There are many things which our culture believes are automatic and unknowing processes — such as regulating our blood pressure, remembering to breathe, regulating the salinity of our blood and the acidity of our stomach acid — and that these processes are built into the body, are automatic, and cannot be controlled.

Yet we know by observation that there are yogis who have in fact taken control of many of these processes, and so we know it can be done. But why don’t you and me have awareness of these things?

Baby Know

I personally suspect that, as an infant, even as an infant or fetus in utero, we were dimly conscious of many of these things. Why not? Might not have we had some dim awareness of beating our heart? We had no language, we didn’t even have a completely grown brain. But why wouldn’t we have felt the beating of our heart?

What better a thing for a growing brain to choose as a beginning project than to beat your heart? Perhaps to begin to regulate blood pressure? Perhaps to begin to learn to regulate salinity of the blood?

Some things it didn’t need to learn, perhaps. The mother’s body is regulating the blood pressure as her blood entered the umbilical tube.

The child in the womb didn’t need to learn how to operate lungs, or to digest food.

But at birth it learned how to operate those lungs, real quick.

And soon after, at the breast, it learned how to suckle, and then how to digest food.

Why would we think, just because the infant has no language, cannot speak or use a computer to write an email, that the infant isn’t learning these things? Why would we *assume* that it just knows them?

After all, it learns everything else. Why would these things be so different?

The learning would be stored in the mind, but it wouldn’t be stored in a form readily accessible to later memory. In a similar manner, you might learn how to do a triple-gainer off the high diving board, but when you access it in your memory, it’s probably a memory of sensation rather than some clear visual picture.

We Learn to Focus

In the earlier article, I discussed how we learn things, and these repeated things become what we now call habits, and what that means is that they’ve been relegated to the ‘Unconscious’ part of the mind.

But is that how it happens?

Let’s consider a different view …

I submit that at some point in our lives, starting in infancy, we learn to ‘focus’ the attention. In contrast to the dim and vague warbling of the baby in the crib, as arms and legs twitch aimlessly and the eyes wander, the child learns to focus attention. Perhaps onto being wet or hungry. Perhaps the child learns to stare at the plastic ducky hanging over the crib.

As the child focuses its attention on the yellow ducky, what happens to all the other awareness?

It goes away from consciousness. The child is not ‘attending’ to it. It’s still there: blood being pumped, lungs breathing air, food being digested. But it is not in ‘consciousness.’

I say that the other side of Focus is the creation of the Unconscious.

It’s still the one mind. A single unified mind.

But as we become skilled at focusing attention, more and more and more gets shoved below what we call consciousness. We pretty much have to do it this way in order to get along.

And along the way, we learn to do the same thing with traumatic events. We learn that our pain will subside if we turn the attention away, we place the focus elsewhere, and the traumatic memory now becomes a resident of the so-called Unconscious mind.

The practice of focusing attention is how we create unawareness of the vast majority of the thoughts and processes constantly undulating in the sea of the single, unified mind.

It’s the classical two-edged sword.

Focus is completely necessary to survival. And Focus is what creates ‘Unconsciousness.’

Conscious? Unconscious?

Now here’s something funny.

In many ways, the so-called Unconscious is way more conscious and cognizant of far more than our feeble ‘Conscious’ mind can handle.

Julian Jaynes, in “The Evolution of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind”, provided a brilliant analogy. Each of us is like a person in a completely dark, huge room. On our head we have a helmet with a miner’s lamp. Everywhere we look, we see.

Because we are constantly looking, we constantly see *something*. We think we are being ‘conscious’ of the things around us.

And yet, no matter where we happen to be looking, all around us — above, below, to the right and to the left, and behind us — we are completely unaware. We are blind to 98% of what’s there, because we’re focussing on the 2% that falls within our limited attention, the limited 2% illuminated by the dim wattage of our so-called conscious mind.

Seems to me that the Unconscious mind — attending to a thousand things at once — is actually more conscious than our so-called conscious mind.

Make a friend of your Unconscious mind. It’s probably the best friend you’ve got.

Some folks do well with this; other people never seem to succeed.

What do you want from such a system?

You want (a) success; (b) rapid success; (c) reliable success. Just like your Ford automobile, you want it to always start and carry you down the chosen road, to start quickly, and to operate reliably as expected.

In these various systems, different factors are touted as helping to attain success, rapidity, and reliability. These include –

• Practicing to attain clear images
• Adding additional senses as you visualize
• Having faith, believing
• Practicing to build history of success (creates trust)
• Adding emotions you’ll experience upon success
• Picturing as already happened
• Being *in* the picture
• Repetition
• Spending time, more time, every-day time on the same visualization
• Create ardent desire
• Create gratitude (can only feel gratitude on a basis of success)
• Turning it over to God, to the Universe, to your Higher Self, to your Subconscious

The common denominator of all of these … is that they make the visualization more *real*.

Reality – A Consensual Illusion?

For most of us, the first time we hear the concept that the world around us, what we think is reality itself, could be a consensual illusion … it seems absurd. For it directly contradicts our “experience” of the world.

But think. As infants we have no ability to choose a direction, and then create a focused visualization. We must rely upon some incoming sensory input, and what people tell us. Even the words we learn, their meanings, and the way they are strung together create a view of the world … and *inside* of that world-view we operate. Like fish that don’t see the water, we don’t see the world-view we’ve created around us. Everything we see is *inside* the world view.

In Spanish, a person cannot miss the bus. Because when the young grow up inside the Spanish language, the way they consider the missed bus is (as we’d say in English) … “The bus, she left me.” This is now the world view of how busses behave.

As growing children, sometimes we see things that others do not see. However, in order to communicate with others, to attain our goals (food, water, acceptance, grades, friendship) we are attempting to see the commonly-agreed-upon view that we hear from others. Frequently, the imaginary friend fades away from our view of the world, and we cannot see the friend any longer. The golden glow glistening around the leaves as they pulsate with light fades, leaving the flat green leaves shown in pictures and as (we come to believe) seen by others.

We accept the consensual reality as told and demonstrated to us by our family and our culture.

Is My Red Your Blue?

We don’t actually *know* that others see things as we do, even after we’ve agreed.

We can see a shirt or a dress, and we agree that it is red. But perhaps what my eyes are handing to my brain, and what I call by the word “red” would be what you would call “blue” if you could see through my eyes. Perhaps from your viewpoint, you see red and I’m really seeing what you’d call blue, but since we both call it “red” we assume we’re *seeing* the same thing. But we have no way to really check and see if that’s true.

We call it by the same name, we describe it using the same words, but maybe our experience is completely different.

Three Kinds of Entrapment

1. As in the sad movie, you could get your foot caught in the railroad tracks, and you are stuck, entrapped in the physical universe, and the train could eat you up right quick. A fleeing rabbit could be outsmarted in the quick twists and turns by the faster fox, and the rabbit is stuck, entrapped, and it’s curtains.
2. We can get stuck in the structures and blind spots of the mind we’ve constructed by our decisions, from the beliefs adopted from our parents, and from accidental conditioning (automatic reactions) caused by the accidents of our life experience. An example might be an adopted child. While one person might go on to great success and happiness, another might focus on the core belief that the parents didn’t want him, and spend a lifetime seeing rejection from friends, bosses, and lovers even when none existed. All of life could then have targets and strategies designed to deal with and avoid rejection. It’s like running down a football field, dodging invisible barriers, and often failing to see the real opponents closing in.
3. The entire world itself is a consensual reality, which some systems have called the “Veil of Illusion.”

Attaining Freedom from Entrapment

Physical skills and learned skills of the mind avoid physical entrapment, and help us to entrap/ensnare the things that we want.

Self-help and therapies and practices like Rolfing and Meditation help to fix non-optimum mental structures and blind spots in the mind.

So-called spiritual means can achieve freedom from the consensual illusion that *is* the entire world … sometimes.

