Unconscious Mind Best Quotes

Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one a graduate of Chicago and another of Ann Arbor; one who had passed his examination for the Harvard Law School and was about to take a trip in Europe,--another who had passed at Ann Arbor, the youngest in his class, with three thousand dollars in the bank. Boys who never knew what it was to want a dollar; boys who could reach any position that was to boys of that kind to reach; boys of distinguished and honorable families, families of wealth and position, with all the world before them. And they gave it all up for nothing, for nothing! They took a little companion of one of them, on a crowded street, and killed him, for nothing, and sacrificed everything that could be of value in human life upon the crazy scheme of a couple of immature lads. Now, your Honor, you have been a boy; I have been a boy. And we have known other boys. The best way to understand somebody else is to put yourself in his place. Is it within the realm of your imagination that a boy who was right, with all the prospects of life before him, who could choose what he wanted, without the slightest reason in the world would lure a young companion to his death, and take his place in the shadow of the gallows? ...No one who has the process of reasoning could doubt that a boy who would do that is not right. How insane they are I care not, whether medically or legally. They did not reason; they could not reason; they committed the most foolish, most unprovoked, most purposeless, most causeless act that any two boys ever committed, and they put themselves where the rope is dangling above their heads.... Why did they kill little Bobby Franks? Not for money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised, outcasts, with the community shouting for their blood. . . . I know, Your Honor, that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that a pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without disturbing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame. I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain

Use your conscious mind to acquire all the information you need for making a decision. But don't try to analyze the information with your conscious mind. Instead, go on holiday while your unconscious mind digests it. Whatever your intuition then tells you is almost certainly going to be the best choice.

…Even the idea of a city never entered his mind. It was as if he had walked under the millimeter of haze just above the inked fibers of a map, that pure zone between land and chart, between distances and legends, between nature and storyteller. The place they had chosen to come to, to be their best selves, to be unconscious of ancestry. Here, apart from the sun compass and the odometer mileage, and the book, he was alone, his own invention. He knew during these times how the mirage worked, the fata morgana, for he was within it.

The power of the aesthetics of joy is that they speak directly to our unconscious minds, bringing out the best in us without our even being aware of it.

The workings of your brain shape, reinforce, and influence your subconscious mind, and unconsciously this affect the way you approach life.

As soon as you notice you’re anxious, bring your mind to your thoughts without judgment or labeling. Just observe what your mind is thinking about because it's almost always unconscious thinking that is taking place, and the best thing we can do is to turn that unconscious thinking into conscious thinking.

The world is full of lots of people play acting and hurling stuff about, unconscious of the effects. And there are large group karmic things going on through history that none of us should ever take personally. Rushing about trying to rectify the sins of the past is not productive. The best you can do is to be present as the new you in the now, holding your light as a steady candle to add to the beam of calm and love now spreading to help wake more and more people up. Hopefully we will evolve as a species to eventually cease the unnecessary conflict between different groups of ourselves.

The objective of learning is not necessarily to remember. It may even be salutary to forget. It is only when we forget the early pains and struggles of forming letters that we acquire the capacity for writing. The adult does not remember all the history s/he learned but s/he may hope to have acquired a standard of character and conduct, a sense of affairs and a feeling of change and development in culture. Naturally there is nothing against having a well-stocked mind provided it does not prevent the development of other capacities. But it is still more important to allow knowledge to sink into one in such a way that it becomes fruitful for life; this best done when we feel deeply all we learn. For the life of feeling is less conscious, more dream-like, than intellectual activity and leads to the subconscious life of will where the deep creative capacities of humanity have their being. It is from this sphere that knowledge can emerge again as something deeply significant for life. It is not what we remember exactly, but what we transform which is of real value to our lives. In this transformation the process of forgetting, of allowing subjects to sink into the unconscious before "re-membering" them is an important element.

Believing in what you desire to be true and then seeking evidence to justify it doesn’t seem to be the best approach to everyday decisions.

We have many unconscious thoughts in our mind. When we think 100% we should write only 1% which should be best, precise and useful.

Humans are most imaginative when they need a means of self-destruction. If the world existed in an overflowing amount of happiness; a utopian state, then the suicide rate would dwarf any extinction level threat. Humans cannot be trusted with their own survival. Their minds have been trained to be blindly and unconsciously subjugated. In a time related to Heaven-on-Earth, the smallest amount of worry, will drive a human into the arms of death. This is how weak and fragile the human mind and will is. It's funny, because the best friend of humanity, is none other than Chaos itself.

The unexamined life is surely worth living, but is the unloved life worth examining? It seems a strange question until one realizes how much of our so-called mental life is about the lives we are not living, the lives we are missing out on, the lives we could be leading but for some reason are not. What we fantasize about, what we long for, are the experiences, the things and the people that are absent. It is the absence of what we need that makes us think, that makes us cross and sad. We have to be aware of what is missing in our lives - even if this often obscures both what we already have and what is actually available - because we can survive only if our appetites more or less work for us. Indeed, we have to survive our appetites by making people cooperate with our wanting. We pressurize the world to be there for our benefit. And yet we quickly notice as children - it is, perhaps, the first thing we do notice - that our needs, like our wishes, are always potentially unmet. Because we are always shadowed by the possibility of not getting what we want, we lean, at best, to ironize our wishes - that is, to call our wants wishes: a wish is only a wish until, as we say, it comes true - and, at worst, to hate our needs. But we also learn to live somewhere between the lives we have and the lives we would like.(…) There is always what will turn out to be the life we led, and the life that accompanied it, the parallel life (or lives) that never actually happened, that we lived in our minds, the wished-for life (or lives): the risks untaken and the opportunities avoided or unprovided. We refer to them as our unloved lives because somewhere we believe that they were open to us; but for some reason - and we might spend a great deal of our lived lives trying to find and give the reason - they were not possible. And what was not possible all too easily becomes the story of our lives. Indeed, our lived lives might become a protracted mourning for, or an endless tantrum about, the lives we were unable to live. But the exemptions we suffer, whether forced or chosen, make us who we are. As we know more now than ever before about the kinds of lives it is possible to live - and affluence has allowed more people than ever before to think of their lives in terms of choices and options - we are always haunted by the myth of our potential, of what we might have it in ourselves to be or do. So when we are not thinking, like the character in Randall Jarrell's poem, that "The ways we miss our lives is life", we are grieving or regretting or resenting our failure to be ourselves as we imagine we could be. We share our lives with the people we have failed to be. We discover these unloved lives most obviously in our envy of other people, and in the conscious 9and unconscious) demands we make on our children to become something that was beyond us. And, of course, in our daily frustrations. Our lives become an elegy to needs unmet and desires sacrificed, to possibilities refused, to roads not taken. The myth of our potential can make of our lives a perpetual falling-short, a continual and continuing loss, a sustained and sometimes sustaining rage; though at its best it lures us into the future, but without letting us wonder why such lures are required (we become promising through the promises made to us). The myth of potential makes mourning and complaining feel like the realest things we eve do; and makes of our frustration a secret life of grudges. Even if we set aside the inevitable questions - How would we know if we had realized our potential? If we don't have potential what do we have? - we can't imagine our lives without the unloved lives they contain. We have an abiding sense, however obscure and obscured, that the lives we do lead are informed by the lives that escape us. That our lives are defined by loss, but loss of what might have been; loss, that is, of things never experienced.

There is humility in confession. A recognition of flaws. To hear myself say out loud these shameful secrets meant I acknowledged my flaws. I also for the first time was given the opportunity to contextualize anew the catalogue of beliefs and prejudices, simply by exposing them to another, for the first time hearing the words ‘Yes, but have you looked at it this way?’ This was a helpful step in gaining a new perspective on my past, and my past was a significant proportion of who I believed myself to be. It felt like I had hacked into my own past. Unravelled all the erroneous and poisonous information I had unconsciously lived with and lived by and with necessary witness, the accompaniment of another man, reset the beliefs I had formed as a child and left unamended through unnecessary fear. Suddenly my fraught and freighted childhood became reasonable and soothed. ‘My mum was doing her best, so was my dad.’ Yes, people made mistakes but that’s what humans do, and I am under no obligation to hoard these errors and allow them to clutter my perception of the present. Yes, it is wrong that I was abused as a child but there is no reason for me to relive it, consciously or unconsciously, in the way I conduct my adult relationships. My perceptions of reality, even my own memories, are not objective or absolute, they are a biased account and they can be altered. It is possible to reprogram your mind. Not alone, because a tendency, a habit, an addiction will always reassert by its own invisible momentum, like a tide. With this program, with the support of others, and with this mysterious power, this new ability to change, we achieve a new perspective, and a new life.

