A Miracle A Day

Archive for the ‘Patterns’ Category

Discard Your Life And Find The Real You

What is the real you?  What is it that makes up the true you, what belongs to you and only you?  What do you get when you see past the surface, past the anger and fear, "love" and betrayal, hurt, pain, and even agony?  The real you… the deep you, the you that is beyond what the surface you can even imagine.

When you are born, you have no concept of your "self".  As you grow older, you build up a structure, a belief system, a framework of lenses and mental maps through which you see the world.  You are told, and you believe, that this framework is you.  The framework gets covered with experiences and emotions, and even the spaces between the beams of the support structure get filled up eventually.  You go on about your life with the belief that this giant amalgamation is you.

Everyone else around you believes this, too.  Only what they think of as you isn't even the structure you have built up… it's only the surface of that structure, a surface that changes constantly as new experiences, new emotions, and new everything else piles up, sometimes stripping off pieces of the old coverings, but more often simply piling over them, making them part of the inside, and making that structure ever harder to discard.

As you go about, identifying more and more with this framework that you've built, some of it intentional construction, most of it not, you build walls, walling off this portion from that portion.  You do this to protect yourself, to keep yourself from getting hurt, but that's not what they do, it's only what you fool yourself into believing they do.  Because those walls don't keep things out, they keep things in.

That's right… you're building yourself a prison.  A prison inside a structure that is built of the giant ball of stuff that you call your life.  And you not only build this prison, you voluntarily stick yourself inside of it, trapping yourself in with all the pain and injuries that you have suffered over the years.  And to top it off, the prison that you build, and trap yourself inside, can't ever even fulfill the purpose for which you supposedly built it… it can't even keep out new pain!

That's right… you build up this structure of falsehoods, lies told to yourself, walling yourself in to keep out the pain, and it doesn't even work.  The walls only function in one direction… they hold things in.  They hold you in… they limit you to far, far below your true abilities.  They keep the pain that you have experienced close to you, so that it can continually injure you and prevent you from healing.  What do you do when the pain builds, when it gets harder and harder to deal with?  You build more walls, and build the walls you have higher!

The walls that you build for yourself are a prison… but they're also an illusion.  They are part of the framework that you have built up, an integral part as a matter of fact.  But here's the thing:  that framework isn't you.

That's right, all those lenses and perceptions and mental maps, all those experiences and emotions, those hatreds and angers and fears… they aren't you.  They're a tiny little pimple that you've built up on the surface of the real you.  All that stuff that you're trying to protect, the part that hurts, the part that knows pain and fear and suffering… that is only the very smallest fraction of you.  It's like looking at a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, and calling that the ocean.

The real you is vast.  It is deep, and strong, and powerful.  It cannot be hurt by the vagaries of this life, because it is only the tiniest fraction of it that is involved with this life.  Your physical presence, and the structure that you have built up, are merely the tiny portion of it paying attention to what you perceive as your whole life.  And when you identify yourself as that tiny portion, you are giving up the vastness of the real you, like identifying yourself as your pinky.

Your walls you have created are illusions, but they are self-maintained illusions, given the power that you are drawing through your connection to the real you.  Want evidence that what I'm saying is right?  It's very easy to obtain… all you have to do is let down one, just one, of your walls.  You will immediately feel closer to that vastness that is the real you.  And with each wall that you release, you will find yourself closer to that reality.

When you get close, you may be scared by the openness, the sheer open expanse that you feel  drawing nearer.  After all, for all of your life that you can remember, you have lived inside your walls.  You may never have even had a moment's clarity, an opening of the mind's eye to see the vastness around you.  If you HAVE had one of those moments, you may be even more scared, because you have an inkling of what it's like.

It's not an empty vastness, though… you aren't alone.  In fact, when you reach that vastness, you'll find that you are connected to everyone and everything else, with a deepness of connection that the very word connection doesn't seem strong enough to convey the reality of what you feel.  You are a part of everything, and everything is a part of you.

It's sometimes hard to keep this connection to the real you… it's easy to forget and focus back on the surface structure, identifying with that structure that you've built up.  Once you've let the feeling go long enough, in fact, it's hard to remember what it was like… until something triggers it again, and then it all comes rushing back.

There is an old movie called Dune.  They made a newer version of it, too, but I'm talking about the original.  In it, there is a phrase that is repeated a few times:  "The sleeper must awaken."  I have always identified with this phrase… I've always felt like it meant something to me, something more.  I've felt like there was something bigger slumbering inside me.

