The Psychology of Positive Thinking by Ed Nystrom

forming your bubble of reality

2010-09-04T11:43:00.003-04:00

How your bubble of reality is formed:

All of your experiences since birth have contributed to the formation of this bubble. These experiences dictated the formation of the various neuron networks/ pathways in your brain. These are the programs that form in the data bank of your brain, your computer. These programs create the artificial bubble, that contains your beliefs about yourself and the world you live in.

As previously mentioned, at first you exercised little choice in the formation of this bubble, experiences just happened to you. Gradually you took control of your own life, and started to assume control for which experiences you were part of. This program creation has continued to this day, and it has filled us with a world of knowledge and experience. This is a vast storehouse of resources we can use to our advantage. Yet too often we dredge up negative painful memories from the past to our detriment. We tend to act as if this past programming is reality itself, but it isn’t. It is all part of the limited past, which is also full of nonsense from our childhood, and the biases of our upbringing.

So you have this Super Computer- with infinite potential. Your mind has no limits. But if you are limited by your past experiences to instantly replay what has gone on before, you are re-living your past- trapped in your “bubble” of the past! Even if your past was very pleasant, it can still be a trap! In a way, your mind has been taken over by past programming!

This does sound like a “Catch-22”: your past has created your present mind-set, and your mind-set programming limits you to the past! How do we get around this? How do we guide our ship, our bubble of reality, to create a world that is more to our purpose, more to our liking? We will look at some “guiding principles” designed to do that, to expand our world in the direction of our own choosing.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:32

Guiding principle number one is to always seek the truth. For us to navigate our bubble of reality through the sea of reality, we need to be based in truth. The closer we come to a one-to-one correspondence between out bubble of reality and reality itself, the more we are empowered to navigate accurately. When we are in sync with reality, we are “in the zone”, and we are unstoppable!

EXPANDING YOUR BUBBLE OF REALITY WITH POSITIVE THINKING

We get out of this catch-22 trap (maybe we should call it “trap-22”) the same way we got into it! We can use the same programming principles that got us into our present state to propel us into a new future state: but this time on purpose, rather than by chance, or accident. We can become more selective and focus on what we want. We can purposefully focus on the positive.

The Power of Positive Thinking

More than fifty years ago, Norman Vincent Peale wrote his classic book on positive thinking. And it is as true today as it was then. You may be thinking, “Here we go again, this is simply saying we should ‘think positive.’” And yes, thinking positive is the key to escaping from the “trap-22”. By focusing on the positive, the things that we really want, we escape from our trap. But there is nothing “simple” about it. We need to find a way to do that!

“Think good thoughts, Peter!”
said Wendy to Peter Pan. Wendy’s advice helped Peter to fly again, at a time when Peter Pan had been thinking negatively.

The idea is to get new input into our mental programming. At one point I got hold of Norman Vincent Peale’s book The Power of Positive Thinking. And I was hooked! I became a positive thinking junkie! There followed a period in my life when I read everything I could get hold of on positive thinking, and motivational literature. I attended seminars, listened to tapes, took courses… and that did help a lot.

Chief among these was a seminar entitled “The Magical Formula for Dynamic Living”, led by Skip Ross. Skip taught that we bear a great responsibility for directing our own thoughts. His “principles of success” deal with maintaining thoughts that are positive and eliminating sources of negative thoughts. Skip says that we should screen out all sources of negative inputs whether they are on the radio or TV, in books, in the news, in the papers even negative friends!

The idea is that if we fill our data bank with positive thoughts, we will be positive. Most importantly we should think positively about others. If we say and think positive, loving things about each other, that goes into our “bubble of reality”. So fill your “bubble of reality”, your little corner of the world with positive, loving thoughts! The idea is to focus on what is good in life.
The scriptures give the same advice:

• Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8)

A mind instruction manual

2010-08-27T19:05:00.003-04:00

A mind instruction manual

What a fantastic machine! If only we could control our infinitely powerful brain! But our brain didn’t come with an “Owner’s Manual,” and sometimes we struggle and feel very limited, instead of limitless. So our mind is this super computer, with software and hardware, even an operating system. Our physical brain- the hundred billion-plus neurons with all their interconnections- is the hardware. The software consists of the innumerable ways that these neurons become interconnected over time. These range from simple neuron-to-neuron connections to programs which are highly complex.

The programming has been provided automatically by our experience of life, or more importantly as we shall see; the experiences that we attend to.

