Mindhacks

Most people spend their entire life imprisoned within the confines of their own thoughts. They never go beyond a narrow, mind-made, personalized sense of self that is conditioned by the past.

In you, as in each human being, there is a dimension of consciousness far deeper than thought. It is the very essence of who you are. We may call it presence, awareness, the unconditioned consciousness. In the ancient teachings, it is the Christ within, or your Buddha nature.

Finding that dimension frees you and the world from the suffering you inflict on yourself and others when the mind-made "little me" is all you know and runs your life. Love, joy, creative expansion, and lasting inner peace cannot come into your life except through that unconditioned dimension of consciousness.

If you can recognize, even occasionally, the thoughts that go through your mind as simply thoughts, if you can witness your own mental-emotional reactive patterns as they happen, then that dimension is already emerging in you as the awareness in which thoughts and emotions happen — the timeless inner space in which the content of your life unfolds.

The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it. Every thought pretends that it matters so much.

It wants to draw your attention in completely.

Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don’t take your thoughts too seriously.

Read the article by Eckhart Tolle >>

Our Beliefs are Powerful Forces. They shape our world, our self-image, and even our physical bodies. Unfortunately we all carry negative or unwanted beliefs from our past. Yet, did you know that these past beliefs can be over-written? Just like a VCR-recorder, your mind can be very susceptible to programming. Here’s Burt Goldman’s advice on how to re-program unwanted past beliefs.
 

When, through past programming, the mind associates an event
with some traumatic occurrence, that trauma gestates and produces illness,
disease, and other bodily problems.

A better understanding of mind would be through metaphor. The
brain is like a computer. The mind is like the software. A computer without
software cannot be programmed.  Nor will a spreadsheet program produce
a novel, for that you would need a word processing program.

The mind absorbs all the material input from parents, teachers,
family, friends and media.  When a child is brought up by loving parents
love software is programmed and the child learns love. When a child is
brought up by abusive parents abusive software is programmed and the
child/adult learns all about abusiveness. It is possible for a child of loving
parents to be an abusive adult, but the process would be more difficult
and would have been programmed by someone other than the parent.

Because the mind is so easily programmed, it can be just as easily
reprogrammed. A simple example of programming and the mind could be
that of a cassette tape. A cassette tape has a beginning and an end. A song
near the beginning of the tape could be likened to the programming on
the inner conscious mind.  If you wanted to get rid of the song at the
beginning of the tape you could do in any one of three ways.

1. You could cut the song out and splice the tape.
2. You could erase that part of the tape.
3. You could record over that segment of the tape.

Material in the mind that causes you to be the person you are is
similar in that much of the programming has taken place at an early age.

Various therapeutic methods attempt to locate and correct that
programming.  When you liken the mind to the tape the metaphor clarifies
the problem.

As example: Say that you wish to correct a problem. A person
has been programmed to believe that to be thin is to be ill and that a
husky, overweight body, is a healthy, protective body. Say that program
was installed at the age of eight.

You could get rid of that program in a similar 3 ways.

Read More Here >> 

Paul Orfalea is a hyperactive dyslexic who barely reads or writes. As a student, he had dismal grades and was expelled several times, even spending some time in a program for the mentally retarded. He graduated eighth from the bottom of his high-school class of 1,200. He went on to become founder and chief executive of the copy-store chain Kinko’s (named such for his curly hair), turning it into a $2-billion-a-year business.

Orfalea regards his dyslexia and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as "learning opportunities" rather than disabilities. In his new book Copy This!: Lessons from a Hyperactive Dyslexic Who Turned a Bright Idea Into One of America’s Best Companies (Workman Publishing), co-written by journalist Ann Marsh, he sketches how he parlayed such seeming weaknesses into entrepreneurial strengths.

For instance, rather than struggling with memos and emails, Orfalea encouraged voicemails that got quickly to the point. Since he disliked staying in one place, he made frequent visits to the far-flung stores. Since he was reliant on others, he had to be an astute judge of character and was focused on making Kinko’s an attractive place to work. As his mind raced and jumped, he was open to new ideas for marketing and expansion.