Lately, as I have read, and learned, and written, and looked inside of me, my awareness has gradually expanded, and the phrase has changed, in my mind, to "The sleeper is awakening."  I felt that bigger thing inside of me stirring from its slumber, starting to uncoil.

Tonight, as I was talking to my wife to help her relax, something clicked.  Sometimes the greatest words of wisdom come when the conscious mind gets the hell out of the way and lets things flow from far deeper inside.  Suddenly, that thing that had slowly been awakening came aware.  The sleeper has awoken.

This connection, this deeper you, is your connection to God, to the awareness that created, and contains, and in a way is, the universe.  But it is being "consciously" (too small a term, I think) aware of that connection, not in some sort of vague "God created the Heavens and the Earth" kind of way.  It is an intimate and strong connection, a direct connection.  It is deep, wordless communication flowing back and forth, much of which, to this point at least, seems to be more of an "I am here" message and an "I know" response flowing from each direction.

This vastness is inside each of us… in fact, it IS each of us.  We are not the limited lives reflected in the world we live in, we are not even the conscious part of our minds… we are far more than that.  But in order to find our true selves, we must first give up the structure that have built up, that we have defined as "us"… and that's probably the hardest thing in the world to do.  That last wall, the one that separates us from our true selves, the one that is the foundation of support for our whole framework of our lives, is really, really hard to let go.  It is giving up the "you" that you have always known, for a great unknown.

Do not be afraid.  The whole world will change before your eyes, leaving nothing unaltered.  Once you let go of that last wall, and the fear, there will be no doubt, however.

It's worth it. 

 

Author

September 28th

Awareness, Beliefs, Body/Mind Relationship, Communication, Conscience, Energy, Expectations, Fear, Feed Your Mind, Free Will, Growth, Healing, Internal Quiet, Learning, Motivation, Patterns, Relationships

Two Ways To Make Yourself Smarter Through Writing

Make Yourself Smarter

Would you like to both appear, and actually be, smarter?  There are many techniques out there that can help you to learn this or that easier, or improve your memory, but it's not quite so common to find techniques that allow you to increase your general ability to acquire and apply knowledge across the board.

If you're looking for such a way, or weren't particularly looking, but you're interested now that I caught your attention, continue reading this article.  I have two such methods for you that both involve writing.  Not only will they both help you to acquire, categorize, and interconnect knowledge, but because they involve writing, they will also improve your vocabulary (especially if you make that one of your goals while applying the techniques), which makes you sound (appear) smarter.

Alright, so let's get started… here is the first way to make yourself smarter: 

Write About A Random Topic

Our first technique is to pick, or even better, have someone else pick for you, a random topic and write at least a page about it.  If you want to get the most out of this method, write three to five pages about the topic.  Write it as if you were writing it for someone else to read, not just for yourself, and it's even better if you do let someone else read it, as they can give you feedback to improve your writing.  It can be whatever kind of writing you want… you can explain the topic, research it, introduce it, write fiction about it… whatever you want, they all work.

It doesn't really matter whether you know anything about the topic or not.  If you do know something about the topic, then writing will help you to refine your knowledge and make it more concrete and easy to call to your conscious mind.  If you write about a topic that you don't know much about, you will obviously have to learn something about it in order to write about it. 

As you write more about things you know, you are practicing your skills of making information you already have usable and easy to recall.  This makes it easier and easier to do this with any other topics as well… it's a general skill that you learn, not just applicable to the specific topics that you write about.

When you write about things you don't know you practice you skills involved in learning, categorizing, and applying new knowledge.  Again, as above, this is a general skill which will improve your ability to do these three things with any new knowledge, not just a specific topic, and not even just when it comes to writing.

So, now on to the second way to make yourself smarter: 

Connect Two Unrelated Topics

Our second technique is slightly more complicated, and really puts your mind to work.  It works by picking two apparently unrelated topics, and finding a way to relate them.  This can be anything… you can pick two random nouns from the dictionary, or as above, have someone else pick the two things for you.  In fact, if you're really feeling adventurous, and wanting to push the envelope on this method, you can use more than two topics… but don't use too many, or the relations you draw between the topics lose their depth.

As above, this works best if you write it as if you were writing it for someone else, and actually allowing someone else to read it can result in feedback that improves your writing.  It can also be any type of writing you want, but in this method you really need to write more than one page to get the full benefit.  You can use up one page just introducing the two subjects, and you really want to give the connection between them some depth, as this is what makes this technique work.