The I Ching insists upon self-knowledge throughout. The method by which this is to be achieved is open to every kind of misuse, and is therefore not for the frivolous-minded and immature; nor is it for intellectualists and rationalists. It is appropriate only for thoughtful and reflective people who like to think about what they do and what happens to them -- a predilection not to be confused with the morbid brooding of the hypochondriac. As I have indicated above, I have no answer to the multitude of problems that arise when we seek to harmonize the oracle of the I Ching with our accepted scientific canons. But needless to say, nothing "occult" is to be inferred. My position in these matters is pragmatic, and the great disciplines that have taught me the practical usefulness of this viewpoint are psychotherapy and medical psychology. Probably in no other field do we have to reckon with so many unknown quantities, and nowhere else do we become more accustomed to adopting methods that work even though for a long time we may not know why they work. Unexpected cures may arise from questionable therapies and unexpected failures from allegedly reliable methods. In the exploration of the unconscious we come upon very strange things, from which a rationalist turns away with horror, claiming afterward that he did not see anything. The irrational fullness of life has taught me never to discard anything, even when it goes against all our theories (so short-lived at best) or otherwise admits of no immediate explanation. It is of course disquieting, and one is not certain whether the compass is pointing true or not; but security, certitude, and peace do not lead to discoveries.

In a commentary on CNNMoney.com, Fortune senior writer Anne Fisher reported that scientists have begun to realize “that people may do their best thinking when they are not concentrating on work at all.” She cites studies published in the journal Science by Dutch psychologists who concluded, “The unconscious mind is a terrific solver of complex problems when the conscious mind is busy elsewhere or, perhaps better yet, not overtaxed at all.” That’s why I subscribe to the philosophy of the late Satchel Paige, who said, “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.

Someone once wrote that in between the lives we lead and the lives we fantasize about living is the place in our heads where most of us actually live." "The best kind of music comes when you're being intuitive, unconscious of your body, in some ways losing your mind: the Body/Head dynamic.

Darkness seems to have prevailed and has taken the forefront. This country as in the 'cooperation' of The United States of America has never been about the true higher-good of the people. Know and remember this. Cling to your faith. Roll your spiritual sleeves up and get to work. Use your energy wisely. Transmute all anger, panic and fear into light and empowerment. Don't use what fuels them; all lower-energy. Mourn as you need to. Console who you need to—and then go get into the spiritual and energetic arena. There's plenty work for us to do; within and without. Let's each focus on becoming 'The President of Our Own Life. Cultivate your mind. Pursue your purpose. Shine your light. Elevate past—and reject—any culture of low vibrational energy and ratchetness. Don't take fear, defeat or anger—on or in. The system is doing what they've been created to do. Are you? Am I? Are we—collectively? Let's get to work. No more drifting through life without your higher-self in complete control of your mind. Awaken—fully. Activate—now. Put your frustrations or concerns into your work. Don't lose sight. There is still—a higher plan. Let's ride this 4 year energetic-wave like the spiritual gangsters that we are. This will all be the past soon. Let's get to work and stay dedicated, consistent and diligent. Again, this will all be the past soon. We have preparing and work to do. Toxic energy is so not a game. Toxic energy and low vibrations are being collectively acted out on the world stage. Covertly operating through the unconscious weak spots and blind spots in the human psyche; making people oblivious to their own madness, causing and influencing them to act against–their–own–best–interests and higher-good, as if under a spell and unconsciously possessed. This means that they are actually nourishing the lower vibrational energy with their lifestyle, choices, energy and habits, which is unconsciously giving the lower-energy the very power and fuel it needs—for repeating and recreating endless drama, suffering and destruction, in more and more amplified forms on a national and world stage. So what do we do? We take away its autonomy and power over us while at the same time empowering ourselves. By recognizing how this energetic/spiritual virus or parasite of the mind—operates through our unawareness is the beginning of the cure. Knowledge is power. Applied knowledge is—freedom. Our shared future will be decided primarily by the changes that take place in the psyche of humanity, starting with each of us— vibrationally. In closing and most importantly, the greatest protection against becoming affected or possessed by this lower-energy is to be in touch with our higher vibrational-self. We have to call our energy and power back. Being in touch with our higher-self and true nature acts as a sacred amulet, shielding and protecting us from the attempted effects. We defeat evil not by fighting against it (in which case, by playing its game, we’ve already lost) but by getting in touch with the part of us that is invulnerable to its effects— our higher vibrational-self. Will this defeat and destroy us? Or will it awaken us more and more? Everything depends upon our recognizing what is being revealed to us and our stepping out of the unconscious influence of low vibrational/negative/toxic/evil/distraction energy (or whatever name you relate to it as) that is and has been seeking power over each of our lives energetically and/or spiritually, and step into our wholeness, our personal power, our higher self and vibrate higher and higher daily. Stay woke my friends—let's get to work.

But I guess I can't, or my subconscious can't, even imagine a warless world. The best it can do is substitute one kind of war for another. You said, no killing of humans by other humans. So I dreamed up the Aliens. Your own ideas are sane and rational, but this is my unconscious you're trying to use, not my rational mind. Maybe rationally I could conceive of the human species not trying to kill each other off by nations, in fact rationally it's easier to conceive than the motives of war. But you're handling something outside reason. You're trying to reach progressive, humanitarian goals with a tool that isn't suited to the job. Who has humanitarian dreams?

If a friend of yours has actually been secretly or unconsciously wanted to walk away from the friendship for a while then it's best they do so. You only want to keep relationships in your life that are thriving, that they are genuine. You don't want to maintain your grasp on a friendship where one person is fundamentally unhappy with it for one reason or another, or one person doesn't want to give the amount of energy and commitment that you do. Sometimes even if it hurts and it's shocking and we thought it would never happen, when a friendship ends it is actually, absolutely the right thing for us, because if they have had any doubt in their mind that the friendship wasn't right for them or beneficial for them, it's always best for us if they walk away. We don't want to continue to maintain friendships that allow them to linger, if there is something rotting that we never knew of. If we keep those kind of friendships in our life that are not built on a foundation of trust and mutual benefit, something is going to blow up in our faces.

Priming works best when you are on autopilot, when you aren’t trying to consciously introspect before choosing how to behave. When you are unsure how best to proceed, suggestions bubble up from the deep that are highly tainted by subconscious primes. In addition, your brain hates ambiguity and is willing to take shortcuts to remove it from any situation. If there is nothing else to go on, you will use what is available. When pattern recognition fails, you create patterns of your own. In the aforementioned experiments, there was nothing else for the brain to base its unconscious attitudes on, so it focused on the business items or the clean smells and ran with the ideas. The only problem was the conscious minds of the subjects didn’t notice.

A good marketer can sell practically anything to anyone. Tobacco is literally dried, decaying vegetable matter that you light on fire and inhale, breathing horrid-tasting, toxic fumes into your lungs.121 At one point marketers promoted smoking as a status symbol and claimed it had health benefits. Once you give it a try, the addictive nature of the drug kicks in, and the agency’s job becomes much easier. If they can get you hooked, the product will sell itself. Since the product is actually poison, advertisers need to overcome your instinctual aversion. That’s a big hill for alcohol advertisements to climb, which is why the absolute best marketing firms on the globe, firms with psychologists and human behavior specialists on staff, are hired to create the ads. These marketers know that the most effective sale is an emotional sale, one that plays on your deepest fears, your ultimate concerns. Alcohol advertisements sell an end to loneliness, claiming that drinking provides friendship and romance. They appeal to your need for freedom by saying drinking will make you unique, brave, bold, or courageous. They promise fulfillment, satisfaction, and happiness. All these messages speak to your conscious and unconscious minds.

A blank sheet of paper on a brisk Monday morning can panic the mind into silence. The best sort of thinking emerges when we have no set agenda, in the hollows of the day, when we are just walking around the park or taking a train journey, having a bath or staring blankly into space. It is then that our best, but also most furtive, thoughts may be lured out of the unconscious and can be glimpsed by reason before they run away again.

