24 Tuesday Sep 2019
Posted in Thinking Tuesday
Image by TeroVesalainen from Pixabay
This Ted Ed talk was inspired by my wife who is taking a test for her teaching credential today. Good luck, dear!
All of us get a little nervous before taking a test, wondering if we studied the right material, will remember what is important, and ultimately do well. Watch this Ted Ed talk to discover what happens in our brains when we are stressed out.
I hope you are having a terrific Tuesday!
Until next time…
Dave
09 Saturday Mar 2019
Posted in Spiritual Saturday
“As Soul, you are like a balloon that rises above the ground. The higher you go, the farther you can see. And the farther you can see, the better you can plan your life.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul
Have you ever observed other people’s lives? Have you ever wondered about the friends you have, the job you ended up with, or the situation you find yourself in? All of us are here to learn. We learn about ourselves. We learn from others. We learn how to do new things.
I notice patterns. I have always possessed an innate ability to recognize patterns and processes within various systems. I notice patterns in other people’s lives. Patterns that help them and patterns that hurt them. The patterns that hurt are self-destructive. Patterns like excuse making. Patterns such as blaming other people or outside circumstances. Patterns of apathy that contribute to a person giving up, accepting their lot in life and doing nothing to improve their circumstances.
If you pay attention, you can uncover destructive habits in yourself too. When I think about or observe myself, I take the view from the real me—soul. Soul is the real you. It is not the ego or your mind. It is that part of you that can view the things you think about. When you can stand back and look at your life or the lives of others, you can see what’s wrong and make changes. You can break down “you” by understanding that each part composes multiple levels of consciousness.
We have the physical or lowest level. This is the part of you that gets hungry, tired, and horny. Next you have the emotional part of you. The part of you that gets scared, bored, angry, fearful, and lustful. Beyond the emotions is the memory part. The memory contains your past and highlights key events in your life you have learned from. Beyond the memory is the intellect. This part of you represents your ability to think, analyze, and learn. Soul decides on a course of action by using memories and other environmental inputs. Finally, you have the intuition. This is the part of you that gives you little hints or ideas when you are trying to solve a problem or decide after you have analyzed all the things your mental part of you is thinking about or learning.
At the top of all of this is Soul. Soul is the real you. Soul uses these lower parts of you to interact in each sphere of existence. Soul is infinite. Soul can rise above these lower parts to glimpse the whole. When you act at the soul level, you can make better decisions because soul sees the entire picture of you. Soul can also explore beyond you. It can go places your lower parts cannot. When you get an impression or idea, this comes from Soul. Soul can warn you before you make a mistake. Soul can show an idea that might help you solve a problem. This is the analogy of the quote at the top of this posting. The higher soul goes the more it can see.
You can also limit yourself. Have you ever gotten so mad you cannot think? This is when soul has activated your emotions and focuses its attention on this part of you. Soul blinds itself to any higher faculty. When Soul focuses on the past, the same thing occurs. Soul is so entertained by the past it can’t think or analyze new ideas. Instead of rising above these lower parts of you to see the whole, it entertains itself by these lower parts, and restricts itself from the higher view it is capable of.
This leads me back to the statement I made in the initial few paragraphs. People become occupied with one part of themselves and get stuck. Soul gets stuck in the physical, emotional, memory, or mental realms. This prevents soul from seeing all there is to see and prevents soul from providing the ideas or advice these people need. They get caught in an automatic loop that the lowest part of them used for survival. Bad habits rule over them.
Your brain builds habits. It builds neural pathways to perpetuate actions that repeat. The brain does this to conserve energy. This system is automatic. We can exploit this process for good when you recognize a harmful neural pathway or habit. The only way to determine the advantage or disadvantage of any habit is to measure the results a habit produces. How do we do this? We take the time to analyze ourselves. If something we do is destructive, we can identify the specific actions we take and change them.
Changing or altering your habits is difficult. The neural pathways that compose our habits are as strong as steel cables. The longer you have acted out a habit the stronger it will be. Undoing a harmful habit can take as many years to undo as it took to build. Be persistent. Remember the harm this habit causes.
Need outside help? No problem. Research. Look for books, websites, blogs, and research articles that address this problem. You’ll find that there are many people that have run across the same problem and broke their harmful habits. Record as many ideas as you can. Try each one until you find the solution that works. Engage with other people on social media that have had the same problem. Ask them questions. Most will be happy to help you out. In fact, it is highly likely they got help from others the same way.
Remember who and what you are. You are soul. You are not your brain, your emotions, your memories, your intellect, or your intuition. You are above these individual facets.
Until next time.
Dave
07 Tuesday Feb 2017
Posted in Quotes, Uncategorized
Tags
answers, consciousness, Emotions, ideas, Intellect, memory, questions, subconscious
“A mind stretched by new experiences can never go back to its old dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
The mind is a collection of neural pathways forged by our senses, thoughts, and our experiences. The mind collects. The mind compares. The mind stores.
Each of us is unique because our senses and the neural pathways they create are forged by our circumstances. But is the mind all there is?
A mind is a tool. We exist beyond the mind but need the mind to negotiate the reality of this reality. We are our consciousness.
Think about emotions, memories, intellect, and subconscious. These collectively represent the mind, the combination of which are infinite when we deal with the world. When a particular experience is over you will come away from a collective experience with your own unique version of it. You interpret the event with your emotions, any memories that may provide some background, you evaluate the input with your intellect, and there may even be something in your subconscious that contributes to your experience. If you talk to others who experienced the event, there will be differences in each person’s unique way of interpreting the event.
Our consciousness allows us to be aware of things and to accept or reject them. Our consciousness is what allows us to think of things beyond what the mind has seen or collected. Our consciousness allows us to find new ways of doing things. How does this occur?
Consciousness is connected to a greater expanse. Some call this expanse God. Others call it the Universe. The name that is given to it is irrelevant. We can contact this expanse and find what already exists somewhere in infinity.
By doing so, we stretch. We become more aware each time we tap into this greater consciousness. The next time you have a problem to solve. Ask the question. Write your question down. Think about it before you go to sleep. The answer will come in some way. It could come while listening to a radio program, watching television, or surfing the Internet. You could see your answer on a billboard, in a book, or overhear someone in the coffee shop you frequent. The more aware you are, the easier it will be to find the answer to your question. The only caveat to this is to test the answer you receive. Ask for a confirmation. Sometimes the mind gets in the way. It doesn’t believe the answer it receives and will block some of it out. We will misinterpret the response we get to our question. The answer comes. They always come. What is important is becoming aware enough to receive them.
Until next time…