This second technique teaches you how to see connections between two seemingly unrelated things.  This is vital to pushing your intelligence to higher levels… being able to see the relationships between things where it's not obvious is what separates the smart people from the average people.  It helps you to see more and more patterns in the world around you, and recognizing these patterns quickly and usefully is what intelligence is all about.  Everything in the world, the universe, is related… there is a pattern that contains any two subjects, and of course there is the pattern that IS the universe.

Your ability and skills in the area of recognizing patterns will be stretched farther (and thus grow more) as the topics you use are less related.  That means that if your two topics are monkeys and bananas, you're not stretching much, and won't get much.  If you relate bananas and an allen wrench, that might be a bit more of a stretch, and thus you gain more.

Again, fictional stories also work for training these skills, though you might not get the added benefit of learning more about the topics as you would if you did another form of writing.

Shared Benefits

There's another useful thing that you can get out of using these techniques… if you have someone else who is reading your results, you are likely to be helping them improve their intelligence, as well.  Their vocabulary should be expanding as yours does, and they, too, get to see connections between things they hadn't previously recognized as being related.  Their benefits will be smaller than yours, because you are having to find those connections, while they are having them shown to them, but they will still benefit.

Make Either Technique More Effective

There are a few things that can make both techniques more effective.  One of these things is to have someone else suggest your topics.  This keeps you from going easy on yourself when you're feeling less motivated, and is likely to push you even more outside of your comfort zone.  Another one is to have someone else, or several someone else's, read your end product.  At least one of these people is likely to be the one who suggested the topics, but it's always good to include someone else, because they won't have any preconceptions based on knowing before reading what the topics were.

Another thing that makes both techniques more effective is to do it with a partner and suggest topics to each other, with a set time to finish your writing.  After that time, which should be as short as possible without causing undue stress on either of you, you should give each other what you wrote, read the other person's writing, and then talk about it.  This gives you added motivation to keep it up, added benefits from reading the other person's writing, and can make it more fun, as your suggestions for topics can mean something to you, and even if they don't before you write about them, they may have added meaning for both of you afterwards.

Summary 

So… there you go.  Want to be smarter, and make it apparent to other people as well?  Practice one, or better yet both, of the techniques above.  Make it work even better by finding a partner, or even a network (ie more than just you and one other person).  Speaking of which, I'm interested in finding a partner or network for doing this myself… anyone interested?

Author

September 28th

Awareness, Communication, Feed Your Mind, Growth, Learning, Patterns

The Subconscious Mind In Control (AKA Habits)

What Habits Are 

"Habit" is a word for an area where your subconscious mind controls your actions in the absence of input from your conscious mind.  Most of your every day life is controlled by habits… you have a habit of breathing, sleeping, waking, etc.  When most people talk about habits, though, they are referring to ones where you are aware of the habit but still relinquish control to your subconscious.  Smoking, drinking, gambling… these are things where the decision to do it is made by your subconscious, and your conscious mind, while aware of what you are doing, is nothing but an observer.

There are two things you should know when looking at habits from this viewpoint.  The first is that if your conscious mind involves itself, becoming more than an observer, it can break (or change) that habit.  The second is that even if you do decide to make a change, but don't give regular attention to maintaining the change, you will allow that area to slip back to your subconscious mind's control.  If you have established enough of a different pattern, that won't matter, because the subconscious will continue along the new pattern, but if you slip before that new pattern is set, your subconscious will go back to its old ways, and your habit will return.

Now let's get something straight… not all habits are bad.  Taking a shower every day is a good habit, as are brushing your teeth, chewing with your mouth closed, and exercising.  Smoking can even be looked at as a good habit, if the benefits outweight the costs… it's just that the costs for smoking are cumulative, and quite high over the long term, where the benefits are NOT cumulative, and only valuable over a very short term.  So one person may consider something a bad habit, where another might consider the same thing neutral or even good.

How Habits Form

You form habits by repeating the same response, or a very similar response, to the same, or very similar circumstances.  You form your habit of breathing by exhaling when your lungs are empty of oxygen and inhaling when they are empty of air.  You form your habit of smoking by picking up a cigarette in certain situations, which can then expand if you start doing so in more situations.  Doing something one time is seldom enough to form a habit… it usually requires tens, hundreds, or even thousands of repetitions.