Some saints and religious figures have done things that seem to be above the entire world, impossible things, miracles. One Indian holy man can create precious jewelry from thin air. Another heals with a hug. Some monks have created enlightenment and freedom in a student with a riddle, pointing a finger, or a whack with a stick. The Jesus is said to have arisen from the dead, awakened the dead by calling his name, and walked upon water.

Most of us have seen miracles, done miracles, or heard about miracles.

We tend to erase these from our minds immediately as we see them. Even when seen, they do not fit into “what is true” or “what is real” or “what is possible.” We can actually make them disappear from our memory even if we just saw it, because immediately it is easier to create the belief that we mis-perceived.

I have seen miracles: The bones in a woman’s face change shape completely in less than an hour, a woman’s vision change from 20/200 to 20/20 in five minutes, a wart be requested to fall off the body and it does, choosing one bus from over 30 from which to retrieve a book belonging to my wife, a fly requested to fly across the room to light on my finger and it does so, visualizing a lost object in a friend’s house and immediately retrieving it (twice), objects appearing where they didn’t exist before.

Miracle = it happened, in contravention to “reality,” contradicting the consensual agreement we call the world.

Magic, when it happens, nearly always happens just outside of your vision. Seldom is there a puff of smoke or sound effects. It just flows in what seems the normal way, except that it’s impossible, and is often re-interpreted immediately by the mind which is caught and can see and remember only *inside* the consensual veil of illusion that we have adopted.

Do You Believe Your Own Eyes?

If you own some blue plates, and you go to the cupboard and open the cupboard, you are very, very certain that the plates you see there will be blue, just like they were yesterday and the day before.

This kind of “reality” is very, very persuasive.

Picturing what “isn’t” against the constant automatic repeated internal creation of what “is” is pitting a weak force against a strong one.

Only repetition, strength and enhancing the weak can prevail.

And it can be done.

Some people become so practiced that they can simply feel good, think about what they want and it shows up quickly.

Others of us must start out more slowly.

But, just as you will probably have to practice if you want to play basketball, then you probably have to practice if you want to manifest a reality different than what you see around you today.

The good news is that, according to the reports of many, over thousands of years … it can be done.

The good news is that if you’ll spend time just to learn it a little, magic and manifestation and freedom will become more and more visible in your life.

Alas, for most of us, you must actually try it a bit before you’ll see results. You can’t just say, “show me,” and have your life instantly revamped. There is no force in the Universe that can take the place of *you* in this game. Nobody can shoot the basket *for* you; you’ll need to take your shots yourself.

Tips for Success

• Tip #1 — Picture what is *near* the consensual reality.
• Tip #2 — Remove counter-intentions. If you’re trying to walk north and south at the same time, little progress is possible. So in addition to creating the new reality, be sure to remove your participation in the old reality that is no longer your heart’s desire. (One example is chatting with a friend who mocks and reinforces the old views or who continually creates negative scenarios which you “should” accept. Another example is making your actions in the physical are compatible with your vision, like getting a bed large enough when you are seeking a lover.)
• Tip #3 — Practice, and you gain skill.
• Tip #4 — Connect with other people who share the view that changing the world is possible.
• Tip #5 — Choose one thing on which to focus, and then focus as if your head were on fire. Avoid choosing a long laundry list, because watering down your focus over many list items weakens each one.
• Tip #6 — Choose a target about which you can feel passionate. For example, if you think you *ought* to want a million dollars, but you have much stronger feelings about getting a new rug, a new boyfriend, or losing some weight, then the million dollars can wait.
• Tip #7 — Use a gradient. Success is cumulative, and so starting with simple things builds your “strength” or belief.

You can Use the Physical Universe, too

In some cases, a person encountering this magical/spiritual approach can completely overlook using the physical universe. That can be a big mistake. In some cases, using the physical universe may be the quicker road, and please realize you are *still* using the principles of visualization in order to bring about the manifestation of your heart’s desire.

Here’s an example:

At the age 26, I was still completely backward about how to meet and flirt and attract a girlfriend. But one day I had an epiphany, and saw a different way to look at it, and created a kind of system for myself. It worked fabulously. I turned this into an instructional manual some years later, and it appears to have worked very well for pretty much everyone who has tried it.

It consists in asking many people to go out. And in this case, for certain reasons of theory, you do not much discriminate much about who you ask out in the very beginning. (That is, you adopt a mental viewpoint which stops ruling out everybody.) Since your purpose here is not to immediately find the love of your life, but rather to experience the process of inviting and going out, and to learn how to enjoy this process, this whole thing becomes rather easy.

You stay out of bed and avoid entanglement, while you learn how to have a good time, how to share a good time, and how to operate in this world of asking women out. And what happens?

It’s the Ultimate Visualization

Your physical eyes *see* you going out with women. Your nose *smells* the perfume the women are wearing. Your sense of touch *feels* the women going out with you. Your ears *hear* the women saying yes to your invitation to go out. You see and hear and feel and experience that you are going out with women.

How much chance do pre-existing “mental” limitations and visions have of standing up against this evidence of your senses? Precious little. Because you are now pitting the strong (automatic repeating creating of your reality) against the weak (mental fears and blind spots). You are using the Universe to reprogram your reality, in the direction you have chosen.

It changes you. It changes you fast. It changes you reliably. It changes you in the direction of success. It changes you on a self-regulating gradient. It changes you “near” to the existing physical universe. And it changes you more and more as you continue.

You then discover, whether you started this way or not, that attractive women somehow start falling out of the sky, appearing in your world, manifesting. And, better still, one or more start manifesting in your dates.

Keep this up, and it’s darn difficult to avoid meeting the love of your life.

(How do you know when to say “yes” and accept the love of your life? My rule is simple. When I realize I’d be a *fool* to let *this one* escape, then it’s time to say yes.)

A Learned Manifestation Skill Remains

More good news — If you start out fairly clumsy with women, as I was, then the first time you try this, it takes a while, and it may take time before you really flip over somebody.

However, this process is teaching you a skill. And if, some time later, you need to reactivate your “dating mode,” you’ll happily discover that things go faster and easier … because you have (a) learned a new skill, and (b) this new “possibility” is now a part of your psyche, easy to accept, and now a part of you and who you are.

This is using the physical universe. Alter your actions so that your eyes and ears and nose and body create your desired reality, more and more.

And you are still visualizing, and manifesting.

You are using judo on the consensus reality you call your life to find true love and happiness.

What Visualization System is Best to Use?

Though some are probably better than others — for you in particular — it probably doesn’t matter a lot whether you engage in prayer, magic, meditation, manifestation, and such things.

You may have to sort out some of your skills in the physical universe, and in your mental universe, before you start creating thunderstorms over your town, or speedboats appearing in your driveway.

But the good news is … you can do this.

[reprinted, with permission, from Shyguy's How To Get A Girlfriend Blog.]

All too often, in our lives we find ourselves being manipulated or influenced by other men, by women, and sometimes even by the damned television.

Of course, as a kid against a schoolyard bully, perhaps the only options are the Charles Atlas course, karate classes, or a tactful withdrawal. But in later life usually we’re not influenced by physical threat.

HOW DO ‘THEY’ MANIPULATE US?

It’s done with worths, with images, and with social pressure.

If you’re being influenced this way … what that tells you is that you DO NOT actually understand how it’s happening. Oh, you may have theories and opinions about those bad people.

But if you’re still being manipulated, either “having” to go along, or even resisting but feeling upset or angry about it .. then you DO NOT fully understand how it works.

But here’s how to change that …

HERE IS THE KEY:

If you wish to invest time to understand how it all works, then *you* can learn to influence people around you. You can control nearly every situation. You can attract people to you, and they will listen to what you have to say.

If you don’t wish to invest time to understand how it all works?

