About the Fear of Flying - The Psychology of Fear
Fear is like a self-replicating computer virus. It needs only to start for it to develop a momentum of its own. It is difficult for anyone suffering from a fear to examine it objectively because the very process of examining it will change it, and in all probability change it for the worse. Our fears control many of our conscious and unconscious thoughts and a fear will gather information to support itself, while at the same time prevent us from collecting information to dislodge or deny it.
The problem is to break the cycle of fear. At the start of overcoming our fear, we are vulnerable in the way that an alcoholic is to drink or a reformed smoker to a cigarette. They have to resist the thoughts of temptation and you have to resist the thoughts of being vulnerable and fearful. And you are vulnerable because a fear will attack at unguarded moments and enter your mind without your realising it.
An unguarded comment from a friend, an ill-informed comment in the press, a so-called television documentary, constantly and gently filling your mind with doubts. By contrast, a drinker or smoker will at least be aware of the temptations before him or her and succumbing to the temptation will be obvious.
Suffering from a fear of flying means that we pick up negative information subliminally and therefore not be able to reject it. Much of the information that causes and maintains a fear is lodged in the part of our memory (the long-term memory) to which we have no obvious access but paradoxically is easily retrieved.
Even our conscious and positive thoughts that might otherwise protect us from our fear are influenced by these unconsciously held pieces of information.
This is why it is so difficult to dislodge fearful thoughts. We can rationalize and write down all the reasons that our fear is illogical but still something inside nags us and says don’t believe it and this of course reinforces the fear. So the bad thoughts make it worse and the unsuccessful good thoughts make it worse by their failures. Being fearful is easy, fighting the fear is harder. Thats why its easy for the fear to take over.
Overcoming a fear of flying involves making decisions that have serious and costly implications. A family waiting for one family member to make their mind up whether to travel or not puts enormous pressure on that person quite unintentionally. And the effects and influences of that occasion add to the pressures of the next. Someone with a fear of spiders or heights doesnt usually carry the responsibility of a whole family’s happiness. Nor does it have the prospect of considerable financial penalties…
To introduce hard facts like statistics into the process puts even more pressure on to that person. This in turn aggravates the situation and puts more negative thoughts into the long term memory, but this is typically the families/friends/partners only avenue of encouragement. The downward spiral can go out of control easily. The task might seem hopeless but its not. To restructure the information so that it is allocated to another part of the brain is what many therapies do, whether its by some form of temporary self deception or by a structured approach. However, it needs to be done at a time of no pressure not at the airport or in the run up to travelling. So you need to start your strategy now. Its likely to take longer than you expect but the upside is that itll be more successful than you believe. Be confident that you will succeed.
And smiling when you think of your fears will have a very beneficial effect. Try it.
Having spent 27 years as a BA Pilot I became the youngest person in the UK to hold a flying instructors licence and became the youngest person to be the Chief Instructor of a CAA approved flying school. If you have a fear of flying check out http://www.flyingwithoutfear.com, for help and resources.
A Look at the Psychological Stages of Divorce and Your Children
Psychologists recognize three major stages that families go through when they divorce, with each stage having its pitfalls and opportunities. “Opportunities” may seem like an odd choice of word considering the emotional pain that divorce inevitably brings, yet from a purely developmental point of view, any challenge in life can spur emotional growth.
The three stages include the Crisis Stage, lasting up to three months; the Reorganization Stage, which lasts up to two years after the divorce; and the Adjustment Stage, lasting from two to five years.
If you’ve gone through a divorce, or you know someone who has, you will know that “crisis” aptly describes the initial reaction to divorce. It is a period of extreme emotions for the couple, typically characterized by swings between anger and depression. Children are not usually as emotionally reactive as their parents are to an impending separation or divorce. They may be very upset at first hearing the news, but shortly thereafter they may be eerily calm.
Younger children don’t really understand all that a divorce implies. It is an abstract concept, like death, and they may choose not to think about it. Even older children and adolescents may initially react with a surprising amount of composure. Most children and teens have much better psychological defenses than parents give them credit for, and they will typically rally these defenses at a time of crisis.
Children of all ages, however, are more reactive in this initial stage when their parents have emotional difficulties. They are not used to seeing their parents this upset, and it can be frightening for them. Although most children will be able to continue their lives with a minimum of difficulty, their ability to handle prolonged stress is fragile, and it depends on continued support from their parents. If this support is not forthcoming, they may soon become emotionally vulnerable, with problems ensuing. The most significant danger of this stage is what psychologists refer to as “diminished parental capacity.” Children need their parents to protect them, guide them, and support them throughout their developing years, but when parents are preoccupied with their own pain and suffering, children can suffer as well.