Performing the same action in response to non-similar circumstances can peripherally reinforce a habit that is forming, but the impact is small.  That is, if you have a habit of smoking first thing in the morning, and you smoke one at lunch time, that isn't really enough to expand the habit to smoking at lunch, and if you have smoked a few in the morning, then smoke one at lunch, it is unlikely to cement the habit of smoking in the morning, either.

How Habits Change

There are two kinds of change that can happen with a habit… replacement and removal.  Replacing a habit is FAR easier than removing it.

When you replace a habit, what you do is change which action is fired when certain circumstances trigger a habit response from your subconscious.  Basically, you have trained your subconscious to fire off a habit when certain circumstances arise.  Replacing a habit simply points that trigger at a different habit, such as chewing gum instead of smoking.  That's relatively easy, because all you're doing is choosing a different habit to fire, rather than trying to change the whole subconscious pattern of responding to those circumstances with a a habit.

Removing a habit is the other side of that coin… it is conditioning the subconscious to STOP responding to a certain set of circumstances by firing a habit trigger.  This is mostly done by altering the way you perceive the set of circumstances.  If you want to remove a habit of swearing, for example, you could train your subconscious to look at the circumstances where you would normally swear through a filter of "What if my baby was here?".  Even this doesn't actually remove the habit trigger, though… it simply keeps your subconscious from seeing the set of circumstances that trigger it.

That last is why people who form a habit of smoking, then quit, can one day pick it up right where they left off.  They changed their perception of the circumstances for the time where they quit, but then their perception goes back to, or close enough to, the old set that fire off that trigger.  Abra cadabra… your habit is back!

The ability for "removed" habits to return is one more reason why replacing habits is more effective… even if that set of circumstances arises, it fires off the replacement habit, not the original.  I haven't really looked into replacement FOLLOWED by removal… that might be a relatively effective technique, so that even if you backslide it's only to the replacement habit, not the original.

Conclusion

The reality is that if you want to alter a habit, the first thing you must do it become consciously aware of it.  After you become aware, you have to make a conscious decision to change, and you'd better have motivation for the change, too (and internal sources of motivation are by far the strongest, most persistent sort).  Then you can work on replacing the habit or removing the habit trigger.

Don't expect instant results when trying to change habits.  Chances are pretty good that you'll have a fight on your hands for at least two weeks… often much longer.  Just keep your focus on now, on the progress you have already made, the changes that you already have, not on the permanent change that is your goal… it'll make it much easier to stick with it.

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PS – This post was written in response to Jenny and Erin's self development writing challenge.

Author

September 6th

Awareness, Growth, Learning, Motivation, Patterns, Perseverance, Subconscious

The Most Essential Ingredient Of Success

Peaceful Scene

There are an incredible number of books, articles, videos, and any other kind of media you can imagine selling you "the secret of success".  Most of these methods are questionable… after all, if it were easy, then everyone would be successful, and that's clearly not the case.  There is one thing, however, that IS critical to success… success in ANY field.

That one thing is awareness.  There are many kinds of awareness, but there is one kind that has greater impact on your path to success in anything you attempt.  That kind is awareness of self… awareness of how you make choices, how you change your subconscious tendencies, and how that determines how you see the world.

We all face an uncountable number of choices each day.  With each choice that comes, you have two levels at which it can be made:  subconscious or conscious.  The default is subconscious, as you can plainly see if you think about it.  You don't consciously choose when (or whether) to breathe, at least not normally.  You don't, generally speaking, choose which letters to read in which order.  Your subconscious handles all of these types of decisions…. EXCEPT when you become consciously aware of it.

When you read the paragraph above, you may have suddenly become aware of your breathing, and made a choice to hold your breath, or breathe more deeply.  If you did decide to do one of those things, then your conscious mind made the decision to take over that choice temporarily from your subconscious.  It will shortly pass the choices back to the subconscious as your awareness of your breathing fades.

When you become aware of a choice your conscious mind has the chance to pick the option that best aligns with your conscious goals, rather than your subconscious goals.  That means that you have a much better chance of achieving success in the area where you are aware.  Your conscious mind has the ability to prioritize goals much better than your subconscious… for instance, your subconscious will seldom, if ever, decide that something is more important than taking care of hunger.  Your conscious mind, on the other hand, can see that going to an interview during your lunch break, and thus missing lunch, will satisfy higher priorities, like getting a better job.