<!–more–>Well, then you will simply go on with the same life you now have — being manipulated by women, by men, by situations. All seeming out of your control.

So unless you wish to continue the life of a helpless pawn … then the question becomes simply … WHERE and HOW can I learn how ‘Influence’ works?

And luckily, in recent years, this is no longer mysterious.

There is a body of knowledge that reveals all of this. It requires some time investment and some study, but it actually does deliver this kind of power, this kind of skill, into your hands.

It is the rightful study of Hypnosis.

WHAT?

Now before you start thinking about guys on stage with wild eyes, and people in chairs acting like chickens, please be aware that there have been radical developments in recent years, and for the first time, these INSIDE techniques are being presented to the public.

In the past, we sometimes have described certain politicians, certain charismatic individuals, certain evangelical preachers, and certain actors as “almost hypnotic.”

Well … it’s not “almost” … they are using modern, secret hypnotic methods.

Hypnosis is all around you, being used successfully, and profitably … by business, by politicians, by television.

Why do housewives pay $2-$3 more for a bottle of name-brand laundry soap? The stuff in the other bottle works just the same. So why do her eyes go to the more expensive bottle? Why does her hand reach out and pick it up? Why does she stand at the check-out stand and pay extra?

Hypnosis is simpler than you imagine, more common that you imagine, and easy to understand … IF it’s presented simply.

I FOUND A MASTER WHO MAKES IT SIMPLE

Though I’ve known of this field since about forever, I recently stumbled across an up-to-date report and was delighted to discover an outstanding hypnotist — perhaps the best hypnotist in the world — who has the true gift of a master and a teacher …

He has a way of making it simple.

GET THE FACTS

Your life can transform itself.

You can have a body of knowledge that sets you apart, that gives you freedom from being manipulated by women, by men, by situations.

You can .. be in control.

Get the facts. The full story is revealed here –

http://learn-conversational-hypnosis.org

You’ll be happy you did.

Mobius Megatar ToneWeaver Guitar.

I make and sell guitars. Unusual guitars that you can play without strumming or picking, and this lets you play strings with both hands, so you can play bass strings and guitar strings at the same time. The name of this instrument is the Mobius Megatar.

Recently, a college student had inquired because he wanted to get one of our instruments. We wrote back and forth, and he was all set to go, but then he sent me this email –

“I’m sorry but the Megatar is not in the picture any more. I was coerced into buying a 2700 dollar classical guitar from a company that gives referral bonuses to the teacher who I was coerced by, so I’m left broke and on crappy terms with my main teacher for the next 3 years.

“I really wish I had the cash and time to delve into a tapstyle instrument right now, and if I could, it’d be a Mobius with Bartolini pickups, but it seems like that won’t be available for a while. With student loans and a no emergency funds (thanks to the aforementioned jerk of a teacher) I’ll be lucky if my car makes it without scheduled servicing for the next 6 months.”

What is really odd is that I got another email from another college student, in a similar situation who told me something of a similar story, that he’d been required (or perhaps urged) to get a nylon-string guitar for some upcoming course work. However, the second student seemed much less bitter.

And it got me to thinking. I can understand the disappointment he must feel.

And actually, it does sound kind of crappy behavior for the college music instructor, to push the student toward an instrument that pays the instructor a commission.

On the other hand …

On the other hand, that’s the past, and I’m guessing that it’s a pretty good guitar, and I expect that the young man will get quite a bit of good out of it. So I suggested that he might as well see if he could let some of the bitterness go.

If somebody makes you angry, it’s as if they have given you a heavy rock to carry around. You can go into the other room, but you’re still carrying the rock. Over time, it seems like the rock grows heavier and heavier and heavier.

The person who triggered the unhappiness, perhaps they are good perhaps they are bad, but in any event most of the time these other humans are doing about the best that they can with the training and insight that they possess; most people are like you and me. Sometimes we are good people. Sometimes we are bad people, but generally we are doing the best that we can. Because, if you knew how to do better, you would do better, wouldn’t you?

Even the fools and jerks are about the same.

Generally speaking, you cannot do too much about the ignorance or wrong choices of other people, but you do make your own choices.

At this point, might you be able to consider this idea? … Throw down the rock. Let it roll away. Someone else can pick it up, if  they want to. Might that make your passage through the days … lighter?

You’re young or you’re old. Either way, there are lots of adventures ahead.

Time enough for things that are important.

For example, if you think you want a Megatar, start picturing it, allow yourself to think of it as something you *already possess*. Something you already have, in the fullness of time. Perhaps you don’t see the way right this minute, but that’s the way of all life. You don’t see all life right now. And the first step is to see it, decided that it’s on the way, picture it, enjoy that you have it … and generally it will show up, often sooner than you’d have thought, just because that’s the future you are creating.

You create your life as you go, moment by moment, with your thoughts and with your perceptions.

Perceive tragedy and all around you tragedy abounds, and with your thoughts, future tragedies begin to take form.

Perceive what you want, and the good things you enjoy, and all round you, good things exist, and you create more good things a-coming.

Your Megatar is just one of the good things coming to you. You have a wonderful life unfolding.

What is it about taking a shower that causes new ideas to pop into your head?

Is it the invigorating ions that are caused by splitting water droplets?

Or is it a simple as Murphy’s law triggered because you will never have pencil and paper in the shower?

I don’t know the answer to this time-proven rule, but as of this morning’s shower, I do know a super-simple way to look at mental health, a simple way to be happier and more productive.

It’s simply this –

As you go through life, and as you go through each day, stuff will be going on. Some of it’s yours, and some of it seems to just happen. And you’re going to be seeing this stuff happening and you’re going to react to it and think about it.

Now here’s the key –

If you allow yourself to *dwell* upon the bad in it, you’ll be using your mind in a way that, over time, conditions you (by repetition) to habitual thinking. And in this thinking, you’re dissatisfied with life, you’re the effect of stuff out there, perhaps a repeating victim of stuff out there. And this will never produce happiness in your life, and your thinking or perception will tend to become oblivious to the good things, the good possibilities, the good feelings, that could turn it all around for you.

But to have a happier life, if you will make an ongoing and intentional practice to consciously find what good is in whatever is happening, if you will consciously consider what’s happening and consider how it may be to your (now or later) benefit, then several good things will happen.

Over time, as you do this you will experience more happiness, because you’re going out of your way to find some happy thoughts. Thinking happy thoughts tends to go along with a happy life. Sounds a little too simple, because frankly it is simply too simple. It is so simple that hardly anyone thinks to try it.

Further, as you intentionally practice focussing your attention on discerning what good is in what’s happening, or how it may turn to your advantage, you are developing a creative problem-solving mentality, and you’ll discover yourself creating new ways to operate that are to your advantage. This too is horribly simple — if you look for ways to get good from a situation, you’re likely to find some.

Now let’s hear it from the nay-sayers!

The nay-sayer will have an automatic reaction against what’s just been said here. Now in fact, what we’re seeing with the naysayer is that something happened (some words appeared) in the naysayer’s life, but the naysayer is in the habit of finding the bad, so the automatic, trained, habit of the naysayer is to now find something that will ruin it for himself.

For example, the naysayer can object that “squelching down your negative feelings and suppressing them is an unhealthy mental practice.” And, truth be told, there is a germ of truth here. Because the ongoing practice of denying the feelings one experiences will lead to the automatic, trained, habit of becoming unconscious of one’s feelings. That doesn’t help survival nor lead to a happier life.

The difference is: if you’re *pushing against* a negative thought, you just keep it there. ‘Pushing against’ will tend to be reflected in the words you say inside your head. For example, “I’m not feeling like crying, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!” is a pretty good example of pushing against. Another one is “I’m not going to be mad at Johnny any more!”

Maybe you squelch it, but it’s not really going away. And for some folks, who have fears about their mind being out of control, this can be a real catch-22. A self-fulfilling problem.