A contagious psycho-spiritual disease of the soul, a parasite of the mind, is currently being acted out en masse on the world stage via an insidious collective psychosis of titanic proportions. This mind-virus—which Native Americans have called “wetiko”—covertly operates through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche, rendering people oblivious to their own madness and compelling them to act against their own best interests. Wetiko is a psychosis in the true sense of the word, “a sickness of the spirit.

Must we believe those who tell us that a hand foul with the filth of a shameful life is the only one a young girl cares to be caressed by? That is the teaching that is bawled out day by day from between those yellow covers. Do they ever pause to think, I wonder, those devil's lady-helps, what mischief they are doing crawling about God's garden, and telling childish Eves and silly Adams that sin is sweet, and that decency is ridiculous and vulgar? How many an innocent girl do they not degrade into an evil-minded woman? To how many a weak lad do they not point out the dirty by-path as the shortest cut to a maiden's heart? It is not as if they wrote of life as it really is. Speak truth, and right will take care of itself. But their pictures are coarse daubs painted from the sickly fancies of their own diseased imaginations. We want to think of women not--as their own sex would show them--as Loreleis luring us to destruction, but as good angels beckoning us upward. They have more power for good or evil than they dream of. It is just at the very age when a man's character is forming that he tumbles into love, and then the lass he loves has the making or marring of him. Unconsciously he molds himself to what she would have him, good or bad. I am sorry to have to be ungallant enough to say that I do not think they always use their influence for the best. . . . And yet, women, you could make us so much better, if you only would. It rests with you more than with all the preachers, to roll this world a little nearer heaven. Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. It is you who must wake it to noble deeds. You must be worthy of knightly worship. You must be higher than ourselves. [1886]

What, then, is active imagination? In practice it’s exactly what Jung did in his visions and conversations with inner figures such as Philemon, Ka, and Salome mentioned above: entering a fantasy and talking with one’s “self”—at least a part of oneself “normally” left unconscious—asking questions and receiving knowledge that one—“you”—did not know. In many ways, it’s something we engage in often already, but in a shallow, fleeting way, when we “ask ourselves” what we think or will do about a situation. More abstractly, it’s a method of consciously entering into a dialogue with the unconscious, which triggers the transcendent function, a vital shift in consciousness, brought about through the union of the conscious and unconscious minds. Unexpected insights and self-renewal are some of the results of the transcendent function. It achieves what I call that elusive “Goldilocks” condition, the “just right” of having the conscious and unconscious minds work together, rather than being at odds. In the process it produces a third state more vivid and “real” than either; in it we recognize what consciousness should be like and see our “normal” state as at best a muddling through. We’ve already seen how the transcendent function helped Jung when faced with the dilemma of having to choose between science and the humanities. Then it operated through a dream, producing the mandala-like symbol of the giant radiolarian. In the simplest sense, the transcendent function is our built-in means of growth, psychological and spiritual—it’s “transcendent” only in the sense that it “transcends” the frequent deadlock between the conscious and unconscious minds—and is a development of what Jung earlier recognized as the “prospective tendencies in man.

At the moment he was unconscious of everything except his fear. He did not even know what he was afraid of: the fear itself possessed his whole mind, a formless, infinite misgiving. He did not lose consciousness, though he greatly wished that he might do so. Any change—death or sleep, or, best of all, a waking which should show all this for a dream—would have been inexpressibly welcome. None came. Instead, the lifelong self-control of social man, the virtues which are half hypocrisy or the hypocrisy which is half a virtue, came back to him and soon he found himself answering Weston in a voice not shamefully tremulous.

Trusting our instincts is not limited to sports. In every walk of life, regardless of how well trained our instincts are, we will usually do our best by trusting them. Recent brain-scanning technology has shown that the brain unconsciously makes rational decisions, quickly analyzing the data it gets, and reaches a decision sometimes seconds before our conscious minds “think up” that same decision. Actions that feel like random choices or instinctive responses are often logical thought processes using available information carried out in the unconscious mind. Many successful businesspeople say their best decisions are the ones they make using “gut feelings” or instinct.

It has always been asked in the spirit of: ‘What are the best sources of our knowledge – the most reliable ones, those which will not lead us into error, and those to which we can and must turn, in case of doubt, as the last court of appeal?’ I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist – no more than ideal rulers – and that all ‘sources’ are liable to lead us into errors at times. And I propose to replace, therefore, the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: ‘How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?’ The question of the sources of our knowledge, like so many authoritarian questions, is a genetic one. It asks for the origin of our knowledge, in the belief that knowledge may legitimize itself by its pedigree. The nobility of the racially pure knowledge, the untainted knowledge, the knowledge which derives from the highest authority, if possible from God: these are the (often unconscious) metaphysical ideas behind the question. My modified question, ‘How can we hope to detect error?’ may be said to derive from the view that such pure, untainted and certain sources do not exist, and that questions of origin or of purity should not be confounded with questions of validity, or of truth. …. The proper answer to my question ‘How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?’ is I believe, ‘By criticizing the theories or guesses of others and – if we can train ourselves to do so – by criticizing our own theories or guesses.’ …. So my answer to the questions ‘How do you know? What is the source or the basis of your assertion? What observations have led you to it?’ would be: ‘I do not know: my assertion was merely a guess. Never mind the source, or the sources, from which it may spring – there are many possible sources, and I may not be aware of half of them; and origins or pedigrees have in any case little bearing upon truth. But if you are interested in the problem which I tried to solve by my tentative assertion, you may help me by criticizing it as severely as you can; and if you can design some experimental test which you think might refute my assertion, I shall gladly, and to the best of my powers, help you to refute it.

In 1976, a doctoral student at the University of Nottingham in England demonstrated that randomizing letters in the middle of words had no effect on the ability of readers to understand sentences. In tihs setncene, for emalxpe, ervey scarbelmd wrod rmenias bcilasaly leibgle. Why? Because we are deeply accustomed to seeing letters arranged in certain patterns. Because the eye is in a rush, and the brain, eager to locate meaning, makes assumptions. This is true of phrases, too. An author writes “crack of dawn” or “sidelong glance” or “crystal clear” and the reader’s eye continues on, at ease with combinations of words it has encountered innumerable times before. But does the reader, or the writer, actually expend the energy to see what is cracking at dawn or what is clear about a crystal? The mind craves ease; it encourages the senses to recognize symbols, to gloss. It makes maps of our kitchen drawers and neighborhood streets; it fashions a sort of algebra out of life. And this is useful, even essential—X is the route to work, Y is the heft and feel of a nickel between your fingers. Without habit, the beauty of the world would overwhelm us. We’d pass out every time we saw—actually saw—a flower. Imagine if we only got to see a cumulonimbus cloud or Cassiopeia or a snowfall once a century: there’d be pandemonium in the streets. People would lie by the thousands in the fields on their backs. We need habit to get through a day, to get to work, to feed our children. But habit is dangerous, too. The act of seeing can quickly become unconscious and automatic. The eye sees something—gray-brown bark, say, fissured into broad, vertical plates—and the brain spits out tree trunk and the eye moves on. But did I really take the time to see the tree? I glimpse hazel hair, high cheekbones, a field of freckles, and I think Shauna. But did I take the time to see my wife? “Habitualization,” a Russian army-commissar-turned-literary-critic named Viktor Shklovsky wrote in 1917, “devours works, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war.” What he argued is that, over time, we stop perceiving familiar things—words, friends, apartments—as they truly are. To eat a banana for the thousandth time is nothing like eating a banana for the first time. To have sex with somebody for the thousandth time is nothing like having sex with that person for the first time. The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes. This is true of chocolate and marriages and hometowns and narrative structures. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we’re not careful, pretty soon we’re gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack. In the Tom Andrews Studio I open my journal and stare out at the trunk of the umbrella pine and do my best to fight off the atrophy that comes from seeing things too frequently. I try to shape a few sentences around this tiny corner of Rome; I try to force my eye to slow down. A good journal entry—like a good song, or sketch, or photograph—ought to break up the habitual and lift away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought be a love letter to the world. Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.

