Breaking Free from your Reality

Your experiences of the past have helped to form what you are, today. For better or for worse, this is largely true. IF we allow ourselves to remain as we are, in our “bubble of reality” that we have created for ourselves from past experiences, this will remain true. Even if our past was highly successful, and we have reached all our goals, it is still a trap.

Life is new every day. To appreciate its newness we need to break free of this bubble from the past. Eckhart Tolle suggests that we do this when take on a new point of view: that of self-observation. This allows us to have a new perspective that includes the universe outside our own egoic mind (that had been built from the past.) Doing this puts us in the now, with its newness of the moment and its infinite possibilities of creation.

Thus we break free from the past, and free to fulfill the Purpose for which God put us on this earth.

What’s in Your Reality?

You create your own reality, your own portion of reality or “bubble” of reality (as we have been calling it), by the portion of reality to which you attend. Over the course of your life you have created, and continue to create it.

What is in your bubble of reality? What do you spend time thinking about, attending to, focusing your life on? The scriptures advise us: “Finally, brothers and sisters, keep your thoughts on whatever is right or deserves praise: things that are true, honorable, fair, pure, acceptable, or commendable.” (Philippians 4:8 God’s Word Translation [©1995])

We are responsible for our own thoughts. Nobody else is. Spend time observing your own thoughts. On those occasions when your thoughts turn away from the Good, put yourself back on track. On those occasions you are not empowered, ask God for His help, He will empower you.

Ask God into your bubble of reality. Let Him be the Power and the Light and the Love in your world. With God in your bubble of reality, all Good things are possible. Let your reality be filled with love.

Creating Your Reality

Is reality affected by positive thinking? Do we really create our own “bubble” of reality in which we live, work, sleep and play? In The Psychology of Positive Thinking we see:

“One aspect of thought about which we may be certain is that it is a process that occurs in the brain. Overwhelming scientific evidence points to this, and it is believed that not only thought but life itself ceases to exist for the individual in the absence of this brain activity. When this brain activity ceases to exist for an individual, we say that life ceases to exist for that individual. When life ceases to exist for an individual, we may say that reality ceases to exist for that individual. Therefore, the electrical brain activity that goes along with our thinking is in fact our experience of life and our reality! …we can say our thoughts do affect reality because in fact they are our reality.” (p21)

“Thinking, then, is our reality and we never stop to consider that it is really our own neural representations, our own map of reality that we in fact experience.” (p46) “But that is because our consciousness is our reality. We are floating merrily (or not so merrily!) down our own stream of consciousness.” (p72)

“Of course, there is a reality. Reality has always been there. Our senses—our ability to see, hear, touch and feel, smell, and taste—are our connection with the “outside world.” This outside world, reality itself, is composed of atoms and subatomic particles and waves of energy in something we understand as “space.” But what we experience is really just a slippery concept that starts at our fingertips and other sense gates.

What drives an even greater wedge between our thoughts and objective reality is what we do with reality’s input once it enters our ‘central processing unit’—our brain. Those sense inputs are added to and compared with previous indirect samplings of reality in our memory/data bank. Over the course of one’s life, this memory data bank becomes fuller and more fully established. As this occurs, new samplings of reality are further constrained to fit into the data bank until what is already in the data bank (our memories and thinking patterns) assumes a far greater importance than the new inputs from our
sense gates (reality).

As if this weren’t enough, the brain attends to only a tiny fraction of what the senses present it with in the first place. Our brain is limited in the number of sense inputs it can focus on at one time; it screens out 99 percent of what is presented to it. So we see here that right out of the starting gate, our brain is messing around with the input it gets from reality. As we gather experiences, we begin to confuse our interpretation of reality with reality itself. That is worthy of repeating: As we gather experiences, we begin to confuse our interpretation of reality with reality itself. And we try to change “the territory” (reality) when it would be far more effective to change our “map” (our thought programming) so that it corresponds to reality instead.” (p 24)

So the answer is yes, we do in this way create our own “bubble” of reality; it behooves us to take care of it, groom it and fill it with positive thoughts. Accentuate the positive. Eliminate the negative. And watch out for Mr. In Between!

The Bubble of Reality

Your “Bubble” of Reality

The previous blogs about the Neurology of Positive Thinking and about the movie “Madea goes to Jail” suggested that when we hold on to a grudge and fail to forgive others we suffer the consequences ourselves, as if we were in a prison of our own making. Our negative feelings precipitate in our own little corner of the world. Our world becomes negative. We become negative.

The positive corollary is much more appropriate to positive thinking: If we let positive feelings precipitate in our own little corner of the world, our world becomes positive. We become positive. When we forgive others and release our grudges we reap the benefits.

Reality is the proverbial glass half full of water. We have a choice. We can embrace, and surround ourselves in, the fullness of reality. We can fill our bubble of reality from the half that is full, with life, hope, mercy and love. Choose Life!

The Neurology of Positive Thinking

There are one or two hundred Billion neurons in your brain, interconnected in an infinite number of ways. This is the vast storehouse of everything that you have experienced in your life. Your consciousness resides here.