But if you have fears about your mind being out of control, then you can simply learn to practice meditation, in the simplest sense of the word.

Meditation, at the simplest level, is nothing more than practicing holding your mind on one thing. That one thing could be your breath going in and out. That one thing could be the repetition of a word, like ‘Om’ or ‘Shanti’ or ‘peace’ or even ‘boogie shoes.’ That one thing could be holding a picture in mind: a mountain, the bright light of a candle, the face of someone you love.

Now your mind *will* wander away; that is the unruly nature of a mind. And when you notice it’s wandered away, you just put it back.

And if you do this every day for 20 minutes, then after a few weeks you will notice that you feel better, and you feel calmer, and your fear about your uncontrollable mind will have dwindled, because slowly by slowly you are actually learning to control your mind. Not in a harsh, military and suppressive way, but by a gentle persistent returning way.

And this is the same way that you would develop your practice of looking at what’s happening to find good in it, or how it can be turned to good.

If you have a real stubborn case of the nasty unhappies, maybe you’ll have to start by simply finding ways to *minimize* the bad that you see all around you. But if you persist, you will slowly by slowly begin to develop the habit of seeing the good going on all around you.

Look, here’s a kind of proof:

In your life, like any life, there have been unhappinesses. Let’s consider how many of your experienced unhappinesses have been ‘hard’ unhappinesses caused by something that happened in the physical universe, and how many of your experienced unhappinesses have been ’soft’ unhappinesses caused as you *thought* about things that had happened or might happen.

If you’re like most humans, and even if you’ve had a rough life, then less than 5% of the unhappinesses were ‘hard’ ones, like you tripped and fell down the stairs and broke an arm or sprained a muscle, or like you had a traffic accident, or your boyfriend left for another woman, or your dog died, or somebody stole something that belonged to you, or something you owned got ruined or spoiled. These are hard unhappinesses caused by an actual event in the physical universe.

Now you may have more control over these things than you realize, but we don’t even need to think about that. What we want to look at here is this –

Do these things happen every day? Do they happen multiple times every day?

For most people, no. They don’t.

These things happen, but only now and then.

For most of us, many days go by before we get another of these ‘hard’ unhappinesses.

But if that’s the case, what about those times when you’ve been continuously unhappy for days and days at a time? Where is that coming from?

Well, if nothing is happening in the physical universe to give you a ‘hard’ unhappiness, then you’re filling up your experience with *your thoughts*.

And you must have these thoughts on automatic unhappy mode, because it’s just one unhappy thought after another. Let’s say the boyfriend left. That happened once. But what about the hundreds or thousands of times you think unhappily about it? What about the hundreds or thousands of times you think about it even before it ever happens?

With these hundreds or thousands of unhappy thoughts, you are training your mind by simple repetition to automatically generate unhappy thoughts, and these will create the unhappy emotions in your body, and you are training yourself, unconsciously and automatically, to become and remain an unhappy person.

Is this mental health? To train yourself to become an unhappy person?

No, it is not good mental health.

So what is the opposite of this unconscious training program for unhappiness?

The opposite is a conscious training program for happiness.

Can it really be that simple?

Yes. Actually, it is exactly that simple.

You choose: Unconscioiusly keep running your unhappiness training, or consciously re-train to become a happy person.

Maybe not always easy. Maybe not immediate. Takes intention, practice, and time. And it works.

You will recreate yourself as a happier, and healthier person.

Presto. Mental health and happiness.

The movie has a focus on “getting stuff,” which is probably a good thing, because this focus that anyone can understand is probably one of the reasons the movie has been wildfire word-of-mouth and rapidly making its way into mainstream culture. And after all, if you’re just too darned spiritual to want some stuff for yourself, you could always manifest a bunch of stuff and give it to the poor!

For the rest of us, getting some stuff sounds just swell. And just a tiny bit of reflection brings us to the realization that we could use the same method to be, do, or have more of the things that interest and inspire us. Nothing wrong with that.

But what about lazy people?

Sometimes people are kind of, well, lazy. And lots of the people seeing this movie are electrified and inspired, but haven’t thought about this kind of “manifesting” before.

As a result, perhaps they find it real attractive to sit on their cushy sofas and just wish up a storm. They’re visualizing sports cars, new homes with pools on the ocean at Acapulco, and bank accounts that just splash with the money overflowing. They’re visualizing new girlfriends who resemble models, cushy jobs where they do nothing at all, and servants leaping around saying “yassah! yassah!”

And some of these folks sitting on their cushy sofas seem to be expecting these things to just magically appear out of the thin air. And … it doesn’t work like that.

It does work. But it works a bit differently.

::: HOW THE LAW OF ATTRACTION WORKS

In the movie, they speak of “Like Attracting Like,” and without getting into discussions of frequencies and vibes, let’s simply say that the idea is that if you’re “tuned in” to the idea of a new girlfriend, then you’re wonderfully positioned to have one show up. And it might be hard to say how much is due to magic — because the universe loves you — and how much is due to your paying attention to what’s around you because you’re tuned in.

I have an opinion about that, and probably you have an opinion about that. My opinion is that it’s simply magic. Some day we may learn that it’s science, but for right now, it’s magic and I’ve seen it happen so repeatedly that I think it’s magic and it’s darned handy.

I have a theory about how it works, but it’s just my theory. I may not know how a refrigerator works, or how a television works, or how a jetski works. But I can use a refrigerator or a television, and I think I could operate a jetski.

In a like fashion, I know the rules for manifesting things, and by golly things manifest, and that’s just swell. And the way that they manifest is not like the cushy-sofa-sitter is picturing.

It works like this …

::: THOUGHTS BECOME THINGS

Thoughts do become things, but perhaps this is less magical than we might imagine.

For example, the lightbulb was just an idea that Edison dreamed up. He then did experiment after experiment learning what didn’t work. And then, one day, one of his experiments revealed what did work.

Nicola Tesla was walking in the park, talking with a friend, and he glanced up at the sun. He was struck with a vision, of a circle around the sun. And the circle around the sun had magnets and he saw electricity flowing. And his friend watched in stupefaction as Tesla stopped in mid-sentence and began drawing a diagram in the dirt. This diagram was the electrical-generator motor, and the same design he saw in a circle around the sun is powering your lightbulbs, refrigerator, and television today.

But his first Electrical Generator, built at Niagara Falls so as to be turned by the falling water, did not spring into being out of thin air. It required steel and wire and machinery and hauling heavy stuff. It required negotiation and salesmanship. Money changed hands. People had to be hired and paid. There was grease and sweat and wrenches and loud noises. And … then … there was an Electrical Generator, and it was making electricity.

Notice that both Edison and Tesla had an idea, a thought, but that before the thought became a thing, each of them went through a period of hard work and doing stuff.

::: WHAT IS ‘ATTRACTION’?

The easiest way to think about this is to think of an iron magnet.

Place an iron magnet upon the table top. Nearby place some iron filings. Zoom! The iron filings leap across space to attach themselves to the iron magnet.

In the same manner, you can seemingly cause things to find their way through space to you. But unlike a magnet, which is “hardwired” to attract one thing — iron — you have the ability to create. What can you create? You can create thoughts. Iron cannot do that.

When you create thoughts properly focused on the thing you desire, like a new car, it is as if you are making yourself into a “new car magnet.” As you go around thinking of positive wonderful things, these positive and wonderful things tend to show up.

And on the other hand, when you go around thinking of horrid and undesireable things, by golly these things tend to show up, too!

Now we might quibble: Is it due to the Magic of the Spheres? Or is it just that you’re sensitizing yourself to these things and so you notice them? And I say, “Go ahead and have any opinion you wish,” but please notice that the facts seem to be true.

When you constantly picture good stuff, good stuff seems to show up. When you constantly picture bad stuff, bad stuff seems to show up in your life.