Your subconscious mind makes choices based on the history of how your conscious mind has chosen in situations similar to current circumstances.  Any time it doesn't have enough related decisions, it passes the choice on to your conscious mind by bringing it to your awareness.  It also brings things to your awareness that your conscious mind has taught it are important.

You teach your subconscious about what is important to you by giving it your conscious attention.  Whenever you think about something, you are giving it importance "points" in your subconscious.  That is, if you think about something in passing one time, it will barely register as important, and your subconscious will only bring things to your awareness concerning it if they are huge, and if it's shortly after the thought.  If you are constantly thinking about something, however, your subconscious will interpret that as you telling it that that something is very important, and it will pop even minor things relating to it into your awareness.

Your subconscious is not terribly smart… it's more like a computer.  It does what you tell it to do, but can't make intelligent decisions on its own.   What that ends up meaning is that it takes not only the content of your thoughts when determining what's important to you, but also the "polarity".  That is, if you think about something in a negative way, it will bring things that relate to that thing in a negative way to your attention.  If you think about it in a positive way, it will bring things that relate to that thing in a positive way to your attention.

One example of this is finances.  When you think about how little money you have, what things you don't have, and how you don't seem to be getting anywhere, that's what you're telling your subconscious is important.  That means that it will make you aware of things that relate to (and reflect) how little money you have, what things you don't have, etc.  If, on the other hand, what you think about when it comes to your finances is how you can invest time or money to bring added benefit, that is what your subconscious mind will bring into your awareness.

For instance, let's take a situation and look at it from each perspective.  Let's say a coworker tells you about his new fishing boat.  Someone who looks at what they don't have feels bad, or jealous/envious, that the other guy can afford to buy a boat when they can't.  Someone who looks for opportunities, on the other hand, might see it as a chance to make a friend and go fishing with them, or from a more financial side, might offer to buy the fish the coworker catches for a set rate, knowing that he can sell them for more than that.

That's the same situation, the coworker with the new boat, and two completely different ways of seeing it.  The same thing happens in other areas, too, like relationships.  If you think more about what's wrong with your relationship (or what's wrong with the other person), your subconscious is going to bring more of that to your attention.  If, on the other hand, you think about the positive aspects of the relationship, or positive attributes of the other person, your subconscious will make you aware of things related to that.  It's pretty obvious what a difference that can make in a relationship.

The good news is that you can intentionally choose to think (or not think) about a specific thing, or in a specific way.  That is, you can consciously choose to look at your relationship from a positive perspective, and start teaching your subconscious that THAT is what you want brought to your attention.  You can turn your thoughts away from what you lack any time they head that direction, and that will make that of less importance, thus bringing less of your lack to your attention.

By doing this, you are choosing what to be aware of.  That means that you make choices in that area consciously, thus also setting "the history of how your conscious mind has chosen in situations similar to current circumstances", and changing how your subconscious handles similar situations in the future when your conscious mind is too busy to deal with it. 

You can set the patterns of success consciously, and then your subconscious will automatically reinforce those patterns.  You can also set the patterns of failure, and your subconscious will automatically reinforce THOSE patterns.  The difference between the two is awareness… when you become aware, you can set the pattern of your choice.   That just leaves choosing what success means to you… and focusing your thoughts and awareness on that meaning.

Author

August 27th

Awareness, Energy, Goals, Patterns, Polarity, Relationships, Subconscious

Learn To See Your Own Rose-Colored Glasses Part 4

False Perception

Perception is what we are presented with once our internal filters are applied to reality.  If you've been with me so far, you have learned how filters are formed, and how to become aware of the filters you already have.  Now we've reached the most crucial part:  learning to create, replace, and discard your filters.

If you've put into practice some of the techniques from the previous article in the series, you now are aware of what at least some of your internal filters are.  Once you are aware of a filter, you can, at your choice, either replace or discard it.  You can also create new filters, but let's save that until the end, as dealing with filters that you already have is usually more urgent.

If you don't like a filter you already have, you can either replace it with another, or discard it entirely.  The first step to either result is to become aware not just of the filter's existence (obviously you've already done this or you wouldn't know that there is something you want to change), but to become aware of it's implementation.  That means becoming aware of every time it gets called, every time something passes through it.  The best technique I've found for this so far is some sort of reminder.  This could be putting a coin in a jar, tying a knot in a string, or one I've read about recently, switching a bracelet from one wrist to the other.  Each time you do one of these things, it's teaching your subconscious to alert your conscious mind when whatever you're trying to become aware of happens, in this case the usage of the filter you've chosen.

