I have a friend who is Wiccan. Her mother is Wiccan, and psychic abilities run in her family. Every once in a while, I’ll go over to her house, and we might play with this thing called “Psychic Circle” - basically, it’s a board like the Ouija board, but more stuff on it.

If you know me, then you know I’m don’t believe in these ritualistic silly games. Nonetheless, I do believe it could be used to “channel” the subconscious mind - which could realistically produce psychic answers. So it has potential, even though it seems a little strange at first. (Of course, I could be wrong! This is just how I reason it to myself.)

When you play “Psychic Circle”, you need four people. We all put our hands on the little plastic disk, ask “the spirits” something, and wait for the disk to hover over an answer.

When we do this, it’s clear that my friend (the one mentioned earlier) is the person moving the disk. So she is either moving it consciously, subconsciously, or maybe a mixture between the two.

Now - the problem is that the answers we get are completely silly and worthless. However, I want you to imagine this situation. Four of us sitting down, with the lights off and candles lit, incense, and asking “the spirits” random questions. My friend delivers the answers - but probably isn’t aware of her own hand movements. We get responses that don’t make sense. Now myself, and the other two participants, look at the answers and say things like, “Hmm, that doesn’t make sense.” Or, “What the hell?” Or, “Ooooooook.”

My friend, on the other hand, defends the cryptic responses and tries to make them work. Why?

You might think this entire story is stupid, but the essence of where the failure occurs is very important - and applies to anyone practicing psychic abilities.

My friend has a vested interest in the results of “Psychic Circle” to be correct. What does it mean to her if the cryptic responses are worthless? Look at her belief system.

She is Wiccan. Her mother is Wiccan. Her mother taught her a lot about psychic abilities at a young age, from the perspective of rituals, spirits, séances, channeling, threefold law, etc. This is her religion.

If the “Psychic Circle” fails, then look at what’s at stake. It could force her to question her mother, her beliefs she’s held her entire life, past psychic experiences, past rituals, etc. Socially, she would have to face myself and the other participants, and consider that she’s letting us down. Letting her mother down, perhaps? She has put so much energy into this belief system - and she has a lot of energy dedicated to “Psychic Circle” being correct.

Now - I’m not saying the Wiccan religion is responsible for this. What I’m saying is that my friends specific situation really puts a lot of pressure on her.

And now the kicker - think of what happens when we start a new “Psychic Circle” session. Subconsciously, she knows she’s the one moving the disk, and she knows she’s the one responsible for the answers. She knows she’s generated answers in the past which didn’t make a lot of sense. Now she has to “perform” in front of three of her friends, and hope for the best - or her entire belief system is at stake.

Is she in a good state of mind to be receiving psychic answers? Is she in a relaxed carefree mood? Maybe consciously - but subconsciously? Far from it. So - because of all these fears, she’s put into a bad state of mind, and she can’t receive accurate psychic information. Because she can’t receive accurate psychic information, she feels her belief system is under attack. Because she’s put so much energy into her belief system, she decides (probably subconsciously) that it’s better to distort and force the cryptic responses to mean something, rather than admit they’re probably bogus. Because of this, the other three participants (including myself) grow more cynical. Because we grow more cynical, the next time we do “Psychic Circle” we’ll put even more emphasis on correct answers. Because of the increased pressure, she is in a worse state of mind the next time - and she can’t accurately receive psychic information.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

As you can see, this produces a downward spiral of increasing pressure on her. Which is bad news.

You might argue that this situation is unique to my friend. In reality, this sort of perpetual failure can happen to anyone. All it needs is a belief system that produces poor results, that we have a vested interest in maintaining. And we know that those aren’t short on demand :-P.

If you think something like this is happening to yourself, it’s important to answer the following question: what do I fear? What is the worst case scenario? For my friend, she might fear that she’s letting her mother down. Or she might fear that her mother is wrong. Or she might fear that her friends will call her names :-P. It’s important to deal with this root fear.

For my friend, let’s assume that she fears that her mother is wrong about Wicca, and she fears that the religion itself is incorrect. What is the solution?

Well, one solution is to change religions. However, let’s not go to that extreme just yet :-P. There are better solutions.

A positive solution would be to study the Wiccan religion more. Get some books - and not those “Teen Wiccan” ones - actual legitimate books on the Wiccan religion. Learn more details about it, and refocus on understanding the different perspectives inside the religion itself. Educate yourself. Become an expert on the religion.

Why does this solve the problem? It removes the link between her mother and Wicca. Right now, when she thinks of Wicca, she thinks of her mother teaching it to her. If my friend later decides she doesn’t want to be Wiccan, then she feels she would be insulting her mother - i.e., rejecting Wicca is rejecting her mother. However - if she educates herself on Wicca - then she can separate the religion from her mother. She is free to reject the religion without insulting her mother. Wicca is Wicca. Her mother is her mother.