These interconnections are the way we process and store information, and we have an infinite capacity for these connections. Some estimate that we have more ways that our neurons can interconnect- than there are atoms in the known universe! So our brain’s computing power, and data storage capability is unlimited. You are a “computer” with unlimited knowledge and blazing fast speed!

Actually, you are two such computers. You have a left and right hemisphere. They are interconnected and can operate independently or in concert. One hemisphere (usually the left hemisphere) is very rational, and literal. It has major responsibility for receiving visual and auditory signals, and processing and comparing them. It houses the speech and language abilities (in adults.) The right hemisphere is the intuitive, creative, feeling side.

When both sides are engaged and operating together you are awesome, indeed. Here is where you can change reality. Here, miracles can occur. You are like God Himself—except that of course, you’re not! It is said in the bible that “we are created in the image of God” and that we are children of God. And like god, you have created a world: your own unique bubble of reality. Let’s look at this reality we create: let’s begin our journey into this reality.

I think, therefore I am- Rene Descartes

This is our “stepping off” place. Within our “bubble of reality”, what can we be sure is real? The philosopher Descartes was looking for such a firm foothold when he came to this point after having doubted that anything else existed. As he could not doubt that he doubted, he concluded that he was real; he existed, because he was thinking these doubts. A bit convoluted, but for our purposes an excellent conclusion: Reality exists in our own thoughts.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? – attributed to Philosopher George Berkeley
Even more convoluted, but also worthy of mention is this question of whether anything exists at all, if there is no one there to observe it? This ages-old riddle also supports the idea that Reality exists in our thoughts. For something to be real, it must be perceived, it must be Observed. We will come back to this point later.

The more you know about a particle's position, the less you can know about its (mass.)—Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle

Science weighs in on this issue as well. When we take an extremely small particle of matter we cannot know both its location in space and its mass. The act of observing (measuring) the particle interferes with the possibility of determining what it is (consists of). This observation effect, as David Darling explains it in Equations of Eternity is fundamentally a creative process:

Equations of Eternity

In a sense, this is genesis at work, here and now: the making of the real from the unreal, the breathing of fire into the equations that underpin the world.

It is remarkable that such a deep metaphysical insight should spring from the heart of what is now mainstream scientific theory. But from what we have already seen of the relationship between human consciousness and the external world, we should not have been unprepared for it. Indeed, it comes as a powerful corroboration of what we have been suggesting all along: that the conscious mind is crucially involved in establishing what is real. (emphasis added) p 103
While we rightfully remain skeptical of this metaphysical, even “scientific” thinking, there does appear the possibility that we are far more involved in the creation process of reality than simply being passive observers. Yes we can change reality to a far greater extent than we ever thought possible, even to the point of being part of the creation process itself, when we Observe reality.

The World We Create: our own personal “bubble” of reality

While reality-- the real world that we only perceive through our senses-- is limitless, our own portion that we experience is limited: we have our own personal “bubble” of reality; something that we have created over the course of our lifetime, and continue to create. While our potential is limitless, for practical purposes we limit ourselves to the part of the “bubble” of reality that is our past. While we have room for an infinite amount of information, we are for practical purposes limited to the information that we attend to. This is clue #1; we have created a reality within ourselves by what we attend to, and we attend “7 bits” of information at a time:

Miller article
The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information by George A. Miller

• George A Miller discovered this “limit” about fifty years ago. In a classic article on how the brain processes information, The Magical Number 7, +/- 2, he relates how we can hold up to about 7 “bits” of information in our immediate memory. That would appear to be the limit of what we can focus on, and those seven “bits” that we focus on is what goes into our “bubble of reality”!

This focus is critically important. It is the portal into our reality. It is the NOW of our experience. And this is the critical issue in positive versus negative thinking. It is in what we attend to that we become more positive or negative. This is the magical ingredient for living a positive, creative live, or the demonic ingredient in living a negative, destructive life.

A Model of the Mind

2010-08-19T23:20:00.003-04:00

This model is the product of a lifetime of interest and study of how the brain and the mind work. In college and grad school I studied Psychology. During that time Dr. Harry Bahrick, professor of Experimental Psychology at Ohio Wesleyan University, was pioneering research in information theory. Man is an information processing machine. When we are thinking, we are processing information. This may seem like a simple statement, but really, it is astounding. How is it that we think??? And how does this happen in our small brain, about the size of a grapefruit?!!