Now that you're aware of each usage, you can either consciously apply a different filter that you would like to replace your current one, or you can work on trying to perceive whatever it is without the filter at all.  For example, if you want to remove a filter of being scared of dogs, each time you see one, and feel that filter kicking in, you can do your reminder task and then make yourself stop and see that the dog is not a threat, perhaps even going so far as asking the owner if you can pet it, depending on how great your fear is and how far in the removal process you are.  If you want to replace a filter, say to go from seeing the world through a scarcity filter to seeing it through an abundance filter, you can do your reminder task, and then make a conscious effort to perceive the same situation through the new filter you want.  In the example of scarcity vs abundance, for instance, if you notice yourself looking at something as something that you can't have, make a conscious effort to change and see it as something that will take more effort to have, and evaluate it in the context of effort versus reward instead of simply seeing it as something you can't have.

Creating a new filter is very similar to replacing an old one (in fact, replacing one involves creating the replacement filter).  Basically, you need to become aware of situations where the filter you would like to acquire would apply, and then make a conscious effort to see that situation through the new filter.  There is another way to acquire new filters, though, that is easier in some ways, and more difficult in others.  The simplest way to acquire a new filter is to be around someone, or even better multiple people, who already have that filter.  This is even more effective, as I mentioned in part 2 of this series, if you consider that other person (or those other people) to be an authority in the part of life to which the filter applies.

Creating, discarding, and replacing filters is generally not an instant process, and the time it requires is directly related to how deep the filter is set (for discarding and replacing) or how deep you want the filter set (for creating).  Very shallow filters may take very little time or effort, while very deep filters may take weeks, months, years, or even decades.  On the positive side, while deep filters may take a long time to complete the process (whichever it is, creating, discarding, or replacing), there is generally noticeable progress along the way, so that you don't get too discouraged and give up.

Well, that covers the basics of internal filters and biases.  You now know enough to consciously change how you see the world, and through that, who you are.  If you put into practice what you've learned, you will find it becomes easier as you go.  You will also probably have insights that help to make it even easier.  This process of becoming who you choose to be is what I'm talking about with the slogan at the top – Intelligent Self Development. 

Articles In This Series:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Author

August 2nd

Awareness, Beliefs, Patterns, Subconscious

Learn To See Your Own Rose-Colored Glasses Part 3

False Perception

Perception… reality passed through internal filters, formed by one of three methods, and on into your conscious awareness.  Your perception of reality is all that really counts, when it comes to making choices.  There is no way to distinguish your current perception of reality from reality itself, but you CAN change your filters and then re-evaluate reality, possibly changing your perceptions.

Now you know that you have all these internal filters affecting every part of your life, because they affect how you see every part of your life.  And you even know how they are formed and how they can be either strengthened or weakened.  But how do you become aware of what filters you currently have in place?

The first, and easiest, method of becoming aware of your filters is to look at a situation from another perspective.  That is, imagine how someone else would see it.  If it's different than how you see it, you can look at the differences and begin to see your filters.  For instance, let's say you are looking for a house and you come across one that's in relatively good shape, but it's a bit run down.  Now you might see this as a sign that the previous owner didn't take care of it, and you'll want to look for another house.  But another person might look at it and see an opportunity to fix it and get the satisfaction of doing something worthwhile, as well as imprinting their own tastes.  The differences, such as one seeing it as a negative while the other sees it as a positive, shows you a little of the filters you're applying to that situation.

If you want to use this method to find your filters, then it is best to try to find as many different circumstances where you can apply the technique as possible.  Even situations that don't appear related can often be passing through the same filter.  Buying a car and buying a house, for example, both generally pass through a "value for the money" filter… although if the cost is insignificant enough compared to your income, it may NOT pass through that filter.  Your filters will become clearer (and more optional… a filter you're aware of has less power than one you apply subconsciously) as you try this process in more and more situations.

Another way of becoming more aware of your filters is to simply imagine a situation, and try to picture as many different possible ways to approach the situation as you're capable of doing.  This has the benefit of not being immediately involved in the situation, which removes some of the pressure, and gives you time to work out what your filters are in peace.  It also lets you try to find filters in situations that are not common, like buying a house… for most people, it's not something you do all that often, although some real estate investors do it regularly.