The second stage of a divorce, the Reorganization Stage, generally begins three months after the initial separation and lasts from twelve to twenty-four months. It should be characterized by the beginning of a return to normalcy for both children and their parents. Custody arrangements should become consistent and predictable. As children adjust to the changes in their lives, they can begin to explore their feelings and conflicts about what has happened. In this stage, parents should strive to stabilize their lives so that their children will feel as secure and confident as they did before the divorce. This is also a period when many parents seek help. Now that the crisis is over, parents may turn to friends, a support group, or a professional counselor.
A common mistake that parents make in this stage is to turn to their children to fill an emotional void. Sometimes it is subtle, like when a mother finds herself confiding to her son about the details of her problems at work, as if that child were another adult. Sometimes it is more obvious, like when a father has his daughter dress up for a Saturday-night “date,” and they go to a high-priced restaurant as if they were a couple. It is not the job of children to cheer up their parents or to be a companion. When I hear a parent say, “Oh, my child is my best friend,” I know a problem exists.
It is also not unusual in this stage for parents to seek their children as allies against the ex-spouse. Since anger and hostility are often still present, some parents make the mistake of asking their older children and teens to choose sides. One ten-year-old I treated said that her mother “grilled” her about every visit to her father’s new apartment. This mother would ask detailed questions about the arrangement of the father’s furniture, what he served for each meal, and whom he was dating. The daughter said that her mother made her feel like a spy.
The third stage of divorce, the Adjustment Stage, might not actually start until two years after the initial separation, sometimes even later than that. You know you are in this stage when your life feels “normal.” Although most parents and children report that they never feel exactly the same after a divorce, by this time there should be a sense of calm and predictability to a child’s day-to-day life, permitting her to deal with developmental issues that have nothing to do with the divorce. Yet even this stage can present problems for parents, problems that get passed on to their children.
Frequently parents in this stage don’t “let go” of the ex-spouse. Hostility isn’t usually as intense as it was, but the bitterness and resentment still colors the family life. A few years ago I worked with a man who had been divorced from his wife for over ten years. His two children were in their mid-teens. Both he and his ex-wife were remarried. Yet he talked about problems with his ex-wife in every conversation we had. They wrote venomous letters back and forth on a weekly basis. Both still retained lawyers who contested the terms of the divorce. I could only imagine the effect all this had on his children.
While the divorce process is considered over when life gets back to normal and the divorce issues cease to be a daily concern, children of divorce live with it as an important part of their identity for the rest of their lives. This is critical for parents to understand. No matter what age the child was when the divorce occurredinfancy through adolescence-the event is part of a child’s history.
In a “successful” divorce children see their parents as having made a mistake but having had the courage to correct it. As adults they learn that we all make mistakes, but when we deal with them well, they are certainly forgivable. When children develop understanding and forgiveness as they grow, the effects of the divorce are usually of a limited nature. But a difficult divorce that has caused unresolved pain for parents or their children can have a powerful effect on their futures. Children grow up feeling that something “bad” happened when they were young. The divorce is never fully accepted and understood, and instead it remains an unhappy filter through which all future relationships are viewed.
Of course, any divorce will bring some pain and sadness, but it need not be a major influence on your child’s development or your own.
Angela Abbette is an enthusiastic writer for http://www.hitkingdom.com and is an avid user of the Nutritional Health information …. http://www.upublish.info/Category/Nutrition/102 …. found at uPublish.info
Are You Arguing With Your Child?
“Defiant Child?” trumpets the half-page ad in my weekend newspaper’vs magazine section, offering help to change your kid’s attitude and take back control of your family.
I had a defiant child once. I overheard her having a telephone conversation with her best friend. It went something like this: “When they say ‘no’, you should say ‘why not?’ When they tell you, you should say, ‘that’s not a good reason.’”
Many parents believe that the best way to teach children to be successful is to teach them to obey. Anything less than that is seen as a serious problem, and leads to taking steps to control such a “defiant child.” The child gets angry and either escalates the fight or caves in to the control and the anger goes underground.
Other parents feel completely helpless in the face of a child’s opposition. These parents are the ones who cave in after making only a half-hearted, ineffective stab at controlling their rebellious youngster. These kids keep pushing, secretly hoping for the relief of boundaries to keep them safe, while vehemently protesting any attempt to impose limits on their behavior.
I had been leaning in the over-control direction until I learned a better way. My daughter’s anger had turned into sweetly agreeing to do whatever she was told to do and then doing absolutely nothing about keeping her agreement. And driving me crazy!