So it appears that you can create your reality. And it doesn’t really matter whether it gets created by elves or far-out science. If you can create your reality, why not create a good one and enjoy your good life?

::: WE START WITH A THOUGHT

Perhaps the oak trees began as a thought in the mind of God. Hard to prove it. But for certain all the man-made things — shoes, and ships, and sealing wax — began with an idea. A fellow invented bubble gum by accident. Another guy invented useful rubber products by accident. Other folks invented things like the cotton gin and the gin and tonic by experimenting.

But every (man made) thing in the universe began as a thought. So we can feel pretty certain about that one.

::: IS THAT ALL THERE IS TO IT?

You think a thought and then the thing is there?

Well, actually, sometimes it does happen like that. I think of a friend and my phone rings and it’s my friend. That sometimes happens. And similarly maybe I think that today I’d like to have $1800 of new income show up. And quite often I get an email or a phone call from somebody who wants to send me $1800.

Now it is possible that it might be Publisher’s Clearing House telling me I’ve won, but quite often these people who want to send me money also want something for their money. I make musical instruments — see http://megatar.com — and often when people contact me to send money, they want me to send them a musical instrument.

Is the the wondrous fact that I thought of getting $1800 and somebody called up and offered to send $1800 diminished by the fact that it’s commerce? Is this reality diminished by the fact that the dollars didn’t just appear “Poof!” on the table?

Not really. I find that being able to call up what I’d like makes me happy when it shows up and it doesn’t matter to me whether it’s delivered by UPS or Federal Express.

Sure, if I found $1800 lying on the ground outside my back door, that would be another swell way to get $1800, but when you’re all a-manifesting stuff, the one thing you don’t get to do is to tell the Universe how to send it. You get to choose what you want. The Universe gets to send it any way it chooses.

::: THE PREACHER AND THE FLOOD

There were warnings of a flood one day, but the Preacher knew that the Lord would provide, so he didn’t leave with all his neighbors. And sure enough it did come a flood, and he had to climb up on his roof.

The view up there was fine, and he saw some people he knew paddling by in a boat. They smiled and waved.

“Come on, Preacher!” they called. “We’ve got room in the boat.” But he shook his head.

“No, thanks,” he said, “Pick up somebody else. The Lord will protect me.”

So they paddled around the bend, and then the Preacher saw two men holding onto a large log. They called to him to jump in the water and join them as they drifted down the current. But he declined, saying that the Lord would provide.

And the water rose, and rose. And it swept him away and he tumbled in the dirty water, and he drowned.

And when he opened his eyes, he stood before the Pearly Gates. And he saw, past Saint Peter, God himself looking out at him. And the Preacher was just a little bit miffed.

“Lord,” he said, “I believed in you. I believed in you and you let me down!”

“Foolish man,” said the Lord, “I sent you a news broadcast, a boat, and a log.”

::: HOW TO GET IN THE BOAT

Take action.

In the movie, “The Secret,” several people (Joe Vitale, Jack Canfield) say that “you may have to take some action.” Perhaps you get an inspired idea. Maybe you just get a “What if …” idea. Maybe you already know what you need to do.

You’ve got to do your part.

If you’re sitting in front of a table, and on the table is a glass of water, and you’re thirsty, you don’t just sit there asking the Universe to get the water into your mouth. Instead you just pick up the glass and drink.

What if you’re in some business building, and you’re thirsty. You ask the Universe for some water. But you also look around the halls and ask people. Sure enough, you find a water cooler. Now you could be ungrateful and snippy, and you could say, “The Universe didn’t do a darn thing for me. I found it myself!”

Which reminds me of Moishe in Jerusalem

::: MOISHE IN JERUSALEM

Moishe had finally gone to see the Holy Land and he had a car to drive around. He was having a hard time finding a parking place, though. So he called on the Lord.

“Lord,” he said, “I really need a parking place. If you’ll just give me a parking place, I promise to keep the sabbath, and to be a better man.”

At just that moment, right in front of him, a car pulled out of a parking space that couldn’t have been more perfect. Moishe leaned out the window and looked up.

“Never mind!” he called. “I just found one!”

Albert Einstein once said, “You need to treat life as if nothing is a miracle … or everything is.” And that’s really the choice that we have. You can choose either way. But here’s a hint: When you choose to treat life as if it is all miraculous, it’s more fun.

::: THE HEART OF THE MATTER

When you decide to try the method given in “The Secret,” you will start to picture something that you desire. You will start to *feel* the emotion that you have when you contemplate this thing you desire. You will remember to *feel* gratitude for the things you already have in this life. You will choose to *trust and believe* that what you want is on its way, that you are going to have it.

Now here’s the key point.

On the one hand, though you get to choose what you want, it is *The Universe* that gets to choose how it will come. You don’t get to choose that. No matter how it comes, it will get to you, but you have to give up being able to tell the Universe how you want it delivered.

Nextly, you may have to take action. Suppose you want a girlfriend, and you know there’s a gaggle down at Joe’s Bar on any Saturday Night. If you *refuse* to take action, and wander on down to Joe’s Bar, then you are picturing a *COUNTER-INTENTION* to your alleged desire.

It’s like a diet. Losing some weight should be a simple thing in theory. You just eat less food and burn more energy, and you’ll lose weight. But for most of us, it’s a little more stubborn than that. And the reason is dead-simple obvious.

The reason why diets proceed slowly is because you’re holding two different and conflicting ideas in your head at the same time. On the one hand you say, “I want to lose some weight.” And at the same time you think, “I want to eat that luscious big piece of cake!”

Going in two directions doesn’t work!

Try it. Stand in the middle of the living room. Take one step to the North. Then take one step to the South. Repeat this over and over, as fast as you can. See how long it takes to get to the kitchen!

::: COUNTER-INTENTION GOES NOWHERE

In actual fact, the practice of visualizing (with emotion) what you want, and having it appear in your life is actually pretty simple. However, you cannot move in two directions at once.

You cannot picture the “good times with new girlfriend,” while at the same time picturing “how bad old girlfriend treated me.” Because at the same time you’re picturing good times and bad times. It just cannot get you anywhere.

Likewise, if you’re picturing “fun times with new girlfriend,” and for a moment you have the inspired idea to mosey on down to Joe’s Bar, but then you think “sit on my butt and watch wrestling on television, yeah!” And now you’re picturing two opposite and contradictory ideas. And which one are you *acting* on?

::: THE UNIVERSE ISN’T STUPID

The Universe isn’t stupid. It’s clear where your priority lies. And that’s what the Universe will deliver to you. You get to watch wrestling on television.

And similarly, if you’re picturing “fun times with new girlfriend,” and it just pops into your head to maybe wander down to Joe’s Bar and flirt around, and then you have the thought, “Oh, but wait. I’m clumsy at flirting. It might not work.” And so you think you’d like to have a new girlfriend but you don’t want to mosey down to Joe’s Bar, so you go into the kitchen to see if there’s any doughnuts left.

And guess what? You’re refusing to act. You are *declining* the available women standing around down at Joe’s Bar.

When you decline to go to the trouble of mosying down to Joe’s Bar to fetch one of those women, what are you thinking? That you’re going to find one in your kitchen cabinet in the sack of doughnuts?

When you decline to bother to go fetch your new girlfriend, you’re expressing a counter-intention. You are *demonstrating* that you don’t really want the woman.

Guess what?

That’s what you’ll get.

You’ll get a doughnut, but no woman.

::: THE ANSWER

Use the method given in the Secret. It will work. And, at the same time, get yourself down to Joe’s Bar and hustle. And walk up to them at the Supermarket. And ask your Aunt Mabel to fix you up with women from Church. And join a pottery class. And strike up conversations at the bus stop. And ask them out every chance you get. And keep on using the visualization with feeling. Now everything you do is telling the same story.

That’s when it *really* works.

Immediately, it’s as if unseen forces in the Universe cause women to come toward you in seemingly strange coincidental ways.