Visual of grapefruit

By a happy timely coincidence I came across a theory by Donald Hebb, a Canadian neuroscientist, that accounts for how the brain does this information processing. He proposed that our experiences are recorded in our brain in the form of neuron cell assemblies (which are networks of neurons.) This happens as a result of information being transmitted (from the senses) to the neurons in our brain. Basically his theory was that when one neuron transmits an impulse to another neuron a linkage is strengthened at their connection. So that the next time the first neuron is active it will more likely transmit its impulse to the next neuron. Interestingly, a similar process occurs in the programming of computers.

Visual cell assembly

This becomes very important when we consider what happens in our brain when we think the same thoughts over and over again. Those linkages become wired in. We will come back to this topic later. When these “linkages” occur we are forming pathways in our computer/brain. These pathways are our programs. The “data bank” in our computer/brain consists of the way these neurons have become linked to each other.

Visual of cell assembly progam

When we see a “tree” for instance, the visual input from the tree activates those nerves that were previously established as “tree” from our previous experiences of “tree”. The electrical/chemical activity that occurs as the neurons activate each other is our thoughts. Hebb proposed the idea of a “reverberating circuit”: as these neurons activate and re-activate each other we can hold a thought for more than just a moment. These reverberating circuits are the key to how we can focus on an idea, and how a stream of these ideas become our stream of consciousness. This is how our knowledge, memory and experiences are stored. This is how we think!

Visual cell assembly reverberating circuit

This was the beginning of the computer age, and the combination of information theory with Hebb’s theory made for a neat psychology major thesis about the mind: it works like a computer! Subsequent discoveries have further confirmed Hebb’s early ideas, and I integrated them into my research. Neurons do indeed change at their interconnections when they transmit impulses. Programming does take place in our brains.

Yet it seems like we have a whole universe of these thoughts and ideas. If these are programs, how can we carry them all in our brain? How can there be enough room for all these programs?

Actually, we really have two brains, interconnected, and the size of our brain is deceiving. Current estimates are that each hemisphere of our brain contains fifty to a hundred billion neurons. Some years ago, while writing The Psychology of Positive Thinking, I wrote:

• Estimates of the number of neurons in the brain are in the range of twelve to fifteen billion and more.** If we were to represent each neuron in the brain by a light bulb (which may be either “off” or “on”) taking up one cubic foot of space, it would take a room a mile long, a mile wide, and five hundred feet high to contain it! If we then added hook-ups between these lights as they occur between the neurons, the various light patterns that could be displayed (possible combinations of “turned on” lights, or cell assemblies) would be equal to the number 7, followed by 14 million zeros!!!

• Seven, followed by 14 million zeros… that is a very impressive number! I asked my daughter how big she thought that number was. She was in second grade at the time, and starting to learn some math concepts. She thought a minute, perplexed, and then seemed to brighten as she answered my question with another question: “Oh, Daddy! Is that how much infinity is?” Maybe so.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**that observation was made years ago. It was actually quite an underestimation. Today scientists believe that there are over a hundred billion neurons present in the brain, and each one of those neurons has between five and a hundred thousand interconnections with other neurons.

This is a truly fantastic number. We can call this number infinity! And we all have this potential Mind Power! With this Higher Power in our computer- we can account for the universe of experiences that we have in our lifetime. This is the data bank that has formed, and continues to form as you experience life. This data bank has made you become the person who you are today. All our experiences from our entire lives, everything we believe to be true about the universe and our place in it are stored there.
Visual- mind instruction manual picture of “How to” manual

What a fantastic machine! If only we could control our infinitely powerful brain! But our brain didn’t come with an “Owner’s Manual,” and sometimes we struggle and feel very limited, instead of limitless. So our mind is this super computer, with software and hardware, even an operating system. Our physical brain- the hundred billion-plus neurons with all their interconnections- is the hardware. The software consists of the innumerable ways that these neurons become interconnected over time. These range from simple neuron-to-neuron connections to programs which are highly complex.

Choice- Getting off autopilot, taking over the controls

2010-08-16T22:46:00.003-04:00

As adults we choose what we focus on in our environment and how to react to it; but most of that “choosing” is simply based on what has happened in the past. And herein lies a most important point:

If the choices we make today are based on the sum total of the experiences we have experienced yesterday, plus the equipment we were born with, then we are simply on Automatic Pilot. We are simply the response, in a stimulus-response reality.

• Now there is a choice to make. We can deliberately take control of this process. We have been guilty of being on this “Automatic Pilot” existence far too much of the time.

It is time to take over the controls, to take over your own thoughts by purposefully focusing your thoughts. This takes them off Automatic Pilot and puts you at the controls.