Your charming charm is a super sexy mega power that is simply impossible to overcome. Sweetest gourmet, I adore your gorgeous body, when I see you, only one word sounds in my head: yum, I will give myself completely to you. I will always love only you unconsciously, unconsciously, your gently erotic image sat in the depths of my mind completely. From your amazingly contagious beauty, your mouth opens and speechless is lost. Dizzyingly, stunningly beautiful, you are like a giant tornado, from which everything attracts you. And the heart and soul yearn all the time only for you. It doesn't matter if you love me or not, the main thing is that I still love you, and in my subconscious mind, I will only love you forever. Your luxurious appearance of the highest quality, this is a workshop, the filigree work of Mother Nature, this is just a masterpiece that constitutes a unique example of true beauty, you have no equal, you are a girl of high caliber. You are absolutely beautiful to such an extent, so beautiful, so exotic, erotic, and your image sounds poetic like very beautiful music of love, that I’m just afraid and shy to come to you, I’m afraid to talk to you, as if standing next to a goddess, or with a super mega star, a world scale model that even aliens probably know. My heart beats more often, I can’t talk normally, from excitement, goosebumps all over my body, and it just shakes. All these are symptoms of true love for you, well, simply: oh), wow). To be your boyfriend and husband is the greatest honor in the world, he knelt before you with flowers in his hands. Your appearance is perfect just like Barbie. You are so beautiful that only you want to have sex forever, countless, infinite number of times. You are unattainable, you are like a star whose light of the soul, like a searchlight, illuminates me in the deep darkness of solitude. In love with you thorough. You are simply amazingly beautiful. You are the best of the best. Goddess of all goddesses, empress of all empresses, queen of all queens. More beautiful you just can not imagine a girl. Sexier than you just can not be anything. Beautiful soul just is not found. There was nothing more perfect than you and never will be, simply because I think so. Laponka, I'm your faithful fan, you are my only idol, idol, icon of beauty. It doesn't matter who you are, I will accept you any. Because in any case I am eager to be only with you. You have a sexy smile, and your sensual look is just awesome. And from your voice and look a pleasant shiver all over your body. You are special, the best that is in all worlds, universes and dimensions. You're just a sight for sore eyes. To you I feel the most powerful, love and sexual inclination. You're cooler than any Viagra and afrodosiak. From your beauty just cling to the constraints and embarrassment.

He took her horse. Kestrel saw the logic. Her carriage had been abandoned on the road and the stables were largely empty, since many horses had gone with her father. Javelin was the best of those that remained. In war, property goes to those who can seize and keep it, so the stallion was Arin’s. But it hurt. He studied her warily as he saddled Javelin. The stables rang with noise: the sounds of other Herrani readying horses to ride, the beasts whickering as they smelled human tension, the thumps of wood under hooves and feet. Yet Arin was silent, and watched Kestrel. The first thing he had done after entering the stables was grab a set of reins, slice the leather with a knife, bind Kestrel’s hands, and place her under guard. It didn’t matter that she was powerless. He watched her as if she weren’t. Or maybe he was just contemplating how hard it would be to bring a captive on horseback into the city and down to the harbor. This would have given Kestrel some satisfaction if she hadn’t been very aware of what he should do. Knock her unconscious, if he wanted to keep his prize. Kill her, if he had changed his mind. Imprison her, if she was too much trouble either way. She saw his solutions as well as he must.

Principles That Great Teachers Follow Great teachers know that each brain is unique and uniquely organized. Great teachers know that all brains are not equally good at everything. Great teachers know that the brain is a complex, dynamic system and is changed daily by experiences. Great teachers know that learning is a constructivist process, and that the ability to learn continues through developmental stages as an individual matures. Great teachers know that the search for meaning is innate in human nature. Great teachers know that brains have a high degree of plasticity and develop throughout the lifespan. Great teachers know that MBE science principles apply to all ages. Great teachers know that learning is based in part on the brain’s ability to self-correct. Great teachers know that the search for meaning occurs through pattern recognition. Great teachers know that brains seek novelty. Great teachers know that emotions are critical to detecting patterns, to decision-making, and to learning. Great teachers know that learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat. Great teachers know that human learning involves both focused attention and peripheral perception. Great teachers know that the brain conceptually processes parts and wholes simultaneously. Great teachers know that the brain depends on interactions with other people to make sense of social situations. Great teachers know that feedback is important to learning. Great teachers know that learning relies on memory and attention. Great teachers know that memory systems differ in input and recall. Great teachers know that the brain remembers best when facts and skills are embedded in natural contexts. Great teachers know that learning involves conscious and unconscious processes. Great teachers know that learning engages the entire physiology (the body influences the brain, and the brain controls the body).

What possibilities are there for preventing actions with negative consequences, actions that we may later regret? One possibility is dhyāna, which in this context means “reflection.”3 Reflection can take many forms. For example, when faced with an important decision, you could imagine what would happen if you did the exact opposite of what your instincts suggest.4 Try to make the consequence of your decision as real as possible in your imagination. No matter what it is or what you feel, before you make an important decision and take action you should give yourself the opportunity to consider the matter with an open mind and a certain degree of objectivity. Dhyāna in this respect is a quiet, alert consideration, a meditation. The aim is to free yourself of preconceptions and avoid actions that you may later regret and that may create new troubles (duḥkha) for you. Dhyāna strengthens self-sufficiency. Yoga makes us independent. We all want to be free, although many of us are dependent on psychologists, gurus, teachers, drugs, or whatever. Even if advice and guidance are helpful, in the end we ourselves are the best judge of our own actions. No one is more interested in me than me. With the help of dhyāna we find our own methods and systems for making decisions and better understand our behavior. There are other ways of distancing ourselves from our actions than reflecting on how it would be if we were to act differently from what we intend. We might go to a concert or go for a walk or do something else that calms the thoughts. All the while the mind goes on working unconsciously, without any external pressure. In the pursuit of other activities we gain a certain distance. However short it may be, time becomes available to cast the mind over everything surrounding the decision that has to be made. Perhaps with ease and distance we will make a better decision. Stepping out of a situation in order to get a better look at it from another standpoint is called pratipakṣa. The same word describes the process of considering other possible courses of action.5 The time spent in dhyāna is extremely important. Through self-reflection our actions gain in quality.

Kshemaraja says: Let people of great intelligence closely understand the Goddess Consciousness who is simultaneously of the nature of both revelation (unmesha) and concealment (nimesha). The best attitude is to regard everything that happens in the group as the play of Chiti. Revelation is Shiva and confusion is also Shiva. However, there is always recourse to A-Statements, statements of present feeling. An A-Statement (I feel mad, sad, bad, scared or glad), is already at a higher level than a statement in which the A-Statement is not acknowledged or expressed. A person might be angry and not know it. That anger will colour all his opinions and attitudes and distort them. The simple statement, ‘I am angry’, is much closer to the truth and also much less destructive. Making A-Statements keeps thought closely tied to feeling. If thought wanders away from feeling, that is, if it is unconscious of the feeling underlying it, it can and does create universes of delusion. When thought is tied to feeling, it becomes much more trustworthy. If I were to look for a scriptural justification of the concept of the A-Statement, I would point to the remarkable verse (I.4) from Spanda Karikas: I am happy, I am miserable, I am attached—these and other cognitions have their being evidently in another in which the states of happiness, misery, etc., are strung together. Notice the A-Statements (I am happy, etc.). Of course, the point that Vasugupta is making has to do with the old debate with the Buddhists. He is saying that these cognitions or A-Statements must exist within an underlying context, the Self. The Buddhist logicians denied the existence of a continuous Self, saying that each mind moment was essentially unrelated to every other one. Leaving that debate aside, the verse suggests the close connection of the A-Statement with the Self. The participant in Shiva Process work makes an A-Statement, understanding that with it he comes to the doorway of the Self, which underlies it. I think of the A-Statement as a kind of Shaivite devotional ritual. The Shaiva yogi sacramentalises every movement and gesture of life and by making a perfect articulation of present feeling, he performs his sacrament to the presence of divinity in that moment. Once the A-Statements are found, expansion takes place via B-Statements, any statements that uplift, and G-Statements, those B-Statements that are scriptural or come from higher Consciousness. Without G-Statements the inquiry might be merely psychological, or rooted in the mundane. Without A-Statements we are building an edifice on shaky foundations. Balance is needed. Mandala of the Hierarchy of Statements. Self-inquiry leads to more subtle and profound understanding. A-Statements set the foundation of present feeling, B-Statements draw on inner wisdom and G-Statements lift the inquiry to higher Consciousness.