The Law of Attraction says that when you send out your message as a thought, with feeling, and when you hold that desire clear in your mind, with belief and faith, that it will come.

Try it. Try it with your eyes wide open, and be willing to do the work that is shown to you.

You’ll see magic. Real magic. If you take action.

People in my parents generation used the word “beggers” to describe people who beg on the street. Or sometimes “moochers,” “panhandlers,” or “bums.” Of course, in tiny Henrietta, Texas, where I grew up, the town was too small to have an official panhandler, so the town drunk filled in part time.

Friends of mine as I grew up didn’t seem to like the word “Begger,” though it would seem to be accurate. And I guess the phrase, “Buddy, can you spare a dime?” from that older time had mutated into “Spare change?” by the hippie period in the 1960’s.

THE SPARE-CHANGER

The writer in “Evolving Times” was describing what we’ve all felt in that situation. You’re walking along and you are suddenly asked, “Spare change?” Which as we all know, means “Do you have any spare change, that you could give to me?” (I guess those beggers are either very lazy, or they are astonishingly efficient.)

And then what happened?

Well, as you know, the common reaction is that you say “No, sorry,” and you hurry a bit more to get past the place where you just told a lie.

The writer of that blog is someone who follows the “Law of Attraction,” which states that what you think and imagine in your mind tends to manifest in your life. And the key thing there is that it doesn’t matter whether you think about something you do want or something you don’t want. In either case, you’re picturing something, and you tend to attract more of what you are “picturizing,” and so more of that is likely to show up.

So if you’re following the Law of Attraction, it greatly behooves you to pay attention to what you’re thinking and picturing. And the writer suddenly realized that, telling that lie to the spare-changer, because the writer didn’t want to stop and give away money, was in fact a statement to the Universe that “No, I do not have any money at all that I could spare.”

Which, according to the Law of Attraction, would tend to bring you that very thing. A shortage of money so acute that you couldn’t possibly spare even a quarter!

Bummer.

And even if a person didn’t try to follow the Law of Attraction, even so, you’d be programming your own habitual thought that you don’t have any money whatsoever to spare. And this kind of thought, repeated and made habitual, would cause you to experience the emotions that would be reasonable for a person who had no money whatsoever beyond the strictly necessary. And those particular feelings aren’t much fun.

So whether you follow the teachings of the Law of Attraction, or whether you follow the Law of NFL Football, either way, letting yourself get in the habit of telling this particular lie to the spare-changers is a losing proposition for your own prosperity and enjoyment of life.

A RAY OF HOPE

Now, having shown you a veritable hell on the sidewalk, it’s only fair that I show you how beautifully we can escape these torments and have a delightful day, and it’s just warm enough.

Here’s how –

Realize that the spare-changer is, in his or her own special way, saying “Hello!” to you. Watch them and you’ll realize that they greet everyone with this same phrase. It’s their greeting to other humans. And that’s OK. They are free to greet the other humans any way they choose.

And you have the same right.

So when they greet you, saying “Spare change?” you can just smile broadly and greet them right back, saying “Hello!” or “How ya’ doin?” or “Nice to see you!”

And what you will discover is that quite often they’ll simply say, “Hello,” or “Fine, thanks.”

Other times they’ll repeat their greeting, “Spare change?” but you’re already past them now. And so if getting past them without stopping, and without giving away money was your goal, then you’ve succeeded.

And other times they’ll just stop, silent. Gave them pause, you did. Probably not many people greet them back.

Or, you could just stop and give them some money.

It’s your call, and you have a perfect right to do it any way you choose.

As you may recall from the movie, that young man started out hating the pirates, and yet, in the course of his adventures, he’s become bolder and he has dared great things, and by golly he has become a pirate. And that’s a good thing.

And so … why is it a good thing to be a pirate?

Here’s an idea to consider –

“Personal growth only takes place outside your comfort zone.”
– Tony Robbins

Think about it. Think about moments when you’ve attained major personal growth. Think about the moments just before you attained this personal growth. Would you say those moments were “comfortable?”

Probably not. We grow the most when we’re challenged. Funerals. Difficult contests. A breakthrough moment. When you go beyond what you know. That’s when it happens.

While it’s not always street-smart to “live on the edge,” it is usually exciting. And while the path of wisdom does not lead us to endanger our lives, our loved ones, or that which we hold dear, it is also a fact that living a life in which there is no challenge, no “danger,” no spice, nothing new, the same every day … well, I suppose it’s good for some folks, but I question whether it’s good for you.

Wouldn’t you rather be a pirate?

There. Didn’t that feel good, just thinking about being a pirate?

Why is that?

DILEMMA OF THE DAY

Mankind, and men (and women) have it in them to both (a) seek safety, and (b) seek novelty. I suppose evolution built that into us. I mean, some folks living way back when who didn’t seek safety left no descendants! And other folks who avoided anything new couldn’t adapt to the first change and they didn’t leave any descendants either!

So you and me, and all the rest of humankind, are the descendants of those humans who did both (a) seek safety, and (b) seek novelty.

So that means it’s a natural fact. We’re built that way. That’s just the way it is.

Go with the flow, and live well. Rebel and become like those way-back folks who left no descendants.

HOW DOES IT PLAY TODAY?

How does it play out? Look around you. One common scenario is a guy who works at a boring job, doing something he finds less than inspiring — it never occurred to him to create something inspiring, because his attention was fixed on renting an apartment and he needed some cash each month — and he’s seeking safety.

He’s a human, so he’s also seeking novelty.

How will he find it?

Television, I reckon.

Synthetic adventures. Stuff that happened to everybody else but him.

When he gets to the end of his life, lying on his deathbed, and maybe he’s thinking back, and he’s saying to himself, “Man, what a great life. I watched me some really good TV!”

So if that’s the obvious outcome of that behavior pattern, then why did he follow that pattern of behavior for 40 years? I can think of only one answer. He just didn’t know any better. He never looked. He never examined the path, and the outcome. He was too busy seeking safety, and finding his novelty cheap and easy.

Personal growth only occurs when you’re outside your comfort zone.

HOW TO HAVE PERSONAL GROWTH

It’s simple: Just operate regularly outside your comfort zone. Make it your habit to do so.

In other words, be a pirate.

You know you want to.

Perhaps you are now asking yourself, “But how?”

Well, you’re a grown person. Figure it out. That’s your first assignment.

There. You’re outside of your comfort zone right now.

Keep it up.

Think of the President. There’s your opinion … automatically.

Go out on a date. There’s your usual feeling … automatically.

Decide to tie your shoe. There go your hands … automatically tying your shoe.

But what if you’d like to do something … different … for a change?

MAKING A CHANGE

You might formulate a plan, like going on a diet, but your usual responses are going to be served up automatically. Just the *thought* of a meal will automatically trigger your usual response to have more pie. Your non-conscious mind trying to help you, just like you trained it to do, by repetition. That’s how it learns.

But let’s use going on a date as an example. Let’s say that it has been your habit to be up-tight, anxious, and worried. For our purposes, it doesn’t matter how this got started or whether your parents were good people or what your astrology sign is. Let’s just say that uptight, anxious, and worried has become your habit.

And maybe you think this isn’t the best way to enjoy your next date.

Now, just supposing you have that thought, thinking about going on your next date, most likely already your non-conscious mind starts serving up your usual feelings, so quite likely you may begin to feel uptight, anxious, and worried … and you haven’t even gone out on the date yet!

How then can you make a change?

CREATING SYNTHETIC EXPERIENCES

One way is to mentally “rehearse,” using your ability to chose which thoughts to think. You can mentally rehearse the date, and you can choose to imagine success, and all sorts of things going right. And the way your body will react to these thoughts and images of success is by giving you a bunch of good feelings.