The important secret I learned was to teach her how to argue with me. The telephone conversation was her simply passing this information along to her friend (in a somewhat modified form). Fortunately, we all survived and she now has children of her own.
What too few parents realize is that all healthy school-age children are sometimes rebellious and oppositional - for a very important developmental reason. They need to learn to think for themselves in order to learn to take responsibility for themselves as they mature.
Believe it or not, arguing is the best method to learn thinking skills. No, not repeating the same “Why not?” “Because I said so!” scenario. You need to model explaining the reasons for your position and help your child explain the reasons why she or he wants a different outcome.
This can be a challenge for a mom or dad who avoids confrontation or negotiation because s/he has never had the opportunity to learn or practice this kind of argument. You can learn, though: just expand the directions my daughter was giving to her friend.
Instead of insisting that your child follow your rule without thinking about it, help him or her to understand why you think the rule is important. LISTEN to your child’s counter-argument. Ask questions about it. Take time to talk about it. Imagine possible outcomes by asking “What if” questions.
Be willing to change your position if your child’s argument is convincing, and if health and/or safety aren’t at risk. And be willing to take a stand and insist that your child do it your way if you still feel strongly about it.
The process of having the argument is more important than the outcome.
Helping kids learn this skill before they reach adolescence increases the odds that they’ll think about what their friends are pressuring them to do. When they practice thinking about the outcome of their choices now, they are better prepared to make healthy decisions for themselves later.
Laurie Weiss, Ph.D., is a Master Certified Coach, relationship expert, parenting consultant and author. Claim your complimentary relationship building tips at http://www.BeingHappyBook.comEmail
feedback@laurieweiss.com
Understanding your fear - About Stress
Stress and the effects of stress are all part of modern life, however sometimes we confuse being busy with being stressed. Sometimes there isn’t enough time in the day to complete the routine tasks of life and we have to prioritize what we do in both work and our domestic lives. When we perform minor tasks at the expense of the more important ones we get an increasing sense of urgency and inability to do them. Our mind tells us that we have done the wrong things. Stress however is not caused by doing the wrong things; stress is caused by our perception of the time available to do the things we have to do.
A definition used for pilots in their training regarding stress is as follows;
Stress is the difference between the perceived task and our perceived ability to perform the task.
You will see that this definition does not include any reference to the importance of what we do.
For instance the reason that traffic jams are so stressful to some people is that the perceived task i.e. getting to work on time versus the ability to get there on time is in conflict and out of one’s control.
However if each morning you were escorted to work by a police car with its flashing lights and sirens going then your perceived ability to get to work on time would be fairly high and therefore your stress levels would come down.
Anyone who suffers from a fear of flying suffers considerable stress because the task of getting on a plane and flying away compared with ability to perform that task is almost non-existent. This causes very high levels of stress, which affect many aspects of our cognitive (thinking) processes. The first step to reduce stress levels it is to set realizable outcomes. You should set your expectations to something that you can realistically achieve, and then when you enjoy success you can raise your expectations gradually until you meet your required outcome.
Clearly if you have a fear of flying, you cannot expect to fly as happily as the crew do. Perhaps it would be more realistic to expect to be very anxious generally. Why not concentrate on a small part of the flight where your anxiety can be reduced. Perhaps your first task might be to walk around in the cabin or to let go of the armrests for a few moments; start with something simple, congratulate yourself, then set new targets.
The mind is open to all sorts of negative thoughts when stressed. A fearful flyer not only suffers the overall stress of flying but also to additional stresses like turbulence or being in an enclosed space.
If you change your perceived task, youll increase your chances of your perceived ability to do it. Then you will be in a better state to apply a working strategy. And a working strategy should be your immediate goal.
Here is something that could help.
If you aim to climb a mountain, then you will succeed only when you reach the summit. If however you aim to get as far up the mountain as you can, then each time you try youll succeed. This is not a question of setting low standards or aspirations its setting realistic ones. After all overcoming your fear is not a competition, theres no winning or losing there is only succeeding.
And success breeds success.
Having spent 27 years as a BA Pilot I became the youngest person in the UK to hold a flying instructors licence and became the youngest person to be the Chief Instructor of a CAA approved flying school. If you have a fear of flying check out http://www.flyingwithoutfear.com, for help and resources.
Knowing Authors Through Their Handwriting
Graphoanalysis has given me one reward that cannot be measured in dollars and cents, or for that matter, in any other way I can describe. It has given me the ability to know people. All kinds of people. There have been famous religious leaders like Stephen S. Wise, the great Jewish Rabbi, and Hal Wallis, the famous motion picture producer. Great artists, some of the world’s great poets, and singers, motion picture stars, and some that society describes as “rats”. There has been a lot of good in many of them, but none of them has been quite as good or nearly as bad as the public gave them credit for being. Not necessarily the public, but very often their close associates, even their families.