But one element of this contention remains true; namely, that all scientific descriptions of facts are highly selective, that they always depend upon theories. The situation can be best described by comparison with a searchlight (the ‘searchlight theory of science’, as I usually call it in contradistinction to the ‘bucket theory of the mind’3). What the searchlight makes visible will depend upon its position, upon our way of directing it, and upon its intensity, colour, etc.; although it will, of course, also depend very largely upon the things illuminated by it. Similarly, a scientific description will depend, largely, upon our point of view, our interests, which are as a rule connected with the theory or hypothesis we wish to test; although it will also depend upon the facts described. Indeed, the theory or hypothesis could be described as the crystallization of a point of view. For if we attempt to formulate our point of view, then this formulation will, as a rule, be what one sometimes calls a working hypothesis; that is to say, a provisional assumption whose function is to help us to select, and to order, the facts. But we should be clear that there cannot be any theory or hypothesis which is not, in this sense, a working hypothesis, and does not remain one. For no theory is final, and every theory helps us to select and order facts. This selective character of all description makes it in a certain sense ‘relative’; but only in the sense that we would offer not this but another description, if our point of view were different. It may also affect our belief in the truth of the description; but it does not affect the question of the truth or falsity of the description; truth is not ‘relative’ in this sense4. The reason why all description is selective is, roughly speaking, the infinite wealth and variety of the possible aspects of the facts of our world. In order to describe this infinite wealth, we have at our disposal only a finite number of finite series of words. Thus we may describe as long as we like: our description will always be incomplete, a mere selection, and a small one at that, of the facts which present themselves for description. This shows that it is not only impossible to avoid a selective point of view, but also wholly undesirable to attempt to do so; for if we could do so, we should get not a more ‘objective’ description, but only a mere heap of entirely unconnected statements. But, of course, a point of view is inevitable; and the naïve attempt to avoid it can only lead to self-deception, and to the uncritical application of an unconscious point of view5. All this is true, most emphatically, in the case of historical description, with its ‘infinite subject matter’, as Schopenhauer6 calls it. Thus in history no less than in science, we cannot avoid a point of view; and the belief that we can must lead to self-deception and to lack of critical care. This does not mean, of course, that we are permitted to falsify anything, or to take matters of truth lightly. Any particular historical description of facts will be simply true or false, however difficult it may be to decide upon its truth or falsity. So far, the position of history is analogous to that of the natural sciences, for example, that of physics. But if we compare the part played by a ‘point of view’ in history with that played by a ‘point of view’ in physics, then we find a great difference. In physics, as we have seen, the ‘point of view’ is usually presented by a physical theory which can be tested by searching for new facts. In history, the matter is not quite so simple.

Marturano recommended something radical: do only one thing at a time. When you’re on the phone, be on the phone. When you’re in a meeting, be there. Set aside an hour to check your email, and then shut off your computer monitor and focus on the task at hand. Another tip: take short mindfulness breaks throughout the day. She called them “purposeful pauses.” So, for example, instead of fidgeting or tapping your fingers while your computer boots up, try to watch your breath for a few minutes. When driving, turn off the radio and feel your hands on the wheel. Or when walking between meetings, leave your phone in your pocket and just notice the sensations of your legs moving. “If I’m a corporate samurai,” I said, “I’d be a little worried about taking all these pauses that you recommend because I’d be thinking, ‘Well, my rivals aren’t pausing. They’re working all the time.’ ” “Yeah, but that assumes that those pauses aren’t helping you. Those pauses are the ways to make you a more clear thinker and for you to be more focused on what’s important.” This was another attack on my work style. I had long assumed that ceaseless planning was the recipe for effectiveness, but Marturano’s point was that too much mental churning was counterproductive. When you lurch from one thing to the next, constantly scheming, or reacting to incoming fire, the mind gets exhausted. You get sloppy and make bad decisions. I could see how the counterintuitive act of stopping, even for a few seconds, could be a source of strength, not weakness. This was a practical complement to Joseph’s “is this useful?” mantra. It was the opposite of zoning out, it was zoning in. In fact, I looked into it and found there was science to suggest that pausing could be a key ingredient in creativity and innovation. Studies showed that the best way to engineer an epiphany was to work hard, focus, research, and think about a problem—and then let go. Do something else. That didn’t necessarily mean meditate, but do something that relaxes and distracts you; let your unconscious mind go to work, making connections from disparate parts of the brain. This, too, was massively counterintuitive for me. My impulse when presented with a thorny problem was to bulldoze my way through it, to swarm it with thought. But the best solutions often come when you allow yourself to get comfortable with ambiguity. This is why people have aha moments in the shower. It was why Kabat-Zinn had a vision while on retreat. It was why Don Draper from Mad Men, when asked how he comes up with his great slogans, said he spends all day thinking and then goes to the movies. Janice Marturano was on

In this book we leap ahead to the ultimate possibility, being conscious all the time. But is that feasible when someone is inundated with deadlines, bills, their children’s schooling, and so forth? With so much stress and tension being lobbed at us from so many directions, attention gets dulled. We become reactive rather than attentive. This is how mindfulness gets lost despite our best intentions. Pause for a moment, though, and reflect on how your day has been going. If you’re like most people, you will find yourself spending much of your time in reactions rather than paying attention and being mindful of what’s going on. As a result, you are living unconsciously while accepting that this is normal.

So the optimists were more likely to respond positively to a suggestion that something would make them feel better, because they were primed to hope for the best future scenario. And the pessimists were more likely to respond negatively to a suggestion that something would make them feel worse, because they consciously or unconsciously expected the worst potential outcome. It’s as if the optimists were unconsciously making the specific chemicals to help them sleep, while the pessimists were unconsciously making a pharmacy of substances that made them feel unwell. In other words, in exactly the same environment, those with a positive mind-set tend to create positive situations, while those with a negative mind-set tend to create negative situations. This is the miracle of our own free-willed, individual, biological engineering. While

Reason #1: Downtime Aids Insights Consider the following excerpt from a 2006 paper that appeared in the journal Science: The scientific literature has emphasized the benefits of conscious deliberation in decision making for hundreds of years… The question addressed here is whether this view is justified. We hypothesize that it is not. Lurking in this bland statement is a bold claim. The authors of this study, led by the Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis, set out to prove that some decisions are better left to your unconscious mind to untangle. In other words, to actively try to work through these decisions will lead to a worse outcome than loading up the relevant information and then moving on to something else while letting the subconscious layers of your mind mull things over. Dijksterhuis’s team isolated this effect by giving subjects the information needed for a complex decision regarding a car purchase. Half the subjects were told to think through the information and then make the best decision. The other half were distracted by easy puzzles after they read the information, and were then put on the spot to make a decision without having had time to consciously deliberate. The distracted group ended up performing better. Observations from experiments such as this one led Dijksterhuis and his collaborators to introduce unconscious thought theory (UTT)—an attempt to understand the different roles conscious and unconscious deliberation play in decision making. At a high level, this theory proposes that for decisions that require the application of strict rules, the conscious mind must be involved. For example, if you need to do a math calculation, only your conscious mind is able to follow the precise arithmetic rules needed for correctness. On the other hand, for decisions that involve large amounts of information and multiple vague, and perhaps even conflicting, constraints, your unconscious mind is well suited to tackle the issue. UTT hypothesizes that this is due to the fact that these regions of your brain have more neuronal bandwidth available, allowing them to move around more information and sift through more potential solutions than your conscious centers of thinking. Your conscious mind, according to this theory, is like a home computer on which you can run carefully written programs that return correct answers to limited problems, whereas your unconscious mind is like Google’s vast data centers, in which statistical algorithms sift through terabytes of unstructured information, teasing out surprising useful solutions to difficult questions. The implication of this line of research is that providing your conscious brain time to rest enables your unconscious mind to take a shift sorting through your most complex professional challenges. A shutdown habit, therefore, is not necessarily reducing the amount of time you’re engaged in productive work, but is instead diversifying the type of work you deploy.

When we apply motivated reasoning to assessments about ourselves, we produce that positive picture of a world in which we are all above average. If we’re better at grammar than arithmetic, we give linguistic knowledge more weight in our view of what is important, whereas if we are good at adding but bad at grammar, we think language skills just aren’t that crucial. If we are ambitious, determined, and persistent, we believe that goal-oriented people make the most effective leaders; if we see ourselves as approachable, friendly, and extroverted, we feel that the best leaders are people-oriented. We even recruit our memories to brighten our picture of ourselves.

TMS patients cope only too well in reality; it is their unconscious minds that are cowardly. The best evidence of the validity of this concept is the fact that patients are able to stop the process simply by learning about it.