You interact with the outer world through your senses: information comes in to your brain via nerves connected to your sense organs. You filter out most of the information only allow what you focus on to register in your brain. This is where reality starts.

Your reality, then, is dependent upon what you focus on. If you focus on what is positive, your reality becomes positive.

The Lesson of Madea

The Law of Forgiving

The movie, Madea Goes to Jail, is a very funny movie. It has some action, some drama, and a plot that impossibly comes together at the end. But mostly it is a comedy. It is a little bit “slapstick”, but that’s OK because it isn’t really meant to be taken seriously, anyway.

But it has a message that is very serious. We ignore this message at our own peril. And we all ignore the message, and then we suffer as a consequence. The message is that if we don’t forgive others when they sin against us, we will suffer the consequence. (But NOT the person who wronged us in the first place!)

The plot of the story is about a pretty college girl, smart and with a promising future who gets abused during a party by members of the college football team. The girl, feeling betrayed by her boyfriend who put her in the situation to begin with and then left: quits school, turns to drugs and eventually prostitution and ends up in Jail; where she meets Madea.

The message is stated directly, by the street-wise prison chaplain and then echoed by Medea (just in case we didn’t get it the first time):

Fool, if you cain’t forgive others you are hurtin’ yourself. They- are out there. And you- are in Here, in prison!

The Scriptures insist that we should forgive others. Jesus taught his disciples to pray, asking that God “forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”

In The Psychology of Positive Thinking we find something similar:

“Dr. Michael Beckwith, on the Oprah Winfrey Show of February 15, 2007, that was discussing the book The Secret, had this to say about forgiveness: when you hold a grudge and are unwilling to forgive, it is like choosing to be a victim, over and over, of the wrong you felt was done to you. James Arthur Ray, another teacher of The Secret on the show, agreed: ‘Being unwilling to forgive is like drinking poison, expecting the other to die.’”

Positive Thinking Lesson Plan

Positive Thinking Lesson Plan

There is a parallel blog under construction, the Positive Thinking Lesson Plan Blog. As the positive thinking lessons are constructed they will be mirrored with discussion entries on this site. This blog is under construction, as we are all under construction. Your comments and suggestions are welcome. Your ideas will be integrated with mine which are but an integration of many others’ ideas in the first place.

Then let us begin, and at the beginning. The fundamental principle of positive thinking lies in knowing what direction is positive. Which way is up? The answer to that question lies in knowing two things:
• Where are you now?
• Where do you want to be?

We have each been put on this earth for a purpose that we can uniquely accomplish. Our journey pursuing that purpose, our life’s mission, begins with one step: a small first step. What is your direction?

Write it down. You can change it tomorrow. Let's get started Now.

Turn Stress into Strength

Turn Stress into Strength

As mentioned in the previous post, conflicting ideas in our mind produce stress. This occurs when there are two conflicting goals, or programs. If one goal program is more desirable there is no problem, but when we can’t decide between the two (or more) we experience stress. We feel powerless.

We need a Master Program that will resolve major conflicts when they occur. When we discover/decide upon our life’s purpose, conflicts are resolved before they can occur in favor of the program that is aligned with the Master Program. We are empowered.

Unifying Purpose, and Harmony of Mind

When we are "of two minds", we are conflicted. We are pulled in two different directions, whether it be between two positive goals, or by one goal that both attracts and repels us. This puts us in a quandary, and we experience Stress.

The problem is that we are pulled in two directions, and we are Stuck.

Our salvation comes when we discover our Purpose, and we act in accordance with it. We can resolve our conflicts in accordance with what we have chosen/discovered to be our Greater Purpose.

The Society of Mind

The Society of Mind

Marvin Minsky, in his book by the same title, suggests that our mind is not just a stimulus-response mind, but more like a Society of Mind. In his work on artificial intelligence, he develops a theory of agents within the brain, that working together as a whole (a society) produces the natural intelligence we humans possess. For more information see: http://web.media.mit.edu/~push/ExaminingSOM.html

The model of the mind presented in The Psychology of Positive Thinking similarly suggests that there are an infinite number of agents (neuron cell assemblies and cell assembly programs) that in themselves have no consciousness but together, as a Society, produce the effect that is our stream of consciousness, our mind.

What forms these agents, these neuron networks? The information we focus on through our senses. Thus it behooves us to attend to positive influences. As a man thinketh, so is he! (Proverbs 23:7)

The Power of Now, Purpose and Prayer

As we discussed in the previous post, we can become trapped in our past. Our stream of consciousness can become an instant replay of past life experiences, and we relate everything to the past. We begin to relive past painful experiences. We develop a negative outlook and focus on avoiding pain. We can become negative thinkers.

We become empowered when we raise our level of consciousness from the past to the present and future. Therein resides the power of positive thinking! There is no power to be had in the past; there is Power in the Present, in the Now. In the Present we are able to accomplish things. How do we get there?

There is Power in having Purpose. By finding a purpose that we wish to pursue, we focus on something positive, beyond our own self. We point ourselves toward the future, not the past. But not just a purpose-- a Purpose! Something that will draw us and keep us oriented forward over the long haul.