Many of these people I have never met, although very often we have and because I knew the individual from handwriting, we managed to find a mutual meeting on interests. There is one of the greatest of the old time motion picture stars still playing in Hollywood. We have never met, although we have tried hard enough, but I know her and she knows that I do, for this is what she had to say about the analysis of her handwriting.
“Graphoanalysis revealed me to myself as I never thought it would. It even uncovered traits of character that I knew subconsciously that I had, and when faced with them had to admit.”
In this connection I am reminded of the first time I met Charlie Ransom. Ransom was tall, and I was short. He put out his hand, looked down at me, and said, “From the letters you write I figured you were as big as I am.” Charlie merely read what I had written, and in 1911 I did not know enough about handwriting and what it reveals to have any idea whatever about him. Years later when we were to work on questioned documents together, that little incident would come to mind, and I would smile, but I never mentioned it. However, in those later days I knew
Charlie better than he ever knew me even though he studied some graphoanalysis.
When “The Moon and Six Pence” by Somerset Maugham appeared, it was sent to me by the publishers for review. It was a great book, and I said so, but it was not until years later when Maugham sent me his handwriting that I understood his appeal to that vast audience that love his stories for their word tones, as well as for their message. Figure eight “g’s” show literary tendencies, but the greatest thing in the whole page is his love of color. So, though he did not become famous as a painter with oils, he won a vast following thru the pictures he painted in words that reached ten thousand times as great an audience as if he had been a Raphael.
You will have the same experience very likely with your own favorite author. Somewhere along the way you will get his or her handwriting, and you will understand the individual back of the written words. That will make both the writer and the book much nearer to you because you too will know the author.
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Homosexuals And Their Handwriting
Decoding handwriting can be used for all sorts of purposes. It’s used for finding criminals, explaining a person’s emotional state or personality. Some even say it can be used to determine if a person is homosexual.
A very famous woman medical doctor, with years of teaching in a famous medical college has this to say about sex when she was asked this question: “Why is it that there can never be a discussion of sex with an impersonal slant?” Her comment which follows is the finest brief concept of sex relationships I have ever heard from a speaker’s platform: “With love the sex act is a sacrament. Without love, it is as exhilarating as spitting and gives relief in the same fashion.”
Sex is everywhere. You and I would not be here if it were not for it. Handwriting reveals sex appetites and desires the same at it reveals whether the writer is a potential thief, or a domineering, acid-tongued individual. It is this fact that caused me to answer a question badly a good many years ago. In a class in Hollywood, attended by people from all walks in life, including a priest who had traveled some 3,000 miles to take the week’s work, some one in the audience put up a hand. “Can you tell from handwriting if a man or woman is a deviate?”
What the questioner meant was whether handwriting revealed homosexuality. My answer was a positive “yes” rather than an evasion of the question. After that in various schools held from coast to coast it invariably happened that some man or woman, or several of them would come up after a class closed, hand me a slip of paper, and in a strictly hush-hush tone ask “Is he?” or Is she?” If I assumed ignorance they stammered and stuttered and ended up by saying “you know what I mean.” Certainly I knew what they meant, but as sex is rather primary to life it did not seem to me to be necessary to whisper the question, nor the answer.
However, I should have made my answer to the first question more complete. Handwriting shows homosexuality in some cases and in some it does not. If the writer is conscious that he or she is a homosexual, and is concerned about it, it will show in the handwriting. But if the writer recognizes the situation, and is not bothered by it, or is not worried by what others think, it will not show. It is the mental attitude that shows, not the actual practice of homosexuality.
The handwriting of Oscar Wilde, who served time in prison for homosexual activity, shows no sign of any unusual sex interest. It is the fear or feeling of guilt that reveals itself in handwriting, not the homosexuality.
There are, for instance, thousands of men and women whose handwriting shows latent sexuality that is classified as “abnormal” who are lost, wandering through life. In such cases the handwriting will show the existence of homosexual desires, even though the writer does not recognize that he or she is one of a minority. On the other hand, you have as your first illustration in this chapter the handwriting of Oscar Wilde, who served time in a British prison for homosexual activities, and there is nothing in his handwriting to show any unusual sex interest. Oscar Wilde was a homosexual. It did not bother him. It was not a burden to him. He accepted the fact, and let it go at that.
So in Wilde’s case, the theory that homosexuality is evident in handwriting did not hold true. However, people still use handwriting to attempt to unravel the nature of homosexuals.
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The Alchemy Of Focus
Alchemy is changing the lead in your life into gold.