This second way has a disadvantage, though, in that it's more difficult to picture how you would REALLY react in a given situation than it is to determine from actually being in that situation.  This means that you can give yourself a false picture of your filters, although if you are honest with yourself, this shouldn't be too much of an issue, as it normally occurs when you try to deny something about yourself (like "I wouldn't lie" or "I would definitely give money to that cause" or that sort of thing… trying to convince yourself that you are a "better" person… what makes someone a "better" person is an article all to itself).  It's just something to be aware of, not something to particularly concern yourself with… just be honest, it's not like anyone else can see what you are imagining.

The third, and most difficult, way to find your filters is to find a quiet place where you can be alone (which, if you're a parent, can be difficult all by itself!) and choose a topic.  The topic can be as general or as specific as you wish.  When you have your topic selected, close your eyes (to eliminate visual distractions) and just let yourself consider your filters for the chosen area.  If you are really trying, at least a few of the filters closest to the surface should come to your attention.  After all, those filters belong to the subconscious, and the subconscious does the conscious mind's bidding when given direct, clear orders.

If you repeat this third technique over time, on the same topic, you are likely to find deeper and deeper filters coming up, some of which are likely deep enough that you had no idea they were there.  As in the previous techniques, there is some bleed from topic to topic, too.  You may have a "fear of failure" filter which very nearly everything processes through, or you may have a "fear of being alone" filter that situations dealing with those you are close to hurting you pass through.  Some filters, on the other hand, may be as specific as "mail that comes from Delaware has to do with banking/credit cards"… that one's from personal experience.

Regardless of how specific or general a filter is, one thing holds true:  A filter loses much of its power when you become aware of its presence.  That means that you will be much more free, much more able to see more of the possibilities in a situation as you become aware of more of your filters.  You will also find the ability to create, change, or discard filters grows with your general awareness of their existence, and obviously you cannot choose to change or discard a specific filter if you are not aware of it.

So, that's it for this article… a little more detail on creating, changing, and discarding filters in the next.

Articles In This Series:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Author

August 1st

Awareness, Beliefs, Patterns, Subconscious

Learn To See Your Own Rose-Colored Glasses Part 2

False Perceptions

Perception is how you understand reality after it has passed through all your internal filters.  You can change those filters, but first you must become aware of what they are, how they are formed and strengthened, and what role those around you play in this process.

So you want to change the filters through which life around you passes before coming into your conscious mind?  Be warned, the process is not instant, nor is it necessarily easy or without pain.  Some of the filters you have will be buried so deep that it can take years to change them significantly, let alone actually remove them, if that's what you want.  Even the shallow ones often take weeks to change or remove.  Be prepared, then, for this to take quite some time… but if you stick with it, it can change your life completely.

If you're still with me, then you're interested in positive change, in spite of the effort, and possibly pain, involved.  The first step in your process is to understand how filters are formed.  There are three major sources of filters:  people you associate with (they don't have to be friends, just people you are around frequently), your own experiences, and "third-party" information (things you read or see).  Each of these sources imparts filters of varying strengths and complexity, depending on factors within the category.

When you pick up filters from people you associate with, the strength and depth of the filter is strongly affected by the amount of time you spend with that person, and more lightly by how you feel about that person.  There is also a factor involving how much of an authority you consider the person, especially in regards to the specific area of the filter.  So a co-worker you don't like but spend hours with each day can affect you more deeply than an old friend that you see once a year, but a friend you see a few times a week may have more influence than a coworker you see five days a week, while someone that you see rarely, but consider an authority on the area of life in question can have a profound effect on your filters.  Parents and spouses tend to be the strongest influences of this type, with parents having an advantage due to the fact that there are no competing/conflicting filters when you spend so much time with them, and the fact that when you are young, you consider them to be an authority on almost everything.

You also build up filters from your own experiences as you live life.  If you have been bitten by dogs a few times, you will form a filter that looks for that type of behavior from at least the type of dog that bit you, if not dogs in general.  With this type of filter formation, the amount the event catches your attention, whether via mental involvement, emotions, or pain/pleasure, is the primary factor in how strong and deep the filter is, with repetition of the event (or of similar events) strengthening and deepening the filter, and conflicting events weakening it.  The strengthening effect of similar events is considerably stronger than the weakening effect of conflicting events, unless the conflicting event is of considerable significance.

Filters formed from third-party sources tend to be the weakest of the three types.  They generally have less "authority" than people you know, and certainly less than your own experience.  However, in areas that you don't have any personal experience or particular input from someone you know, such as when you're learning about a new hobby that you don't know anyone who shares, your filters will generally be formed from what you read about it.  Third-party sources can also extend and expand already existing filters, especially if they generally agree with your existing filters, just adding a bit more detail.