There are some guiding principles that govern how we pilot our bubble of reality through the sea of life. It takes more than a super-powered engine and unlimited computational power to get anywhere. We begin our journey by looking at these, and at the super- powered engine that propels us.
We will examine ways we can overcome the bad programs that cripple our computer: fears, pain, inhibitions and false beliefs; even past successes and pleasures can do us in. We will learn how to take over from the autopilot, trim ship and find guidance and help on our journey through the land of Reality. Welcome aboard!

First let us “look under the hood” at this powerful engine that will pilot us through this Land of reality as we go off of “autopilot”.

We will look at a model of the Mind, as it is presented in The Psychology of Positive Thinking, in order to help understand how the mind works.
Visual of book

You Can Change Reality.

2010-08-03T22:51:00.003-04:00

You Can Change Reality.

The following is an exerpt from The Mind Instruction Manual, soon to be published as another blog.

“… you shall say to this mountain, move, and it shall move; and nothing shall be impossible unto you” Matthew 17:20

The purpose of this Mind Instruction Manual is to show you how you can change the reality that you find yourself in. You can change it with positive, purpose-filled thinking and action. Part of the change will be in you, in your perception of reality, and part of the change will be in realty itself. This is something that you are already doing! In point of fact, you cannot not change reality. Every choice you make, everything you do, is already changing reality. Now let’s do it on purpose, and get the reality that we really want, rather than the reality that “just happens”.

First we will consider the questions “What is reality?” and “How do we relate to Reality?” Further we will consider how it is that we can grasp such a concept in the first place. Reality is something that is infinite, eternal and ever changing. Finally we will consider how we can change it, if we should and in which direction. You are the Captain of your own ship Reality. You have the tools, God has given you all the tools necessary, to guide your Reality ship where you Will.

You are made in “the image of God” and “a little lower than the angels”, as it says in the scriptures. You are well equipped to steer your ship. You have a computer, your brain, that has more than a hundred billion nerve cells, each hooked up to about fifty thousand other nerve cells. The number of circuits that this produces is infinite. This number is greater than all the atoms in the known universe. You have a super-power engine. Yes, you can steer your ship and chart your course to the reality that you choose.

First we will look at how our computer interacts with reality. This computer, our brain, has been running on, processing, data input from our interaction with the environment about us: our experiences since birth. This enormous amount of information is the reality of your life. It is your bubble of reality. It contains all the information and resources necessary to accomplish anything; “and nothing shall be impossible unto you”.

Of course it is not reality itself. Reality itself is something out there that is only experienced by you through your senses. Furthermore, the meaning of that experience is dependent on the previous experiences you have had in similar situations and the way you interpreted them. These experiences could have been accompanied by pleasure or pain, stress or stress reduction, joy or sorrow, etc. When those experiences were logged into your computer they were logged together with that positive, or negative, emotion. And you got stuck with them!

All of that data, from your entire lifetime of experiences, has programmed your computer. This is your “bubble of reality.” These data have formed all your likes, dislikes, memories, beliefs, superstitions, fears, joys, expectations. They have, in fact, made you you. All this data has been input into your super computer. Good bad or indifferent data, for better or for worse, has created this Bubble of reality which is you. Much of that data was erroneous; accidents happen; friends, even parents input wrong data: “you are such a klutz!”, “you are always late!”, “my child is so shy!” These accidents and words are data that get fed straight into your computer, and into your bubble of reality.

Initially you had little control over this data collection. Things just happened to you (good, bad, and indifferent) and you experienced and attended to them. As a newborn you were completely at the mercy of others. Gradually you gained some control of this process, and took part in it by focusing on different parts of your environment, approaching some areas and avoiding others. As adults we have gained complete control of this selection process, or at least like to think we do. You now choose what to focus on, and the forming process of your bubble of reality goes on.

Stay tuned for more

Breaking Free from your Reality

2009-05-19T11:33:00.004-04:00

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?

2009-04-14T13:09:00.004-04:00

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

2009-03-29T10:58:00.002-04:00

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

2009-03-16T11:41:00.001-04:00

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

2009-03-14T23:12:00.001-04:00

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

2009-03-10T17:43:00.007-04:00

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

2009-03-05T23:48:00.003-05:00

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

2009-02-26T15:08:00.004-05:00

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

2009-02-25T18:30:00.003-05:00

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

2009-02-23T12:54:00.004-05:00

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

2009-02-14T23:00:00.004-05:00

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

2009-02-11T11:03:00.002-05:00

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

2009-02-05T12:52:00.008-05:00

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

2009-01-29T00:21:00.001-05:00

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

2009-01-25T21:41:00.004-05:00

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.