However, if she studies more, there is another path as well. Perhaps she really falls in love with the religion. Perhaps she reads somewhere about channeling spirits incorrectly, and learns new techniques to try. This will give her a confidence boost, and free herself from all the pressure. If she’s trying a new technique, and fails to get good results, then she can blame the technique (or her inexperience with the technique). Not the religion.

-

If you feel yourself slipping into perpetual failure, then ask yourself: what do I fear? Then address that fear in a positive way. Create an intelligent plan to remove the fear. Sure, it takes effort - no one said growing as a person is always easy - but it will relieve the pressure and feel good :-P. And when you finish this process, and look back in hindsight, you’ll notice that the worst case scenario you had imagined in your head never happened.

Well, I woke up this morning to my mom calling me, telling me my cousin died last night.  Apparently there was a fire in the middle of the night, and he couldn’t get out in time.

Death is such a weird thing.  We can sit around and think about it, and think of all these wonderful philosophies and explanations, and study all these different religions, and try to prepare ourselves for the inevitable.  But it seems nothing ever captures it.

When someone we know dies, it just bitch-slaps all that philosophy right in the face.

I think the truth is that no one can know the truth about death, until we experience death.  And since no one can experience death for us, it turns out to be a pretty scary idea.

I think I would prefer that death stay this way.  An insolvable mystery, that every one of us is forced to deal with.  I’m not sure we have a choice in the matter :-P.

I do know one thing: someday in the future, I’ll become brave enough to create philosophies about death.  Then death will strike, and remind me who is the host, and who is the guest.

To me!  I’m 24 today.

Feels the same as yesterday… just a day more.

You’ll notice that I’ve updated ALW’s theme a little bit.  If things look messed up, it’s either because I’m currently working on something, and have to temporarily mess around and test - or you just need to refresh your browser.  In fact, it’s probably a good idea to refresh your browser now, if you already haven’t :-P.

I added a simple little feature.  If you look at the upper-right hand corner of all the posts, there is a minimize button.  Click on it, and the post will minimize!  Amazing :-).  That little tidbit is courtesy of the great Moo.fx JavaScript Library.  A library with a bunch of cool effects.

I’ll continue to work on the theme here and there, improving little by little.  I feel this strategy is a better idea than working on it behind the scenes, and releasing one big update.

~Sean

I’m reading a book, Think Yourself Rich, by Joseph Murphy.

It’s pretty repetitive, and it really talks a lot about God and the bible, but it has some good ideas too.

Honestly, I’m not sure how Christian the author really is. There are hints in the book that he doesn’t believe in the Christian God, but rather believes that the subconscious mind is the gateway to God. If you strip out all the religious information, the ideas are pretty cool.

Here’s a small excerpt, to give you an idea:

You can get acquainted with the riches of the Infinite storehouse within you by reiterating and believing the following prayer: “I am ever grateful for God’s riches that are ever active, ever present, unchanging, and eternal.”

God gave you richly all things to enjoy in this universe. Life itself is a gift to you. The whole world was here before you were born. Believe and expect the riches of the Infinite, and invariably the best will come to you. As you practice this simple truth, the desert of your life will rejoice and blossom as the rose.

As you can see, it’s pretty heavy with the God references. Not that I have anything against God… what I am against is relying on religion to explain your ideas.

Stripping out the religious stuff from the above passage, and taking the meat of the information, you can get some interesting ideas. 1. Be grateful. 2. Life is a gift to you. 3. Belief and expectation will fulfill themselves. Sounds like pretty good things.

The author stresses that by focusing on positive things, you will attract more positive things to you. Law of Attraction and Intention Manifestation, basically. Ok cool.

One idea that differs from the Intention Manifestation model is interesting though. He comes back to this idea that our natural state is to live an abundant, healthy life. He also states that God never punishes anyone - we only punish ourselves. He uses the analogy of if you cut yourself, the skin automatically heals itself. The blood comes to clot, and the tissue starts to regenerate. In that same manor, when you punish yourself by using the Law of Attraction incorrectly, God’s natural reaction is to heal you.

He claims that if we are poor, we are punishing ourselves, and have a disease of the mind. Once that disease is cured (through prayer and meditation), then our natural state will return - the state of abundance.

Ok, so there is a lot of religion in his explanations. It’s important to understand what someone is saying from the perspective that they’re saying it. This way, while you might disagree with some of the axioms, you can still use the same lessons in your own life.

The important idea that I’ve learned so far, is that we don’t have to work to become rich. If our natural state is abundance, then we are doing more work by staying poor, than we would be doing becoming rich. Think of holding up a pendulum - if you let go, it’s natural state is to drop down. If you want to constantly hold the pendulum out of it’s natural state, then that takes energy. If you just let go, it will naturally find it’s way back to the center. Same idea.