Perhaps all Creation as we know it is an extraction from a totality, which I have chosen to call the ‘Source'. Three psychics have told me the same thing: ‘You’ve touched Source energy.’ Though I don’t know what that means, sometimes I do have an experience of traveling to a place in which everything I need for healing is in infinite supply. My mind moves into super-consciousness and a sense of higher intelligence, then past that into peace, and past that into Nothingness – a place of pure potential where all possibilities exist at the same time. The higher I go, the less I feel. The Source doesn’t do anything, it just is. The best way I can describe the Nothing that contains Everything is through the metaphor of white light. Physicists tell us it contains all other colors: when we see red or green or yellow, that’s a subtraction from white. Perhaps by touching the Source I can give my patients what they need to heal, because the Source offers an infinite number of simultaneous existences transcending time and space. Just as I speculate that Creation may be a subtraction from the perfection of Nothingness, I see disease as a subtraction from perfect health. I find that I am unconsciously drawn to physical need in others, and that somehow I’m able to offer a patient what he or she requires. Instead of time travel backward or forward perhaps I’m able to access some kind of universal energy, intelligence, awareness, or information beyond my perception. I can’t describe any of this more clearly – that’s why we have poets!

bodily regulations, actions, and feelings originate from a conscious level, and that up to 95 percent originate within the unconscious mind. Moreover, some have theorized that the conscious mind is only a “gatekeeper” that claims subconsciously originating actions as its own once they’ve already been decided upon.

The word the Anglo-Saxon poets of Dark Age England used for fate highlights this ironic, circling, swerving logic; they called it wyrd—a word related to a lot of other w-r words still existing in our language that connote twisting and turning (worm, wrap, writhe, wreath, wring, and so on—even word, which, as writers know, is made of bendy-twisty marks on paper or stone). Wyrd, or weird, is the bending force in our lives that, among other things, causes dark prophecies to be fulfilled not only despite but actually because of our best efforts at preventing them. It also warps our mind and induces a kind of compulsion around more appealing-sounding prophecies, as it did to Shakespeare’s Macbeth after hearing the Weird Sisters’ prophecy that he would become king. When we realize that the Minkowski block universe, in its resolute self-consistency, imposes a wyrd-like law upon us (a “law in the cosmos,” you might call it), then all those antique myths about prophecy and the ironic insistency of fate start to appear less like the superstitions of benighted folk in the Back When and start to seem remarkably, well, prescient. And not only prescient, but based on real-life experience with prescience. Divination was an important part of Greek culture, for instance; it was even the basis of their medicine. Sick patients went to temples and caves to have healing dreams in the presence of priests who could interpret their dreams’ signs. They were not strangers to this stuff, as we now are. As intrinsically precognitive beings who think of ourselves as freely willed, the logic of wyrd is our ruler. We can’t go anywhere that would prevent ourselves from existing, prevent ourselves from getting to the experiences and realizations ahead of us that will turn out to have retroinfluenced our lives now, and this imposes a kind of blindness on us. That blindness may keep us from going insane, reducing the level of prophecy to a manageable level. It is why our dreamlife only shows us the future as through a glass, darkly. It is also why the world seems so tricksterish to those who are really paying attention. That we are interfered with by an intelligence that is somehow within us but also Other is the human intuition that Freud theorized in such a radical new way. His focus was on how this Other inside could make us ill; the flip side is that it really does serve as our guide, especially when we let ourselves be led by our unreason. Research shows that “psi” is an unconscious, un-willed function or group of functions.2 The laboratory experiments by Daryl Bem, Dean Radin, and many others strongly support something like presentiment (future-feeling) operating outside of conscious awareness, and it could be a pervasive feature or even a basic underlying principle of our psychology.

Mid June 2012 …Young, as time passed, I missed you more than ever. My exasperation with Toby festered with each passing day. When I finally could not tolerate our tempestuous relationship, I confronted the young man. After a heated emotional argument, Toby left our unfinished discussion in a state of vexation. I did not realize he was using the age-old psychological threat of overdosing himself to obtain my attention. I found him unconscious, foaming at the corner of his mouth from consuming an entire bottle of sleeping pills. He was rushed to hospital. I would not have been able to live with my guilt if Toby had died. He recovered from this ordeal, but my respect for him had plummeted. Instead of loving him, I felt sorry and pitied him. This was a malignant sign of what was to come. To appease him, we often kissed and made up after impassioned disputes. I made false promises that I had no intention of keeping. These desolate pledges soon dissolved into self-abhorrence. I had allowed myself to be trapped into a situation, and I could not figure out a solution. Throughout this ordeal, I threw myself into my engineering studies, channeling my unhappiness into what I enjoyed best. I could not give myself fully to the boy, and had little respect for him. When we made love, I shut him out. Instead, I saw you in our sexual liaisons. Toby was merely a vehicle to satisfy my sexual desires to be with you. Throughout the years we were together, it was you I made love to, not Toby or anyone else. I could not and would not release you from my mind. The pain of losing you was too oppressive, until the fateful day I suffered a nervous breakdown. I ended up in a hospital, in the psychiatric ward. Aria and Ari came to nurse me back to health. Aria stayed for two weeks until I could commence classes again. I knew I had to get away from this toxic relationship. The day I graduated I enrolled in a postgraduate program in Alberta, Canada. I desired to be as far away from New Zealand as possible; I needed to be away from Toby and to find myself again. I finally had a solid and legitimate excuse to separate from the boy. I was glad when Toby’s parents demanded their son’s return to the Philippines after his graduation so that he could take over his father’s business. Toby did not wish to return to Manila, but had no choice. His father threatened to cut off his financial support if he did not return. Thanks to universal intervention, my freedom was restored. I began a new life in Canada. That, my dearest Young, was the beginning of a new chapter in my life. The rest will be revealed to you in our next correspondence. For now, be happy, be well, and most importantly, be you at all times: the Young whom I love and cherish. Andy, Xoxoxo

Before we continue, let’s stop for a second and celebrate. Congratulations! You just learned exactly how to set yourself free from feeling trapped in emotions you don’t want to feel anymore and a reality that you want to change. You found the key to the jail cell. That key is your fear. Having that key in your hand now makes it possible for you to reprogram your mind to consciously create experiences that you want more of and to stop unconsciously manifesting past, painful patterns that you don’t want more of. It’s Conversation Time With Your Mind Now, it’s time to sit down and draft a letter to your mind. Here are the basic ideas you may want to explain in your letter: •    Tell your mind that you understand exactly why you’ve been feeling bad. Mind, I know I’ve been feeling bad because I have the following limiting beliefs. [List your limiting beliefs that you discovered] •   Tell your mind that you know why it constantly gives you the worst-case scenario thoughts and visions. Mind, I know that you help me remember these limiting beliefs by showing me visions and giving me thoughts of the worst-case scenario such as: [List worst-case scenario thoughts and visions] •    Tell your mind that you know that it’s been trying to protect you from a fearful thought coming true. Mind, I know you show me the worst-case scenario visions and thoughts because you want to protect me from: [name fearful thoughts] •    Explain to your mind that its protection may have kept you safe in the past, but now you want to change the way it protects you. Mind, I know that believing [name limiting thoughts] helped protect me in the past. Heck, those beliefs got me to this present moment where I’m ready to reclaim my gift as the co-creator of my reality. I thank you so much for every last thought and vision that you gave me in the past. They have been necessary. You did your job absolutely perfectly and I couldn’t imagine having a better mind than you. •    Explain what you want your mind to show you instead of the worst-case scenario thoughts and visions, effective immediately. Mind, I want to change the way we work together. I want to experience something different. To be able to experience something different, I need your help. This is what I need you to do. You know those worst-case scenario thoughts and visions that you give me all the time? I want you to switch those for thoughts and visions of me achieving the following: [list conscious manifestations]. I want you to show me the best-case scenario for those situations I just listed. Show me exactly what it looks like to live that life and experience the magic of those things I want to manifest. Those manifestations that I want to create are subject to change. If they do change, you will be the first to be notified so that we can create them together. This is a two-man operation and I need you. You’re so powerful and we’re