Here is a complete blueprint on how to use focus to turn lead into gold.
Your focus stimulates you in many ways. It connects with your thoughts, feelings, and actions. It influences your ingenuity and your energy levels. And it sets the law of attraction to move in a particular direction to bring you more of what you focus on.
The way to get full value out of focus is to improve your skills at it.
First, decide on what you really, really want and make that your focus. Just one thing which will give you a feeling of massive satisfaction when you succeed in it. It could be working on your business, improving your relationship, or experiencing health and vitality.
What in your life is not working for you? What one thing could you change that would improve everything else? When you can answer those two questions, then you will have found what you need to focus on.
Second, decide on focusing on it the way you want it to be rather than the way it is right now. Focus on the future, not the past. Envision how you want it to be. Then act as if it were already in the process of happening.
As you do this focusing, it doesn’t really matter if you have a clear idea on how to change things. Just by choosing your focus you are giving your subconscious mind permission to come up with insights.
Third, decide on breaking up that focus into an even smaller unit. What one thing in your field of interest do you need to start on? If it is your business, for example, what one thing can you do today to start things rolling in the right direction. You may have a list of a dozen things that need to happen, but what is the ONE thing that you can do right now.
Fourth, decide on whether you are visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. Which perceptual modality do you tend to use more often? You can discover this through some self-observation.
If you are visually oriented, you can make the image of what you want to happen a movie that is colorful, bright, close, fast, specific, and three dimensional.
If you are auditory oriented, you can make your inner voice louder, clearer, and more promising. You can alter content, meaning, volume, tonality, tempo, location, harmony, inflection, word choice, duration, and uniqueness.
If you are kinesthetic oriented, you can alter the temperature, texture, flexibility, vibration, pressure, location, tension, movement, speed, weight, steadiness, size, and direction.
Once, you’ve done this inner work of identifying what you want to focus on, identifying what aspect of that focus to hone in on, identifying your ideal outcome,
and identifying your sub-modality, the next thing to do is to take action.
So, the fifth step is to take action. Here is a mnemonic to help you. What is the ABC of success? It is to take Action. It is to Believe in the value of your action. And it is to have Courage as you take action. Thus, you need Action, Belief, and Courage.
The sixth and final step is to monitor everything you are doing by creating charts and logs.
Focus is not an easy thing to do. It takes work. It takes practice. It takes discipline. It is more than just a good idea. It is the way to succeed in anything. It is the modus operandi of success.
The opposite of focus is distraction. Unfortunately that is the place where most people spend their lives.
Here is a brief story to hammer in the value of using your time and energy in a focused way.
An apprentice to an alchemist was told to go to the desert, to find a particular oasis, to gather up pebbles, and to bed down for the night. The alchemist told him that in the morning, he would wake up, look at the pebbles and feel both delighted and saddened.
The apprentice went to the desert, found the oasis, gathered up the pebbles, put them in his pockets, and bedded down for the night. In the morning, all the pebbles had turned to gold. He felt happy that he was now a wealthier man. Upon reflection, he also felt saddened. He had not focused much when he was gathering the pebbles. He could have picked bigger pebbles, more of them, and stored them into a large sack instead of his small pockets. He could have been much, much wealthier indeed, a man with an abundance of resources to do anything his heart desired.
Because we cannot see the outcomes of our actions, we tend to withhold our power. The result, in retrospect, is that we come to realize how much better we could have done if we had just applied a little more effort.
When you focus, you bring the possibility of real power to completely change any of your experiences for the better. Focus is the real secret behind any success. The better you get at it, the more successful you will be. At any point in time, you can turn your life around by choosing the magic of focus. With focus, you can turn lead into gold.
Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas with you. Hunting everywhere for a life worth living? Discover the life of your dreams. His book, Never Ever Give Up is offered at no cost to stimulate your success. http://www.theempoweredsoul.com/enter.html
Questions Shape Worlds Out Of Infinite Possibilities
A question is an inquiry. An inquiry creates an answering statement. The process of asking and answering questions is thinking. This thinking is also highly focused. Out of all the possible things you could be thinking of your attention has settled on a few ideas.
These ideas then bring about consequences or effects.
Questions, in short, are focusing tools for thinking. Thinking, in turn, affects all your experiences.
Who you are is a result of your thinking, and your thinking is a result of a question.
Your current experience of pleasure or pain is a result of what you thought and what you are now thinking.
A question create a focused thought. A focused thought is one where attention is paid to an intention. A focused thought is energetic. The potency of this energy is determined by the clarity and intensity of the thought. This focused thought creates an effect because it has the power to affect the quantum field of all possibilities.