If you are persistent, and will rehearse and rehearse, then you can build up an amount of positive “experience” which becomes a habitual way of thinking and feeling, just as your old pattern was a negative experience which became a habitual way of thinking and feeling. If you persist, eventually you’ll have more positive “experience” than negative experience, and you will discover your dates being more enjoyable.

Of course, doing it once, and saying, “Cool!” won’t do the job.

There are some other ways, such as using hypnotic or Neuro-Linguistic Programming methods, but simple mental rehearsal gives a clear model of what works.

COMMUNICATING DIRECTLY WITH YOUR NON-CONSCIOUS MIND

As you formulate your new plan for making a change, you can also “talk” with your Non-conscious Mind. By doing this, you can discover ahead of time how your non-conscious mind will automatically *help* you, and how your non-conscious mind will automatically *block* your new plan.

If you can know these things, then usually you can modify your new plan so as not to automatically invoke a lot of blockage, and in fact you can often modify your new plan so that automatic behaviors that will be served up by the non-conscious mind will assist your new plan.

So the question is: How do you talk with a Non-conscious Mind?

It doesn’t speak you know. It doesn’t even have self-consciousness as you and I know do. It’s not an actual entity as you and I seem to be. But it *acts* like an entity. It *acts* like a different, and autonomous, part of you. Because it is.

IT RESPONDS TO YOUR THOUGHTS

Here’s the answer: Although it cannot talk, it does have the habit of automatically generating the habitual thoughts and feelings you’ve entrained it to store, by your repeated thinking, feeling, or performing habitual actions.

So here’s what you do. Let’s say your new plan is to be more relaxed on your next date, and to have more fun.

So you sit down, and though you can do this just mentally, it will be easier to learn if you first try it with pencil and paper. So you start writing down your plan, with a lot of details. And as you write, pay careful attention, with every word that you write, what feelings and thoughts are popping into your awareness.

These feelings and thoughts are the responses of your non-conscious mind to your plan, word by word, and bit by bit.

For example if you write (or say), “I’m going to go out,” you might have a vague feeling of questioning. (That’s your non-conscious mind’s automatic reaction to the idea of your going on an excursion.)

And you then continue, writing (or saying), “on a date,” and immediately you notice a gentle feeling of unease. So right there you could react, and try some different words, like “I mean, to go get some dinner,” now you get a feeling of relaxation and ease.

And you continue, “with Sally,” and you notice that there’s no feeling of uneasiness. You just saw that your thinking “go out” and especially thinking “go on a date” are triggering the unwanted, automatic responses entrained into your non-conscious mind, but that “going to get some dinner … with Sally,” doesn’t trigger any automatic unpleasant stuff at all.

HOW TO USE WHAT YOU DISCOVER

Well for one thing, pay attention to your thoughts. If you feel uneasy, did you just think thoughts about dating? If so, reframe them differently. In this way you are retraining the non-conscious mind as you go.

You might discover, for example, that your non-conscious mind is going to produce a lot of automatic negative stuff if you plan a trip to the bowling alley, but no automatic negative stuff if you go golfing, and that it will generate warm and pleasant feelings if you’ll take a picnic to the museum.

Then, for certain, take more picnics at the museum, and for those other places like the bowling alley, visit the bowling alley on your own and meditate there or listen to music that always puts you in a good mood, or do something in those places that create more confort for you in those places.

A SIMPLE EXAMPLE

Recently, I’ve been engaged in the process of buying a house, and I knew I had to go to the Title Company, because that’s part of the process. I’d never been to a Title Company before, and when I thought about the mysterious ‘Title Company,’ I felt a discomfort and an uneasy feeling. So, before the day that I had to go there with the seller of the house, I went to the Title Company on my own.

I walked in, and the first thing I did was to “locate” myself in the place. That is, I made a point to look at the space and the things in it. I looked at the carpet and its color, and the way the sunlight fell through the window on the floor. I looked at the desks, and the walls, and the chairs. And then I looked at the several people in the room.

I picked one of them, and was invited to sit down. I sat down and felt the chair, and examined the person across from me. And then I asked a half a dozen questions about the process, which both told me something about the process, and also told me something about the people who work there. I then thanked the lady and left, noticing the furniture and fixtures as I did so.

In short, I familiarized my senses with the place, the process, and the people.

Then, the next day when I returned there with the seller of the house, guess who was relaxed and comfortable in that place? That’s right. My disquiet (automatic reaction from the non-conscious mind) was gone, replaced with a feeling of calm familiarity.

In the same way, you can familiarize yourself with unknown places and situations, and you can de-sensitize yourself from upsets that occurred in the past in certain locations. It’s not a perfect system, but it does work.

HOW THE NON-CONSCIOUS MIND SPEAKS “NEW” IDEAS TO YOU

So far, we’ve discussed how you speak to your non-conscious mind, and how you can perceive its reactions to what you say. However, as you engage in this practice — and at many other times, once you tune in to this process — you will begin to discover that your non-conscious also initiates communications to you, and these can be new ideas. They are probably triggered by things you say and do, but these new communications, to you, represent new and additional thoughts.

This is the process we see anytime you are “brainstorming,” which is listening to all the (wild and wacky) ideas that spring up as you consider a problem. During our daily life, as humans we learn to “tune out” all these associations. We have to do so in order to concentrate on the task at hand. But when you “brainstorm,” you pay attention to all these ideas as they arise. Although many do seem irrelevant, often wondrous gems can be found. And sometimes, behind an idea which seems loco, will be found a useful idea that is completely “outside the box.”

KEEPING THE FLOW GOING

The key in brainstorming, to keep the useful flow a-flowing, is to write down every single idea, no matter how “useless” or “silly.” That is, you permit no criticalness to intrude. (If criticalness or judging ideas is permitted, then very quickly you go back into “daily tasks” mode where non-fitting ideas are squelched, and the flow dries up. Put another way, your non-conscious mind quickly gets the message that you aren’t interested, and stops bothering to send you this rich trove of ideas.)

When you are having your “conversation” with your non-conscious mind, and feeling its reactions to what you are saying, it will also offer up new ideas. These are ideas that just “pop” into consciousness. Hopefully you are listening, and being non-critical and non-judgmental during this process, because these “offered-up” communications seemingly originated by your non-conscious mind are often creative solutions to the project you are considering.

In our dating example, you might discover as you consider taking Suzie to miniature golf, that you suddenly get an image of some female relative from the past or an old girlfriend or a childhood friend. Where did that come from? You guessed it.

Why? That’s the interesting question. When you look, you may suddenly have an “Aha!” when you realize that Suzie is triggering this old similar situation and maybe that’s where some of the worry or anxiety is coming from. Sometimes, when you spot old connections like this, just the process of spotting it is enough to disconnect or weaken the automatic response. Much of conventional therapy is in hopes of attaining enough of these new awarenesses so as to improve your usual operation.

Or, it might be that you get that image of some female relative from the past or an old girlfriend, and you ponder it, and then you think, “Aha!” because you just remembered that Aunt Bessie or old girlfriend Lucy used to really enjoy baking gingerbread cookies, and you wonder if your new date might — radical thought, outside the box — you wonder if your new date might enjoy (as a “date”) the two of you baking some gingerbread cookies, and then you carry them in a picnic basket with a thermos of milk to this really secluded place in the park for a romantic date of cookies and milk? Here, your non-conscious mind had handed you a creative and different idea for a date, that might be lots of fun.

IT WILL FIND THINGS FOR YOU

We’ve all had the experience of searching for a word and can’t immediately grasp it. You’ve probably also had the experience that you are suddenly reminded of something, but you can’t quite remember what. Or you want to recall the past, and you know it’s in there but not floating to the surface.

Your non-conscious mind is already in contact with that information. That’s why you have the “feeling” that you know that word, or why you have the “feeling” of being reminded, or you have the “feeling” that you know it’s there.