This is a new idea to me because I’ve almost always been under the impression that we must work really hard to become rich. Very rarely have I attempted to question that idea. It’s always fun to see someone who disagrees with a belief that you rarely question yourself. It can help you out.

I’m not done with the book, but I think I understand the gist of it at this point. I’ll continue to read, and try and apply the author’s techniques. A fun project :-).

It’s been 9 months since I announced I would be archiving PsiPog.net, and about 4 months since the last PK Party. I figured a postmortem would be appropriate.

The story of PsiPog.net is such a long one, that I could probably write a small book on the subject. So I’m going to break down this postmortem into logical chapters of PsiPog’s life, and go over each.

1. The Beginning

The beginning was a lot of fun. I wish I could go back and just observe it all over again. I was young (15-17), and had no clue what I was doing (don’t worry, I still don’t have a clue :-P). We had a great community at Dimensional-Doorways.com. I think the reason their forum was so popular was because it was one of the first links to come up if you did a search for “psychic forum” or something like that. I rarely spent time surfing the website - 95% of my time was spent on the forum, and that’s how I found the site.

This is where I met Rainsong (RainTurtle) and Nazarak (KMiller). This is also where I eventually met Not_Important (NI). Plus a bunch of other really cool people. Every once in a while I’ll still get e-mails saying, “Hey Peebrain, remember me? It’s X - we met at DD.”

During this time period, I tried everything in psionics. I remember printing out and reading Active Psy (which used to be called Playful Psychic), and trying all the exercises, for months on end. I remember when I first started my training with OBEs. And I remember my first OBE - and afterwards, walking downstairs in complete shock, telling my parents what I experienced - and them probably thinking I was completely nuts :-). I also remember playing GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo 64, which I had gotten for Christmas :-).

PsiPog grew, mostly I think due to good fun information, an active forum, and our impatience with fluff bunnies.

2. Poor Decisions

It seems like almost overnight PsiPog grew to a much larger community. I was around 18 and 19 years old, and had to deal with some really perplexing situations. With zero experience, I made some really bad decisions.

The worst decision was buying into the mentality of: “This is my website, if you don’t like what we do, then leave.” It’s a legitimate idea - I certainly shouldn’t bend over backwards to try and please everyone. But I took the idea to the extreme. It was basically a free for all. If I didn’t like something, or one of the authors had a complaint… we were right. No matter what. The reason we were right was because it was my website. The logic was simple, but it was insanely unrealistic :-).

This idea - while it pissed a lot of people off - I think a lot of people also liked it. Strangely, it might have added to PsiPog’s popularity, because we were such assholes that people HAD to pay attention to us. We were the cool kids. You could be cool with us, or you could be a loser. Your pick.

It probably played on an emotional level with everyone, including ourselves. Let’s face it - we were talking about creating energy balls, telekinesis, and reading minds. Chances are we, and the people who visited PsiPog, weren’t the most popular kids in high-school. Since the vast majority of everyone was around 14-20 years old, maturity wasn’t in our favor - hey, PsiPog is cool, and you want to be cool, right? As outcasts, we promised other outcasts the opportunity to be cool. Perhaps this is another reason why we grew.

Lots of regrets in this time period. Lots of really bad decisions. Oh well. Live and learn, I suppose. For example, we had formed a couple of secret groups that did psychic combat. Now obviously, psychic combat wasn’t allowed to be discussed on PsiPog.net, but that didn’t stop us from trying it out by ourselves. It was fun until we realized it was real :-P. Then it wasn’t fun for the overwhelming majority of us. A lot of the authors left PsiPog.net, and removed their articles. That sucked.

3. Regroup

With the authors splitting, I decided to try and refocus my attention back towards the good things PsiPog.net had to offer. New articles, created the Q&A section, better chat, seminars, PK Parties, new Media, etc. The good thing about making so many bad decisions, and having them blow up in your face, is that there’s so much to learn from it. It also gives you an opportunity to sit down and rethink what it’s all about.

I tried to make the logical and best decisions at this point. I tried to be fair, and repair the damage that was done by the bad decisions of the past. I think I succeeded for the most part :-). Looking back, I think I did a pretty good job here. Granted, this good job is overshadowed by the extremely piss poor job before it :-P. Nonetheless, I’m happy with it.

There was a lot of development at this time. Probably the most work got done during this time period. At first I wasn’t sure if things would get better, but I just kept working hard, and refused to shut the website down. I figured that the reason we succeeded in the past was because the website simply didn’t shut down - so I decided that no matter what happens, I’ll just keep the website up. If it doesn’t go away, and I continue to work hard on it, then it’ll improve. Simple as that.