My good heart and empathetic personality were assumed by many as a weakness. I was unwarily and widely opening doors to my sponge-like heart for people with a strict intent to take advantage of me. I was considered naive and gullible. My charitable practices caused me more pains and heartaches than a long expected feeling of joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction. Dealing with constant depreciation, disrespect, and in few cases even abused, I was being left feeling wronged and victimized. Such treatment sent me into a low-vibration state of mind and ever since I have been attracting and letting all the wrong and toxic people in to my life. In the effect, inadvertently and totally unconsciously, I neglected and deprived myself from having what I deserved best: - true and unconditional love, respect and gratitude. By constantly placing me at "second place”, I depleted myself from positive energy, neglected my own life; its desires, needs, and ended up running on empty. I started losing touch with my own creative inspiration, and my artistic originality suffered a great deal. I started noticing that I was left with no fuel to properly nourish my own body, soul and mind. It is time for me to take charge of my life, place myself first before anyone else, let go of all the “wolfs in sheep’s garment”, and rebuild my dwindling self-esteem. It is time for me to heal and rebuild my essence, give myself proper love, balanced nutrition and attention, and feel again that strong desire to live my life to the fullest. It is time for me to reconstitute, refocus and re-center in order to achieve a blissful feeling of inner peace. I understand that this new development may disappoint some of my "friends" and associates who are used to my giving nature. They will have to accept my transformation given that I cannot go on with my life running on empty, especially since most of my actions remain usually non-reciprocated. It is time for Alex to finally be able to distinguish between those that are really in need and those that are just pure pococurante parasites or scavengers, always expecting of me to cater to their every single need. It is time for me to say "no" to those who under false pretenses entered my sensitive and charitable heart only to take advantage of it and who are always taking but never giving.

First,” began Jung, “you must always remember we can only interpret these psychic facts metaphorically. We can never proclaim with certainty that we have uncovered the total mystery of an archetype. The best we can do is to dream the myth onward and give it a modern dress. And whatever explanation or interpretation we give the archetype, we do to our own souls as well, with corresponding results for our own well-being. Therefore, our explanation should always aim to maintain an adequate connection between the conscious mind and the archetype. If we do this, we will have reconnected with our own psychic roots in the dark, primitive collective unconscious.

They were having a good time, an adventure. That was January’s dominant impression of his companions in the 509th; despite all the bitching and the occasional moments of overmastering fear, they were having a good time. His mind spun forward and he saw what these young men would grow up to be like as clearly as if they stood before him in businessmen’s suits, prosperous and balding. They would be tough and capable and thoughtless, and as the years passed and the great war receded in time they would look back on it with ever-increasing nostalgia, for they would be the survivors and not the dead. Every year of this war would feel like ten in their memories, so that the war would always remain the central experience of their lives—a time when history lay palpable in their hands, when each of their daily acts affected it, when moral issues were simple, and others told them what to do—so that as more years passed and the survivors aged, bodies falling apart, lives in one rut or another, they would unconsciously push harder and harder to thrust the world into war again, thinking somewhere inside themselves that if they could only return to world war then they would magically be again as they were in the last one—young, and free, and happy.

To understand this in detail, let’s look at the model of the mind. The concept of the levels of the mind is not new. Sigmund Freud, the famous Austrian psychologist, was probably the first one to popularize it. The best way to understand this concept is by using a triangle. The conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind, how does it all work? If you can think of this triangle as an iceberg, then the tip of it is the conscious mind, which is seen by everyone. Below this is the slightly

What Beitman is suggesting presupposes either “superpowers” that go well beyond even the unconscious mental feats Freud and his predecessors had posited or, alternatively, some omniscient higher knower capable of aligning our intentions with the infinitely complex webs of material causation governing objectively unfolding events. Once again, the fact that we live in a world of information—including cultural information like books and symbols—does not mean the universe speaks our mental language. At best, both the archetypal and intentional explanations lack parsimony. Fortunately, a causal (with a big asterisk beside the word) explanation for meaningful coincidences is no longer nearly as unthinkable as it was in Jung’s day, thanks to advances in several fields that, as we saw earlier, seem to be converging on a plausible (and indeed even materialistic) answer to how experiences from our future may reflux into our past and inform our dreams, thoughts, and actions. It remains to test these hypotheses, deepen our understanding of physical laws and the brain with new methods and technologies, and persist in our inquiries into psychology and nature with the healthy presumption that we don’t yet know everything about the physical world or how the mind/brain works. We cannot simply reject anomalous phenomena that don’t fit into the current materialist paradigm, but it is also too soon to appeal to explanatory factors beyond physical causation, as the latter is turning out to be far more rich, varied, and interesting than once believed. Causation really seems to go both directions in time.

Usually my best thoughts come when I’m walking alone, or in the shower, or as I’m falling asleep. I’m not the only one, because that’s when the conscious mind let’s go for a while, and we permit the unconscious pieces to come together; a math problem solved or some conflict worked out inside us; a recognition, a sudden comprehension from deep down.

THE SEVEN STEPS OF SELF-TRANSFORMATION Illumination is the act of shining the light of consciousness on the egoic forces that obstruct our minds, things such as defense mechanisms, illusions, and other intellectual structures that obscure our capacity to see ourselves and all around us as Sacred. We can think of this as removing lampshades that cover up our inner One Mind's Light. Submersion brings us into deeper self-awareness by wading into the waters of our unconscious, our inner One Thing, thus opening the door to a productive dialog between the conscious and the unconscious selves, which can be considered respectively as our inner One Mind and One Thing. Remember, it is the interaction between these two that gives power to all creation, so it is important to get these forces into a productive dialog within us if we want our soul to create life. Polarization is a process through which we increase our awareness of inner duality— our One Mind and One Thing — and explore the paradox of their underlying unity and separation ability. Just as we saw in the story of creation, these two internal forces can use their separation to create a polarity, such as charging a battery, and this battery enhances our creativity. Merging is the actual fusion of these opposing powers that can also be known as our active and reactive inner natures, the conscious and the unconscious, the mind, and the soul. Here we start to blend the best of both, giving birth to what Egyptian alchemists call the Intelligence of the Heart, thus overloading our internal battery and our creative abilities. Inspiration takes Merging's creative potential and animates it with the Divine breath of life, introducing new dimensions beyond our ability to plan or monitor. The element of surprise threatens the illusion of the ego-self that it is in control, so a part of Inspiration causes the self-deception to die and fall away so that we can be reborn into the Light of Truth. In other terms, our True Self can be remembered. Refining takes from the previous step the divinely inspired solution and further purifies it, removing any last traces of the ego that would otherwise cloud our ability to see our True Self. We lift our human consciousness to the highest possible level to reconnect with the One Self, and Reiki is a wonderful tool to do so as you will know in the near future. Integration completes the process by uniting our One Mind, and One Thing's distilled essence, allowing us to experience their inherent Oneness at a deep level. This can also be considered as the union of spirit, soul, and body with matter. Saying it pragmatically, we take this state of awakened awareness and incorporate it into the very structure of our daily lives; it's not something we feel only when we're on a couch of contemplation or in a class of yoga. And then we return to the beginning, like the ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, but this time bearing to bear our newly created insight. These are the seven stages of self-transformation, in a nutshell, and now is the time to weave Reiki into the picture.

Hume emphasized education and experience: men of taste acquire certain abilities that lead to agreement about which authors and artworks are the best. Such people, he felt, eventually will reach consensus, and in doing so, they set a ‘standard of taste’ which is universal. … Hume said men of taste must ‘preserve minds free from prejudice’, but thought no one should enjoy immoral attitudes or ‘vicious manners’ in art … Kant too spoke about judgements of taste but he was more concerned with explaining judgements of Beauty. He aimed to show that good judgements in aesthetics are grounded in features of artworks themselves, not just in us and our preferences. Kant tried to describe our human abilities to perceive and categorize the world around us. There is a complex interplay among our mental faculties including perception, imagination, and intellect or judgement. Kant held that in order to function in the world to achieve our human purposes, we label much of what we sense, often in fairly unconscious ways.

For me, the appeal of Prozac was that it addressed the brain but required no thinking. There was no talking your way out of neurosis, no deciphering clues or tracing conflict back to unconscious childhood desire. You took a pill.

Freud had insisted that every stray thought was meaningful, and even told you what the meaning was, which made the unconscious more like Levittown than an uncharted deep; you could put up your own posters but the floor plan was poured concrete. In that sense it was, like Marxism, an anti-intellectual magnet for intellectuals. Prozac wasn’t about finding meaning in mental discomfort, or thinking at all. That’s what I found so exciting.

use your imagination to suggest what you want and the unconscious will work to make it happen. The suggestions can be feelings, sounds, pictures or your own self-talk; adjust the picture you have like you would adjust your television to make it the best picture and sound quality ever!