Finding a Purpose is an adventure in itself. This Purpose cannot be something within your grasp. It must be impossible at present. And BIG. Something outside your power, that will require a Higher Power to accomplish. Consult your Higher Power to discover your Higher Purpose.

There is Power in Prayer. Pray for guidance to discover this Higher Purpose. Ask God to reveal to you what His plan for you might be. And listen. Hopefully it will strike you as absurd for you to contemplate such a grand Purpose. That’s how you will know you are on the right Path.

A New Level of Consciousness

We have spent our life up to this point in time, creating the person we have become. We have likewise created the reality we find ourselves in. Our consciousness itself- our “egoic mind”- is largely dependant these experiences of the past. Our stream of consciousness (see previous entry about the 7 +/- 2 bits of information) is often lost in this past, becoming awake in the NOW only occasionally.

This power of NOW that Eckhart Tolle and others find so miraculous creates in us a New Level of Consciousness. We become empowered because we are no longer trapped in the dead past. Here are some suggestions for ways to break free from the past:
• Prayer
• Meditation
• Self-observation/self awareness
• Goal Setting

Perhaps you have other ways of breaking free. Please add them to the list.

In the Zone, and out of the the Thinking Rut

Current neuro-science tells us that there are more than a hundred billion neurons in the brain, and that each of them is interconnected with many thousands of fellow neurons. These form networks- we have an unlimited, virtually infinite number of neuron networks in our brain. See the following article by Robert Stufflebeam:

http://www.mind.ilstu.edu/curriculum/neurons_intro/neurons_intro.php

The model of the mind, proposed in The Psychology of Positive Thinking, proposes that these networks are programs that store the vast amount of information that has been presented to us by our senses over our life time.

What is much more limited, however, is the amount of information we can store in immediate memory at one time; in our stream of consciousness, if you will. George A. Miller discovered this to be The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two bits of information. He proposed this in his now classic article by the same name in The Psychological Review.

Thus we have available a nearly infinite amount of information- this would correspond to all our memories, all our experiences to this point in time. The Complete Past exists in our mind in the form of these programs. What a great resource this is! Billions upon billions of bits of information! But it is also a trap. Remember, we are limited to about 7 “bits” of information in immediate consciousness to go exploring our infinitely vast stored information. We can also lose ourselves in it!

This may happen all too often, and we get trapped in the past. Eckhart Tolle calls this the Egoic Mind. And while this could be a pleasant, or an unpleasant past, we are still trapped in it. Tolle, Robert Anthony, and many mental health professionals suggest self observation, and self awareness as ways to come out of this imprisonment trance we find ourselves in. Another way to escape this trap is meditation. Meditation helps quiet the “mind chatter” when our thought processes take us echoing around the vast programming storehouse of our “egoic” mind.

Oprah, who has joined forces with Eckhart and other spiritual leaders, has posted on her website a link to a meditation exercise called the “ten minute mind spa.” A link to that website is also posted here. This exercise not only frees us from being trapped in the past, but also helps develop self-awareness and brings us into the Now, and in the zone.

Anthony, Tolle, NLP, Einstein and the Observer Effect

In The Psychology of Positive Thinking the beneficial- even miraculous- effect of the process of self observation is emphasized. The contributions of Ouspensky, Robert Anthony, Eckhart Tolle, NLP, and Albert Einstein are all part of this discussion, found on page 73.

In his book In Search of the Miraculous, Ouspensky describes self-observation as the miraculous way to self knowledge, a pre-requisite for self improvement and growth. He described as Miraculous” his own successful encounter with self-observation.

Dr. Robert Anthony (Beyond Positive Thinking) prescribes self-observation as the first lesson in his 6 day Million Dollar Secret course (http://www.abundance-and-happiness.com/the-million-dollar-secret.html). Once you objectively observe yourself you can start the process of changing yourself- but not before.

Eckhart Tolle suggests that you can escape your pre-programmed, “egoic mind” thinking by becoming aware of it. Self-observation saves you from the constant mental instant replay of the past, and empowers you in the Now.

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) therapeutic techniques often include self- observation as a fundamental method for disassociating from painful memories from the past (particularly traumatic events) in order to deal resourcefully in the present.

Einstein said that no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. When we practice self-observation, we enter a new level of consciousness, from which we can deal resourcefully, and solve, our problems!

In Physics there is a well recognized phenomenon called the Observer Effect. This refers to changes made on the on the object being observed by the instrument that is doing the observing. This Observer Effect is alive and well, when we observe our own selves.

Positive Thinking in The Power of Now

Eckhart Tolle tells us of the miraculous Power of Now, in his book by the same name. In A New Earth Eckhart shows how we are caught in the stranglehold of the past by the egoic mind and the pain body. As we become self-aware and recognize these negative influences we escape the past and become empowered in the Now.

The Psychology of Positive Thinking examines these concepts from the point of view of the model of the mind that it presents. We can see that Eckhart not only makes good spiritual sense, but also makes good scientific, logical, and philosophical sense. The Power of Now, is in many ways, the Power of Positive Thginking.