What you think about you bring about. Your thoughts are actual wavelengths that go out into the quantum field and affect it. Every atom of the universe is connected to every other atom and each atom is in perfect awareness and communication with every other atom. A thought, which is a unit of intelligence, affects these atoms.
This is a brief summary of how the Law of Attraction works.
The fact that it does work can be proved experientially. When you think of any thought with enough intensity then let it go completely, the parallel shows up in your experience.
The unpredictable variables are when it will show up and how. After it shows up, the experience is always one of delight and amazement. We consider it miraculous because the chain of events that brought it about are not known to us. The only thing we actually know is that the effect we desired is now part of our experience.
The quality of your questions then determine the quality of your life.
At any point in time, you can either ask empowering questions or disempowering questions.
When you ask an empowering question, you set off a processional chain of events, an outflow of power, similar to switching on a light.
What happens is that you immediately affect your subconscious mind which in turn affects the superconscious mind. A whole series of events now take place in the invisible world, the world of the quantum field of all possibilities and in the world of pure consciousness.
When you ask an empowering question, you create a stream of empowered thinking. Your thoughts expand to investigate new possibilities, your emotions become positive, your body metabolizes better, your relationships improve, and you tap into new, often miraculous resources of energy and information.
You literally pull abundance to you like a magnet.
When you ask a disempowering thought, an invisible, psychic power disappears, and it is like switching off a light.
When the flow of this power is cut off, your subconscious mind jams up, and you experience a “stupid” or “confused” state; your body starts to tense up and your metabolism goes askew; people start to avoid you or actively oppose you; and you no longer attract the resources you need, resulting in a dwindling of opportunities, and eventually an experience of scarcity.
Questions can create a chain of invisible forces that either attract abundance or precipitate the loss of what resources you currently have, resulting in a condition of scarcity.
This whole cycle can happen at any time. You can be in a hellish situation, turn on the power, and things find a way to turn around in an amazing way. You can also be in a wonderful situation, turn off the power, and things start to dwindle and fall away.
And this entire chain of events is created by a question.
Your choice at any moment is to decide what to do with any stimulus. You can ask an empowering question about it or a disempowering question about it. This simple, almost effortless act of consciousness is enough to make either wonderful or horrible things happen to you.
The visible world only exists because of the invisible world. As physicist David Bohm expressed it, there is a cosmological order which is a distinction between the implicate and explicate order.
In his book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, he describes it in the following way.
In the enfolded [or implicate] order, space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order. These ordinary notions in fact appear in what is called the “explicate” or “unfolded” order, which is a special and distinguished form contained within the general totality of all the implicate orders (Bohm, 1980, p. xv).
The illusion is that the visible world is creating the invisible world. Your experience is what makes you think about things as affecting you. Yet, the opposite is just as true. The invisible world is creating the visible world. Your thinking brings about your experience.
If you are proactive, you will choose your questions carefully, and they will influence your experience.
If you are reactive, which is the default program for most human beings, then an experience will influence your thoughts and you will have more of that experience.
Your power to be an influencer or to be the effect of an experience is a choice.
Our logical minds are trained to take any experience and project its consequences and we then live in the ordinary world of surviving
Yet it is our creative mind that can turn everything around for us. When we use this, then we step into the extraordinary world of thriving.
Using our creative mind means ignoring current conditions and imagining what we want to happen instead. This intervention in the current flow of events will then create a completely new chain of events.
The chain of causality can be interrupted at any point. All it takes is asking an empowering question. This will engage the creative mind. The subconscious and the superconscious then move in the direction of your thoughts. And the circumstances that you envisioned become your experience. You can then continue to direct these experiences in the favorable direction that you created.
However, the idea of causality itself is actually an illusion. It is part of the Newtonian paradigm. When billiard ball A hits billiard ball B then it moves it on a specific trajectory. On the experiential level, this is what actually appears to be happening. When you point something in a certain direction and apply force to it, it appears to move in that direction, whether it is a thought, a human body, a car, or an airplane.
But, in the quantum field, A does not exist because it always has a predecessor. Thus for anything to exist everything else must exist simultaneously.
Nevertheless, for the purpose of this argument, it serves us well. Thus, A, in this theory is the question. It then stirs forces in the invisible world which will then have an effect on the visible world.
The question is the most important part of your creative force. Questions create science and art. They create a search for truth. They create a quest for resolutions. They create
the intention that shapes causality to work for or against you. Ultimately, questions create civilizations. The difference between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Europe was entirely due to the questions that were asked in those periods.
A final speculation. It is possible that pure consciousness asked itself this question: what would happen if I pretended to be other than myself and created a universe where I experience myself other than I am?