A list of successful entrepreneurs with learning disabilities would include not just Orfalea but, among others, discount-brokerage pioneer Charles Schwab and Virgin Group creator Richard Branson (both of whom have dyslexia) and JetBlue founder David Neeleman (who has ADHD). More broadly, human cognitive capabilities and limitations seem to be thoroughly intermingled. Various people perform mental feats not only in spite of, but evidently because of, conditions normally seen as mentally or emotionally debilitating.

Read the Full Story Here >> 

March 20, 2006 – James McGaugh is one of the world’s leading experts on how the human memory system works. But these days, he admits he’s stumped.

McGaugh’s journey through an intellectual purgatory began six years ago when a woman now known only as AJ wrote him a letter detailing her astonishing ability to remember with remarkable clarity even trivial events that happened decades ago.

Give her any date, she said, and she could recall the day of the week, usually what the weather was like on that day, personal details of her life at that time, and major news events that occurred on that date.

Like any good scientist, McGaugh was initially skeptical. But not anymore.

"This is real," he says.

Read More >> 

What you believe to be, is. As simple as that and as complex, for once you understand that statement, freedom is yours.

A belief is mental acceptance of something as being true. That acceptance can be based on trust for an authority, on reason, or on prejudice. A belief can also be a thing that has been programmed or conditioned by outside agencies so that the acceptance is not supported by reason but acted on nevertheless as though the thing were totally reliable.

Belief is a powerful force. There are occurrences, nicely documented by Deirdre Davis Brigham in her excellent work, ‘Imagery for Getting Well,’ (W.W. Norton & Co. 1994,) that substantiate the idea that believing in a thing often brings it about.

She notes that in cases of multiple personality it is not uncommon for one personality to have diabetes, and a second or third personality, of the same person, who displays a normal production of insulin and blood sugar showing no signs of the disease at all. Another case noted is that of personality number one who had a case of the flu with all its attending symptoms, difficulty in breathing, congested chest, running nose, and laryngitis. When personality number two came out all the symptoms disappeared in just about six seconds. No congestion, no running nose, no symptoms of the flu. Same body, two different beliefs.

Read More >>

Wayne Dyer once wrote that Burt Goldman had developed a superb method of reaching alpha, the First Stage Meditation. However it’s not simply reaching alpha that is important. It’s how you use alpha once you are there. Getting to alpha is easy; it’s like getting to a train station, or an airport. You get there, that’s the easy part, but now you have to go somewhere, where are you going?

Jose Silva, parapsychologist and founder of the Silva UltraMind ESP System used to demonstrate an experiment on creativity with kids in his hometown of Laredo, Texas. He would ask kids to think of solutions to a particular problem while they were at the beta, or waking, level of mind.

He would then guide them to the alpha, or meditative level of mind and ask them to think of further solutions. The children were always able to come up with more ideas while at alpha.

Does your mind function more creatively when you’re at the alpha level of mind?

Click here to read more.

"Even if you’re not a genius, you can use the same strategies as Aristotle and Einstein to harness the power of your creative mind and better manage your future."

The following eight strategies encourage you to think productively, rather than reproductively, in order to arrive at solutions to problems. "These strategies are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art, and industry throughout history."

Read the entire article here.

In  1950, a new drug called Krebiozen had received sensational national publicity as a “cure” for cancer and was being tested by the American Medical Association (AMA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). One of the researchers involved in this testing was a doctor called Bruno Klopfer.

One of Dr. Klopfer’s patients, a Mr. Wright was suffering from cancer of the lymph nodes. All standard treatments had been exhausted, and Wright appeared to have little time left.  His neck, armpits, chest, abdomen, and groin were filled with tumors the size of oranges, and his spleen and liver were so enlarged that two quarts of milky fluid had to be drained out of his body each day.

The following story will challenge your idea of just how much your mind influences your body.

You can read the story here.