Until 6 months before I ever heard of Sydney Banks and the 3 Principles, I still believed that all uncomfortable feelings, sensations and emotions were telling me something was wrong and I needed to do something to change the situation in some “positive” way. 

It felt like a lot of effort. 

Then, at the age of 56, after more than 30 years of continuous searching for answers to how health and happiness and relationships really work, I had a totally unexpected spiritual experience and had insights that changed everything instantly. 

Since then, I’ve experienced many other insights, but nothing so hugely impactful, until recently, when I, suddenly and unexpectedly, saw something completely differently and couldn’t imagine how I had not seen before what seemed so obvious now. 

I hadn’t been looking for either of these insights, because I didn’t know what I didn’t know, until I experienced it! 

I had been asking for guidance; to be shown what would be most helpful for me to see or hear or experience at that point. 

We are each having individual human experiences and have insights that are most helpful to us. So I am sharing what happened for me, not for anyone else to have the same insights, but as an example of what can happen when we ask for and follow our  individual guidance. 

The first experience happened a few months after my mother was diagnosed with a very rare form of skin cancer. By that time, I had retired from my very alternative medical, psychotherapy and energy healing practices, because despite my approach being greatly sought after, I knew I still didn’t have the answers we were all looking for. Having discovered the conventional medical approach was often less than helpful I’d worked as a holistic medical doctor and a sexual and relationship therapist, using  first conventional psychotherapy, then NLP and hypnotherapy and later energy approaches. As part of this I’d spent a lot of time supporting individuals through alternative and complementary treatments for cancer. At least 2 of these people experienced total remission from cancers that had been expected to be incurable. 

So when my mother was told the cancer found in a lump on her skin, was a very fast spreading, very rare skin cancer, that was likely going to kill her very fast and after surgery and radiotherapy, she found other tumours appearing in her skin, she was told by the cancer doctors there was nothing else they could do. By this time she was weak, exhausted and hugely frustrated because she could no longer even lift her arm to brush her hair. She felt totally demoralised and lost when dismissed medically without any further hope. 

She knew, however, that some people I’d worked with had recovered from cancer despite doctors giving no hope. I felt an urgent responsibility to find her a cure.   

I was aware there was no one cure for everyone and that most regimes involved drastic dietary change, which I knew would be no use to her. I had no idea what to do.  

So I asked for guidance and, almost immediately, came across a local website listing 10 alternative cures for cancer, including one I’d never heard of, with no diet involved. It involved tiny pulses of electricity and made sense to my practical engineer father. So he bought the equipment and my mother used it regularly, along with sitting for loving energy sessions with me each day. 

Over the following 6 months, she made a dramatic recovery. She was back to her energetic self, looking and feeling well, with the tumours almost completely disappeared. Her doctors had no explanation. 

Then came the biggest challenge of all. Not long after a holiday visiting my sister and family in France, my mother showed me a new tumour starting to grow. In that moment I was emotionally scrambled! I remember being aware of a whole lot of thoughts and feelings all at once. First, I heard a loud voice telling me I had to find another cure for her right away; I couldn’t let her or my father suffer. Then, another voice told me “Stop the negative thinking! Think only positive or you will make her even worse!” 

Then, behind all that, I heard a calm, gentle voice telling me “Get into your little camper van. Drive to a quiet spot on the north coast (we were living on the island of Jersey, so the north coast cliffs were just 15 minutes away). Park and enjoy the lovely sea view. Get quiet and ask for guidance.” 

I automatically followed that quiet voice. Within moments of getting quite, while enjoying the beautiful view and asking for guidance, I experienced what felt like a download into my brain. I was told to simply repeat 3 short phrases, whatever I was thinking or feeling in each moment. 

The phrases made no sense to me at the time (“Don’t let this go; Don’t let it fade; Just Trust”), but I repeated them anyway and within no time at all I experienced a complete shift.  

I suddenly felt totally calm and knew absolutely (after 56 years of feeling the opposite) that I was not at all responsible for my parents; they were on their  individual journeys and they were being taken care of by the Infinite Divine, just as I was.  