He had mastered the art of conducting a love affair through all its stages, from infatuation to consummation, wholly within its mind. How could he do that? The indispensable first step was to capture what he called “a living image” of the beloved and make it his own. Upon this image he would then dwell, giving breath to it, until he had reached a point where, still in the realm of the imagination, he could begin to make love to this succubus of his and eventually conduct her into the utmost transports; and this whole passionate history would remain unbeknown to the earthly original. [ On the erotic life ] It all hinged, he replied, on being able to capture, through the closest, most dedicated attention, that unique unconscious gesture, too slight or too fleeting to be noticed by the average eye, by which a woman gave herself away - gave away her erotic essence, that is to say, her soul. The way she turned her wrist to look at her wristwatch, for example, or the way she reached down to pull tight the strap of a sandal. Once that unique movement was caught, the erotic imagination could explore it at leisure until the woman’s every last secret was laid open, not excluding how she moved in the arms of a lover, how she came to her climax. From the giveaway gesture all followed “as if by fate”. [ On the erotic life ] That’s the beauty of thoughts, isn’t it, that distance doesn’t matter, and separation. [ On compassion ] The woman from Lausanne complains above all of loneliness. She has created a protective ritual for herself in which she retires to bed at night with music playing in the background and lies cosily reading a book, immersed in what she tells herself is bliss. Then, as she begins to reflect on her situation, bliss turns to disquiet. Is this truly the best that life affords, she asks herself - lying in bed alone with a book? Is it such a good thing to be a comfortable, prosperous citizen of a model democracy, secure in her home in the heart of Europe? Despite herself, she grows more and more agitated. She rises, dons dressing gown and slippers and takes up her pen. [ On fan mail ]

And they help us understand why one environment makes people anxious and competitive, while another brims with sociability and tolerance. Think about the way people act in the sterile cabin of an airplane, breaking into fights over three degrees of seat recline and jostling elbows for control of an armrest. Now contrast this with how people behave in the convivial atmosphere of a music festival. Surrounded by vibrant decorations and music, people share food and drink, make space on the crowded lawn for newcomers, and dance with strangers. The power of the aesthetics of joy is that they speak directly to our unconscious minds, bringing out the best in us without our even being aware of it.

There’s a lot of unconscious social conditioning and primal drivers in your mind that offer up thoughts that might not ultimately serve you, your growth as a person, or your intimate relationship. Two of the best tools that I have found to help you begin questioning your thoughts are journaling and mindfulness (also known as observing ego).

Worth Statement: My value comes from who I am, NOT from what I do. Growth Mindset: Anything that happens to me today is in my best interest and it is an opportunity for me to learn and grow. What Went Well: (Write out 15 specific things you did well today. Feel free to use examples of areas you got better in even if they weren’t the very best you are capable of.) 1. I kept my stance solid for every shot 2. I caught myself wondering if I would be able to finish the practice. Started to talk to myself instead of listening to myself 3. I was intentional about treating the other apprentices very well even when I felt like they didn’t deserve it 4. I chose to take deep breaths before I approached the firing line 5. I held my core stable and kept clean lines in my shooting form 6. I cleared my mind before each release and remembered to focus on controllables 7. I saw Katsuo shoot three tight groupings, but I chose not to compare and focused on my own shots 8. I chose to see myself being very strong even when I felt my shoulder shake on my last set of draws 9. When I got frustrated and wanted to give up, I reminded myself that I am building my own house 10. I started and finished my practice today without anyone forcing me 11. I kept my breathing slow and focused on the firing line 12. I remembered to keep visualizing each arrow hitting where I aimed it, even when my shots were off 13. I remembered to pause and settle my mind and breathe before each release 14. I encouraged the other apprentices by reminding them of what they were doing well 15. I did a better job today of letting the negative thoughts fly on by and not give them power 16. I kept my releases easy and unconscious Areas For Growth: (Formerly called “Weaknesses” but we are looking at them as growth opportunities now) • Keeping my mind clear and focusing on my process even when I am distracted • Staying present after a mistake and focusing on what I need to do NOW What I Learned: (This can be something that you already know but learned the importance of again) • I shoot tighter groupings when I remember to release my goals and focus on my controllables instead • By focusing on what my fellow apprentices do well, it creates a much better energy and environment for growth and optimum performance.

In 1896 Freud boldly claimed that “the ultimate cause of hysteria is always the seduction of the child by an adult.” Then, faced with his own evidence of an epidemic of abuse in the best families of Vienna—one, he noted, that would implicate his own father—he quickly began to retreat. Psychoanalysis shifted to an emphasis on unconscious wishes and fantasies, though Freud occasionally kept acknowledging the reality of sexual abuse.

Entwined in the very terminology we use to classify our books – 'highbrow', 'lowbrow' and 'middlebrow' – is the history of those words, rooted in the practice of phrenology as indicators of intellectual capacity. Whether we are aware of the historical source of these words, we are mindful – consciously or unconsciously – of the judgments they carry. We know our books define us. Do we, then, carefully craft our public collections to make the best impression? What factors into the books we choose to keep and display versus the books we read (and enjoy!) but quickly usher from sight? Moreover, what significance is there in how they are displayed?

This principle of only hiring people who are better than the ones we currently have means we don’t make desperation hires to fill an open position. And the raise-the-average rule makes hiring decisions surprisingly easy. It’s easy to visualize in your mind the average person in your sales force or on your brewery floor or even in senior management and it’s easy for your intuition to evaluate whether a candidate is better than the average person. Your gut will tell you. If you’re used to traditional hiring, you might feel uncomfortable turning to intuition. Aren’t we taking too big a risk by relying on our gut feelings about somebody rather than rationally assessing facts such as past experience or education? I would counter that we’re fooling ourselves by not relying primarily on intuition. As recent neuroscience has shown, our brains don’t work rationally. If you hook a functional MRI machine to a chess grandmaster, you find that the best of them are not rationally calculating their next moves; they’re imagining what will happen, unconsciously bringing to bear the hundreds of thousands of moves they’ve already seen. They’re arriving at a feeling that guides their actions. They are using the nonrational part of their brain. The quantitatively logical part of your brain is pretty paltry. Just try counting by prime numbers while you’re multiplying other numbers by seventeen. Impossible. But reading emotions by looking at someone’s facial expressions while you’re navigating a crowded sidewalk is easy for your brain.

Is it not possible that conscious effort, forcefulness, and opposing action with the apparent natural world are all in fact natural parts of the natural world? In the context of Taoism, could working against the Dao merely be the Dao working against the Dao for the sake of its perpetuation? Perhaps a further step in the logical path of Taoism, and philosophies like it, involves an even greater surrender that doesn’t even permit one to choose or consider if they are surrendering or not. Rather, one is born into surrender. If in Taoism, the relationship of all things is a cooperative, unified whole, even when things appear in conflict, is not human and nature always in cooperation, even when they seem to oppose each other? If darkness creates light, silence creates sound, beauty creates ugliness, good creates bad, does not forcefulness create non-forcefulness? Does not man create nature? Does not consciousness create unconsciousness? Human is part and parcel of nature, and so, how could human act in any other way? How would manmade material or action ever not be natural? Of course, this is just one counter idea that stems from just one interpretation of an elusive mysterious Taoist idea. And to step back on it a little, there is no question that our conscious observations and logic do often fool us, and we are, in many cases, clearly deviating from what’s best when we force or strive for what we think is. Clearly, there are better ways for things to go, plenty of which would go better if we never got involved. Perhaps the only remaining questions are: when should we and when shouldn’t we? And how does one find out without screwing the whole thing up? Perhaps these questions miss the point. Perhaps the point ignores these questions. Of course, like all ideals of philosophy or religion, Taoism’s concepts are likely just that: ideals, ideals that are not without some level of contradiction or general incompleteness on their own. But regardless of this and the potential limits of its applicability, the concepts suggested by Taoism are nonetheless filled with rich insights that provide worthy useful counterweights to the more common, brutish way of mind and culture. The thinking that things must always be a different way, or must go one’s own way for it to be the right way, that there must always be some better ideal around the corner that isn’t or couldn’t be in this moment, right now; that one needs to seek and strive for what they already have and know.

The Babel fish,” said The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quietly, “is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. “Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a fina and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. “The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’ “‘But,’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’ “‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. “‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing. “Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo’s kidneys, but that didn’t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, Well That about Wraps It Up for God. “Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.