Assuming the paradigm of causality, which works well in the sensory world, questions create thoughts that create effects, and it is the quality of our questions that determine the quality of our lives. Poor indeed are those who ask poor questions. Add a positive spin to any inquiry and you can birth a miracle.
Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas with you. Hunting everywhere for a life worth living? Discover the life of your dreams. His book, Never Ever Give Up is offered at no cost to stimulate your success. http://www.theempoweredsoul.com/enter.html
How To Get Answers To Anything
Life has a way of working itself out. In the process of living your life, things have a way of resolving themselves.
Another way of saying this is “ask and receive.”
Of course, to the logical, sequential-processing, fact-based mind, this makes no sense at all. It sounds like airy-fairy nonsense, mere wishful thinking.
How does it happen? Is it divine intervention, the presence of angels, or the subconscious mind suddenly paying attention?
I really don’t know. I can tell you the process and you can apply your favorite explanation.
Here are the five steps:
One, ask for a solution to a current problem.
Two, envision a happy outcome.
Three, trust that an answer will show up
Four, let it go.
Five, the answer will appear.
I’ll give you an example. I was wondering how anything could be understood because the nature of all things is infinitely complex. Was it ever possible to have a theory of everything?
That same day, in the evening, I stumbled upon how Albert Einstein had spent his life pursing the same question.
After his General and Special Theory, his dream was to find a theory of everything, a unified field theory. He believed in an elegant theory, where gravitation and electro-magnetism could be united.
Unfortunately, what rudely disrupted his plans was the eruption of Quantum Mechanics, where elegance was not the norm and subatomic elements could either be observed or measured, but not both.
Quantum Mechanics posited two more forces, the strong force and the weak force. The strong force is what holds an atomic nucleus together and a weak force is what is responsible for radioactive decay.
Well, now, not one, but two theories of everything coexisted. One for the world of the very large, planetary bodies. And one for the world of the very small, subatomic particles. Albert Einstein died a puzzled man. He could not figure out how to unite gravity, the force created on a planet because of a curvature in space-time as it traveled around its sun, with electro-magnetism, the forces of light, electricity, and magnetism, with the strong force, the “glue” that bound protons and neutrons together in a nucleus, and the weak force, the force that was responsible for radioactive decay.
How could a theory of everything work on the scale of the very large yet fail on the scale of the very small? How could the elegant laws that governed the planetary bodies and systems of the universe fail to have any application in the world of electrons spinning around a nucleus? (Initially, when scientists had perceived the atom as a “miniature” solar system, this problem was not observed; but after learning how to split atoms, this model was considered nonsensical, because only probability patterns of energy existed at the subatomic level.)
How could the theory of everything have two completely different theories? It would be like a one way street where the signs pointed in both directions or a traffic light which had all three colors on at the same time.
“God does not play dice,” he declared. But according to experiment after experiment in Quantum Mechanics, that is all that He did all day long.
Half a century after he died, however, along came String Theory, which posited that there was even something smaller than a quark and that it was a string, a vibrating string of energy that functioned in multiple dimensions to create the subatomic particles that could be observed. The entire universe, then, was an orchestra, a vibration at the level of the infinitesimally small, that played out different frequencies to create different constituents of things.
This debate, of course, is still continuing, with many physicists believing that since String Theory could never be experimentally verified (because the size of vibrating strings were infinitesimally small) that it was not valid, and more philosophy than science.
The point of this discussion, however, is that answers started showing up after I had asked the question..
I asked what I consider to be an impossible question. Can one understand everything? Is such a thing even possible? . Then to my surprise, through a series of coincidences, I found that not only was my question not original but that this entire phenomena of the universe could be broken down into a quest for a handful of unifying principles.
I actually developed the steps afterwards, through recapitulation of these events.
The only way to prove it, of course, is to try it. Then you will see the evidence for yourself. Follow the five steps. Something will happen. I found a whole stream of answers to my impossible question; imagine how much easier it would be to get the answer to a practical problem.
Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas with you. Hunting everywhere for a life worth living? Discover the life of your dreams. His book, Never Ever Give Up is offered at no cost to stimulate your success. http://www.theempoweredsoul.com/enter.html
Applied Mysticism
The problem of creating problems is a systematic one. The entire system of thinking itself is flawed because it is based on a need to find and resolve problems.
This is not an original idea. David Bohm, an American quantum physicist, had expanded on it fully.
David Bohm, in his book Thought as a System, defined the problem with thinking itself.
“So one begins to wonder what is going to happen to the human race. Technology keeps on advancing with greater and greater power, either for good or for destruction.”