Once a filter is formed from one of these sources, it can also be strengthened by any of the above sources (it doesn't have to be the same one).  For instance, your parents may tell you to be wary of strangers, causing you to form a filter that causes you to be cautious when meeting someone new.  This can then be strengthened by personal experience, if a stranger does something to you that you don't like, or particularly if you have several bad experiences with strangers.  The filter can then be further strengthened by reading/listening/viewing the news and learning about random murders and kidnappings.

A filter can also be weakened by any of these sources, but it is much harder to weaken a filter than to strengthen it.  It is easier to accept reinforcement of your already held filters, opinions, and beliefs than it is to accept contradictory information.  This is true of all people, though noticeably stronger in some than in others, often referred to as being closed-minded or open-minded.

So now, in order to keep this post from getting ridiculously long, I will push how to become aware of your specific filters and how to change them to another post.

Articles In This Series:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Author

July 31st

Awareness, Beliefs, Patterns, Subconscious

Learn To See Your Own Rose-Colored Glasses

False Perceptions

Perception is your interpretation of reality, based on where you are standing in space and time, and processed through all of your filters and biases*.  Unfortunately, or actually perhaps fortunately, there is no way to avoid this, and there is no way to base your choices on reality.

You cannot, as a human being, consciously comprehend reality.  Instead, your  consciousness is presented with an interpretation of reality, filtered by your subconsciousness from the input received by all your senses.  This interpretation is what you must use to make your choices.  If you were standing directly in front of the building pictured above, you would be forced (assuming no prior knowledge) to make any choices based on it being three stories tall.  If you were to move to the side, however, your perception changes, and with it the basis for your decisions.

There is no way to avoid this.  You can only work with what your senses feed your subconscious, and out of that, only what it passes on to your conscious mind.  This is probably fortunate, as the sheer vastness of the amount of information contained by reality would likely overwhelm your conscious mind in seconds.  Unfortunately, however, it does mean that your choices may be based on a falsehood, as any bias you have is automatically inserted before you ever have a chance to consider anything else.

This doesn't mean that your subconscious mind rejects anything that doesn't match your bias, or that you can't perceive contrary information.  It simply means things are "colored" by your biases, beliefs, and other such filters.  That is, if you are "biased" against spiders, when you see one in the corner, you may see something dark and scary, and may even perceive it to be larger than it actually is.  On the other hand, if you have no such bias, you may see a harmless critter (or, with other biases, see a life worth carefully preserving, something to add to your bug collection, or something else entirely). 

Other things that you might not think of fall into this category of biases and filters, as well.  You can have a bias for or against financial opportunities… meaning that you either filter them out, or give them special attention.  Your taste in music, art, and humor are all biases as well.  All communication passes through your filters, which may be different between "groups" of people (like lawyers, doctors, politicians, preachers, or even as general as men vs women) as well as between individuals. 

For example, consider the phrase "I love you."  The source of the phrase makes a huge amount of difference in how you interpret it, as it passes through your filters for that individual and whatever classes you associate them with.  If your wife says it, it passes through filters associated with her, meaning you perceive it differently than if, say, a stranger said it to you.  With your wife, it might make you feel a little closer (or want to be closer, which is not the same), it might make you feel the love you have for her, or if you're having marital problems, it might make you think of those problems.  With a stranger, it's likely to creep you out, make you want to push them away (emotionally/mentally at the very least… depending on how close they are, it might make you want to do it physically, too), and bring all kinds of other negative things to mind, as well, although this depends greatly on the groups you associate that stranger with.  Think about the difference in how you would react if a beautiful woman said that to you, compared to an ugly woman, an effeminate appearing man, or a biker in full tattoos and leather.

Fortunately, your conscious mind IS capable of reviewing its filters and biases, and so you can change the way you perceive information from the world around you.  It's not always easy to do so, but you can do it.   You can choose to change, remove, or add filters, but first you have to learn to become aware of them first.  My next article will deal with how to do this, how to become aware, and from there how to choose which filters you want.

*  These filters and biases mentioned in the article are what I call patterns elsewhere on the site.  The speed and accuracy with which these filters are applied is what most people call intelligence.

Articles In This Series:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Author

July 30th

Awareness, Beliefs, Patterns, Subconscious