctuation in temperature can destroy icebergs that have been around for hundreds of years. In our inner world, no matter how solid our reality may seem, it only takes a slight shift in consciousness for our entire world to change. In this context, the phrase “this too shall pass” takes on a whole new meaning. If you give your mind the opportunity, it will self-correct and gravitate toward a clearer state of mind and an innate intelligence will come forth. Thoughts can be seen as the media through which we experience life. Thoughts are actually energy that takes form in your head. When you are inside whatever form that thought takes, that’s what you experience. It may be happy or sad, stressed, fearful, or even just what you want for dinner tonight. And here is a crucial point: When the volume is turned up on a thought or you hold it tightly, it has a larger effect on you. 

When you don’t hold on tightly to your thinking or play it too loudly in your mind it just slides through, staying only briefly. Generally, the louder and tighter our thinking gets, the more alone, frustrated, and frightened we become because we feel stuck. That’s why when something very traumatic happens in our lives it is harder to let go of it. The volume on that experience is turned way up. Yet when our thinking is quiet and more fluid we feel a sense of connection with people—our individual thoughts aren’t so prominent and isolating, and we feel there is a flow moving life along on our behalf rather than having to make life happen. 

Understanding this concept of inside-out thinking allows us to have insights into the nature of the human condition and opens up a higher perspective and a deeper understanding of what’s really going on. The simple truth is this: Our experience of life is created from the inside out via the principles of mind, consciousness, and thought. We’re living in the feeling of our thinking, not the feeling of the world. 

With an understanding of inside-out thinking then, how do we create true transformation and move into that comfortable feeling of trusting our innate wisdom? When we are living in our normal repetitive life day in and day out we need to find a reason to change. We need to have a new point of view. A new view gives us the courage to make a change in our lives. We go from inaction to action, from stuck to flowing, from miserable to happy. We stop our numbing behaviors like smoking, drinking, or excessive shopping. Before long, our career takes off, relationships improve, and our creative output increases. Such a transformation is not the result of intervention, but rather the effect of a shift in our level of consciousness by understanding that we have the power to change our own lives. That we can handle what life dishes out to us because we have done it before and can do it again. 

Remember the first time you fell in love? Suddenly the world seemed a more beautiful place. When in love, we are inspired to write poetry, draw pictures, or create things that reflect the beautiful feelings we felt inside. But because we attribute those feelings to another person, we often return to our old ways of thinking and feeling. Those feelings didn’t come from outside of us, they are part of our essential selves. When we can see that fundamental truth, the shift in consciousness becomes permanent and a new way of seeing becomes available to us. 

These transformative shifts are actually insights which are these wonderful “aha” moments when we’re able to see something about ourselves, our lives, or life in general in a whole new way. If there is anything to be done, it comes effortlessly. In these wonderful transformative moments we find a fresh new way of seeing things that we may have been feeling for a long time. We just “get it,” not intellectually the way we might understand a concept but at an almost cellular level. An insight is really just a new thought but can change our world, because you can have a fresh thought at any moment. 

Our thinking changes moment by moment, so the ability to have a new thought about an old situation is natural and ever present. Sometimes these thoughts seem to arise from somewhere beyond us and contain wisdom outside of our current knowledge. These are part of our natural intelligence of mind and we experience them as common sense, gut feelings, or innate wisdom. 

A potent example for me happened during a long relationship breakup. I remember feeling this surge of rage come over me and I did not know how to deal with it. I decided I needed to burn off some energy, so I got on my bike and tore down the road. I pedaled harder than I had in years and was exhausted and sweaty and tired. I pulled my bike to the side of the trail to rest, when suddenly, I had this vision of a tiny little man throwing a tantrum, screaming and yelling, and being extremely foolish. I instantly identified this as my ego. I saw this crazy ego off to the side of me which revealed a pure white area in my chest that I also instantly identified as my soul. I had, for the first time ever, detached my ego from my soul and could see that my soul was pure white, and glowing, and innocent, and calm. I began to connect with my glowing soul and my heart rate came down. I felt the most at peace at that moment than I had in a long, long time. 

That image of a tiny little man throwing a tantrum didn’t come from outside of me or even from a therapist or mentor, it came from me. It came out because my intention was to figure out why I suffering so much from the breakup. It was a classic “aha” moment. 

Now that we have experienced a new insight we have a decision to make. We can continue to try and control life and attempt to think, behave, or change the world in our quest for happiness and well-being. This is where most people fail; we’ll find many companions on this path. Or we can take the path of transformation and give up our attachment to the comforting feelings of being in control. We give up the illusory safety of the known in search of the unknown—the field of all possibilities where miracles can happen. 

When we can simply step into the realm of insight and be in the unknown, we can appreciate the mystery of being alive. While we don’t control the timing of these perceptions, each time we have one we see life in a new and clearer way. This my friends is when life gets fun.