“What is the source of all this trouble? I am saying that the source is basically in thought. Many people would think that such a statement is crazy, because thought is the one thing we have with which to solve our problems. That’s part of our tradition. Yet it looks as if the thing we use to solve our problems with is the source of our problems. It’s like going to the doctor and having him make you ill. In fact, in 20% of medical cases we do apparently have that going on. But in the case of thought, it’s far over 20%.”
“The general tacit assumption in thought is that it’s just telling you the way things are and that it’s not doing anything - that ‘you’ are inside there, deciding what to do with the info. But you don’t decide what to do with the info. Thought runs you. Thought, however, gives false info that you are running it, that you are the one who controls thought. Whereas actually thought is the one which controls each one of us.”
“Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally. This is another major feature of thought: Thought doesn’t know it is doing something and then it struggles against what it is doing. It doesn’t want to know that it is doing it. And thought struggles against the results, trying to avoid those unpleasant results while keeping on with that way of thinking. That is what I call ’sustained incoherence.’”
“What I mean by ‘thought’ is the whole thing - thought, ‘felt’, the body, the whole society sharing thoughts - it’s all one process. It is essential for me not to break that up, because it’s all one process; somebody else’s thoughts becomes my thoughts, and vice versa. Therefore it would be wrong and misleading to break it up into my thoughts, your thoughts, my feelings, these feelings, those feelings… I would say that thought makes what is often called in modern language a system. A system means a set of connected things or parts. But the way people commonly use the word nowadays it means something all of whose parts are mutually interdependent - not only for their mutual action, but for their meaning and for their existence. A corporation is organized as a system - it has this department, that department, that department. They don’t have any meaning separately; they only can function together. And also the body is a system. Society is a system in some sense. And so on.
“Similarly, thought is a system. That system not only includes thoughts, ‘felts’ and feelings, but it includes the state of the body; it includes the whole of society - as thought is passing back and forth between people in a process by which thought evolved from ancient times. A system is constantly engaged in a process of development, change, evolution and structure changes…although there are certain features of the system which become relatively fixed. We call this the structure….Thought has been constantly evolving and we can’t say when that structure began. But with the growth of civilization it has developed a great deal. It was probably very simple thought before civilization, and now it has become very complex and ramified and has much more incoherence than before.
“Now, I say that this system has a fault in it - a ’systematic fault’. It is not a fault here, there or here, but it is a fault that is all throughout the system. Can you picture that? It is everywhere and nowhere. You may say “I see a problem here, so I will bring my thoughts to bear on this problem”. But ‘my’ thought is part of the system. It has the same fault as the fault I am trying to look at, or a similar fault.
“Thought is constantly creating problems that way and then trying to solve them. But as it tries to solve them it makes it worse because it does not notice that it’s creating them, and the more it thinks, the more problems it creates. (P. 18-19)”
Thus, the reason we have problems in the first place is because we think of things in a problematic way and manifest the situation. We then get stuck in it. The system of thought itself created the problem. Of course, we like to believe that the problem existed in reality and that we just smacked into it.
But reality does not exist without us, it is, after all, only an interpretation of sensory data. I know that this is not clear either, so let me draw a quick thought-experiment here.
Imagine if one early morning, 10 people were put on a bus and taken to a new town that none of them had ever been before. They were then allowed to roam around it for the whole day. Finally, in the evening, they would return back to their city of origin. Now, each one would be surprised by a separate interview. The physical aspects of the town (an objective reality) would be interpreted by the minds of those ten people based on their own interests, views, habits, predilections, patterns of observation, past history, and so on. Each one would notice different things and filter out different things. In fact because of their differences, they probably would have dispersed and visited completely different places in that town. After the interviewers themselves got together, they would wonder if the visitors had been to the same town or ten different towns.
Reality-creation is an interpretive experience.
So the only way to escape the system of interpretive thought you are in is to follow the five steps that I call Applied Mysticism.
Let us run through a theoretical example to make it clear.
Suppose, you need more money than you can currently receive from your job to pay some bills. Here is how you apply the five steps.
1. Ask for a way to pay the bills.
2. Imagine paying the bills.
3. Trust that the bills are paid.
4. Let it go.
5. The answer will appear.
How will the answer appear? It appears in an unexpected way.
Your mind can only run over what you know. But all this data is mined from the past, because that is where all known variables exist. What you need is an answer from the future. This answer comes in an unexpected way. It can come as an insight, someone just showing up with the answer, or finding the answer in a book that you happen to pick up.
Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas with you. Hunting everywhere for a life worth living? Discover the life of your dreams. His book, Never Ever Give Up is offered at no cost to stimulate your success. http://www.theempoweredsoul.com/enter.html