If you just ask your non-conscious mind to fetch it for you, then at some later time — maybe two minutes and maybe two hours — as you are doing something else, suddenly the missing word, or the missing memory, or the missing information will “pop” into your mind. Your non-conscious mind, having been given the task, has been working on it, and has found a route to present it to you.

This is also related to the process of handing a task to your non-conscious mind, such thinking of a problem as you go to sleep, and awakening with the solution. But that’s another whole thing. And, the better you and your non-conscious mind can get along, and the better the two of you are communicating, the better it can serve you. Remember, it’s looking out for you in every way that it can, as best it knows how. And when you operate in conformity with its activities, you become more integrated and more effective. And, generally, happier.

CHANGING YOUR MIND

The Non-conscious Mind cannot speak, but it can automatically issue feelings and thoughts. That’s what it does. So if you’ll speak (or write), paying close attention to the feelings and thought automatically arising as you do so, you’ll be carrying on a dialogue with your own non-conscious mind.

You can discover where it will automatically help you, and where it will automatically block you. And so knowing, you can choose your path so that it will help you, and you can also find ways to change some of those ‘automatic blocks’ into more useful habitual reactions.

And, so doing, you are changing your mind.

For the better.

Now right there is a poser, because you might think, “Well, if it’s unconscious, then how can it be a mind?”

And if you read up on this, and if you watch dramatic movies about people who have disturbed the ‘Subconscious’ mind, you could easily get the idea that the Subconscious mind is a kind of lunatic stalker which lives inside of us, and given the right situation, it might burst out and *make* you do something … bad.

Scary, huh.

Well, it’s not like that. It’s something far simpler and less mysterious, and you’ve seen it all your life, but you didn’t think about it. Here’s what it is …

HOW TO TIE A SHOE

When you’re a child, you learn to tie your shoe. The first day you really have to concentrate. Finally, you get it tied.

The next few days, it still requires a lot of thought and focus, but in a week, you know the moves. It’s a kind of sequence. You’ve ‘learned’ the sequence. And now, in your normal, conscious mind, the idea of “tie shoes” leads to “certain sequence of actions,” which we might now label as “how to tie shoes.”

Except that we don’t think much about it. We just do it. And over time we do it more and more. And now, think a moment. If you’re wearing shoes with laces today, how much did you think about how to tie them this morning?

ACTIONS BECOME UNCONSCOUS

Probably you didn’t think about it at all. You certainly didn’t think of the steps involved. And yet your shoes got tied this morning. Because the habitual action, repeated, has become “built” into your brain and into your mind. (If you’re interested in the biochemistry of the neurons and how they change structure over time to accommodate learned, repeated activities, then read “Evolve Your Brain,” by Joe Dispenza.)

We see this our entire life, and we just think, “it’s become a habit.”

And it’s a darned good thing, because do you realize how slowly your day would go if you had to stop and really concentrate in order to get out of bed (learned as a toddler), how to shave or fix our hair (learned as teens), how to dress (learned as children), how to drive a car or take a bus (learned long ago), how to operate a time-clock or turn on a computer (learned as young adults), how to use a telephone, how to read the clock (“the big hand is …”), how to read the news, how to operate a vending machine or order from a menu, how to write a check, how to wash clothes, how to make a pot of coffee, how to …

You see, it would be impossible to have the life you have if these things required attention, or consciousness. But they don’t. By repetition, they’ve become “automated circuits” or stored body memory, and can be engaged just by calling them. Your conscious mind decides, “tie shoes,” and another part of your mind handles it for you.

THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

In fact, you were just looking at the “Unconscious Mind,” or the “Subconscious Mind,” and we don’t even realize it because we’ve seen it in action our whole lives long.

Now, bear in mind that a lot more than tying your shoes becomes automatic, repeated, habitual response as we store it away. For example, your habitual feelings and moods (happy-go-lucky, depressed, anxious, angry, dull, chipper, amused, terrified, worried, elated). And for example, your opinions, prejudices, and beliefs (Chinese people cannot drive, your mother is stupid, cops are pigs, your new sweetheart is just dreamy, your old sweetheart was just awful).

Just the conscious thought, or even half-conscious thought as when day-dreaming, will automatically trigger your stored “programs/routines/habits,” and they will play out. Some are useful (driving to work), and some are not (worrying what people will think).

And, sure enough, all that stuff is not conscious. It is not part of your conscious mind, now that it’s been stored as a habit. And for most of us, there doesn’t seem to be some other conscious entity in your head other than yourself. And it operates like a “mind” in that it offers up thoughts, automatically, all day long. Automatic thoughts. Sometimes useful. Sometimes not.

That, and nothing else, is the “Unconscious Mind,” or the “Subconscious Mind.”

THE ‘NON-CONSCIOUS’ MIND IS LOOKING OUT FOR YOU

I like to call it the “Non-conscious” mind because it operates much like a mind, but it’s somewhat more automatic. It follows certain habitual rules rather than thinking things out step by step like you do when you’re consciously puzzling out something new. This non-conscious mind is also directly related to thousands of habitual things that the body has to do, most of which has *never* been in your conscious mind at all, such as regulating your blood pressure, sending chemical messengers here and there, remembering to breath harder when working out, keeping the heart beating while you sleep, and thousands of other bodily processes, none of which are (normally) conscious. It *is* an unconscious mind for it has no self-aware consciousness like *you* do, and it operates in a way that generally you are unconscious of that mind, which I’ll call the non-conscious mind.

It’s not hiding. It’s not stalking. It’s not dangerous, but rather it has been preserving your life as best it can for your entire life long. However, it *does* operate automatically, and sometimes that doesn’t fit.

Automatically driving in the right-side lane will fail to work well when you visit England.

Automatically winking at the pretty girl will fail to work well when she’s your new boss.

Automatically picking your nose when it bothers you will fail to work well when you’re having tea with the Bishop of Boston.

DRIVING IN TWO DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS

Now, let’s get to something *useful* with this information.

Have you ever gone on a diet? Most likely you have. And quite often on diets, it’s not such an easy thing to do. And the reason is quite simple.

You’re thinking two different thoughts. One is “I want to go on a diet.” And the other thought is “I want to eat that big piece of pie.”

You’re thinking both thoughts!

If a car had two drivers, and they were fighting over the steering wheel, and first one was stronger and then the other, can you imagine how the car would be careening all over the road, on and off the sidewalks, into porches and houses and attracting the police while pedestrians leap into the bushes to escape?

What wonder then that most diets fail to follow a straight path to success?

Now, when you consciously decided to go on a diet, where do you suppose that other thought came from?

It came from your automatically-operating non-conscious mind, offering up to you the habitual responses you have entrained all these years. It doesn’t stop working just because you had a different thought today. It’s been remembering that you like a second helping of potatoes and gravy for your whole damn life, and a few minutes of new thoughts don’t neutralize that automatic program. Your non-conscious mind is looking after you, regulating your blood and digestion and helping you drive the car and take another serving of pie by golly.

HOW CAN A HUMAN CHANGE?

Thus comes what we call “will power.” If you can persist long enough with a new course of action then the new course of action becomes ingrained, made automatic and unconscious, and then the new course will be offered up to you next time.

That’s why when you are actively exercising every day, it’s fairly easy to continue exercising the next day. But when you’re in the habit of *not* exercising every day, then tomorrow it’s not so easy to exercise.

The non-conscious mind is looking out for you, the best way it knows how.

And, there are some other ways to make progress. For example, if you could just “talk” with your non-conscious mind, perhaps the two of you could get along. (“Can’t we all just get along?”)

And the fact it, although the non-conscious mind can’t talk, if you know how, you can easily carry on a conversation with your non-conscious mind. And if you can just know what things it’s going to automatically *help* you with, and where it’s going to automatically *block* your new plan, this helps tremendously for your formulation of workable plans.

And over time, the two of you will, in fact, get along better and better.

More to follow.