This insight changed everything. I went back to my mother in Love, rather than in fear and desperation. Our relationship became the best it had ever been and I was able to support both my parents over the next 6 months as her health deteriorated and to nurse her at home until her body finally gave up completely.

When my sister came to be with my mother at the end, she gave me a present of a book she had found helpful. It was “Somebody Should Have Told Us”, my first introduction to Syd and the 3 Principles.  

Remembering the 3 phrases and exploring what Syd shared, helped me to continue living with my father for a further 2 years, without strangling him, despite him pressing all my ‘old buttons’.  

I realised later that the phrases were a reminder of who and what we really are and allowed me to ignore thought responses and be in Love, whatever happened. Our relationship massively improved as a result. 

The second big insight experience occurred more recently.  

I had been asking for guidance about where to go and what to do with my life for some time. I felt that I had no specific direction and that there was something I could be doing, but was not sure what it was. 

From time to time I felt inspired to do something specific, but, unlike in the past, that inspiration did not last. 

Then one day, totally out of the blue and for no obvious reason, I felt I had woken up to something so obvious, I didn’t know how I could not have seen or experienced it before.  

It suddenly struck me that although over the years I had come to see there is only One Infinite energy creating everything and that, since it is impossible for anything to be outside of infinity, I must be a part of, and one with, that infinite creative energy, I suddenly saw I had a huge blind spot. 

I had been vegetarian for over 30 years and had even been vegan for some of those years because I knew I didn’t want to harm animals. Even so, I now realised I hadn’t been seeing those animals as also part of and one with the same infinite creative energy – as part of and one with me.  

On this particular day, however, I very clearly saw that I had somehow convinced  myself (while ignoring the nagging knowing deep inside) that these animals were separate and different, which somehow made it OK to allow and even support farming and marketing industries that were treating farm animals very much like the Nazi’s treated the Jews in the holocaust; tearing them away from their mothers and communities as babies; keeping them imprisoned in diabolical conditions and then  killing them in horrific ways, just so I could enjoy a few minutes of pleasure on a plate. I recognised how much easier it had been to do that, because it was what the majority of the population were thinking and doing, so how could it be wrong?  I suddenly saw just how powerful thought could be in convincing me that demeaning and “discrete” abuse of certain races, or ages, or sexes, or species can be OK in certain circumstances. Of course I had thoughts that said I didn’t know what was really going on. But even before I allowed myself to look into the details of what I hadn’t previously allowed myself to look at, I had to admit I actually already knew enough.  

In that moment of insight I absolutely knew I could never again consume anything at all extracted from an animal. 

Then came all the uncomfortable feelings; based on the thoughts first of guilt for what I had already done and then of how I needed to have all other human beings stop this abuse too. At first it was a struggle, to focus instead on love and appreciation and the world I desire to experience, rather than on the “reality” I had now started to see. 

Thought was of course telling me I needed to change things on the outside. However, I was determined to focus on creating change the way it actually works, from the inside out. So whenever those thoughts and images came to me, I did my best to focus on love and appreciation and plans and ideas for even more love.  And as I did, I started to hear news every day about cats, dogs, pigs, cows, hens,  ducks, goats and sheep, being rescued by sanctuaries world wide and given the chance to lead amazingly happy lives. I heard about hundreds of dogs being released from cages they’d been kept in for years, for pharmaceutical and cosmetics testing. I heard about farms happily converted from meat, dairy and eggs to plant and  mushroom production. 

I heard more and more people sharing the major benefits to health and the planet of eating plant based food.  

And I continued to experience inspirations about putting together all I’ve learned over the years about permaculture, regenerative agriculture, energy healing, innate health and the power of Love and Oneness, to create something new and special, powerful and fun in this human experience. 

Your insights will of course be different and impact you in different ways. I wonder what insights and guidance are in store next for all of us to enjoy? 

To connect with Anne Curtis and find out more about the work she does, please visit the link:  https://insighttimer.com/annecurtis/

If you would like to spend time with speakers like this in person and hear them share their wisdom and experience in a beautiful setting in Albir, Spain in November each year, you can find tickets here www.thevivaevent.com/registration