4. The Golden Age

I think the Golden Age of PsiPog started after I got out of Basic Training for the Air Force, in May of 2005. This was when we adopted the idea of: fair rules! My goodness what a great idea :-P. We also removed the restriction of using the PsiPog Client for the chat room, which was a huge step.

The reason getting rid of the PsiPog Client was a good decision was because of something most of you didn’t see. The new banning system. In the past, the banning system was extremely crappy. It was effective, and it worked pretty good, but the way it was used encouraged abuse of power. There was no accountability. Anyone could add a ban, for any reason, and it wasn’t really questioned.

With the new banning system, I wanted to “do it right”. I took the lessons from the old banning system, and created a new system where each mod used their PsiPog.net account to access it. When they added a ban, it recorded WHO added the ban, what time, and left a comment area for mods to post WHY they left the ban - preferably with logs. All this was available to the other mods to check. In effect - we policed each other.

It also had temporary bans programmed into it. This meant, as a mod, you could set whether the ban was permanent or temporary. If it was temporary, then the script would remove the ban automatically. In the past, we had to manually search all the bans, and see which ones we wrote should be temporary, and remove them by hand. Which never happened. So even the temporary bans were permanent in the old system.

Also, an important switch was to make the default ban be temporary. Meaning that if someone pissed a mod off, we shouldn’t ban them permanently right then and there, no matter how stupid they acted. The system was a lot more forgiving.

The only bad thing about the system was that when a ban was removed, it was removed. Meaning that I should have made it so that when a ban was removed, it would still remain in the system - just disabled. That would have allowed us to see whether someone was a repeat offender a lot easier, instead of relying on memory. Oh well. That was my only issue with it.

When the forums came online at PsiPogBB.net, I followed the same idea. Simple fair rules, with accountability. The default action - instead of banning or thread deletion - would be to lock the thread. This made mods accountable to the community. The community could police the mods, and the mods could police each other. I instructed the mods to add a reason at the end of the post, as to why they locked the thread.

Lessons to be Learned

Overall, the best lessons to be learned were mostly explained in the previous paragraphs. If power is unchecked, then bad decisions follow. So: make people with power more accountable for their actions than the average user.

It’s important for everyone to realize that it’s human to abuse power. When you’re sitting on the side lines, it’s easy to look at someone with power, and tell them how they’re abusing it. But when YOU are the one with that power, it’s a completely different story. It takes a lot of self control to use power wisely. And you will make mistakes. Which is why it’s insanely important to set up a system where people police each other.

I’m not perfect. Even in the Golden Age, I made some mistakes on the forums. But since I made a system where I encouraged my mods to police me - it was caught by them.

It’s important to separate the rules from the rulers. Make the rules public. And make the rules above the rulers. Even the leader :-P. This is tough, especially when you work for years and years on something, only to have some pissant tell you you broke your own rules :-P. And then having to admit that they are right, and that you’re sorry. It’s tough. But it’s correct.

It’s also tough to tell your friend that their ban is too harsh, and that they need to step back and rethink it. I’m sure it was very hard for my mods to come to me and say, “Hey Peebrain, what you did was wrong. These are the reasons why:”. It’s hard to take criticism from a friend, and not take it personally. To keep in mind that they are looking out for your best interests, even if that means making you temporarily angry.

Another important lesson was actually seeing how good people could be convinced to do bad things. How a good person can be manipulated by someone else, and also how they manipulate themselves, in order to convince themselves it’s ok to do something immoral. We really mind-fucked ourselves to say it was ok to do psychic combat.  I’m glad we overcame our self-delusion, and it stopped before it became too serious.  Good lessons.

Sure I have regrets about how I ran PsiPog, but overall - I’d do it again. If I hadn’t have made those mistakes, I couldn’t have grasped these important lessons otherwise. I feel lucky to have learned these lessons early in my life. They will serve me for the remaining time :-).

I recommend everyone put a lot of heart into a project, for a long period of time. Whether it be a website, or band, or politics, or health, or whatever else. Do what interests you, and work hard. You’ll make mistakes, but it’s worth it.

It’s common in the Personal Development world to read about figuring out your life’s purpose. At one point, I had become obsessed with figuring out my purpose, and spent months and months trying to figure it out. Now I know some people have found a purpose, and are quite happy with what they found - I, on the other hand, despite my greatest prolonged efforts, could not come up with a purpose I was happy with.

This threw me into a state of depression, because I had no direction, and while I felt that life had meaning, the fact that I couldn’t define my purpose made me intellectually conclude that there was no meaning. This conflict in beliefs really ripped at me, and threw me into a very negative state of mind, where I wasn’t accomplishing anything. The longer I went without figuring out my purpose, the more pressure I felt to come up with one, and the more depressed I felt. It was a pretty crappy cycle.

Eventually I concluded that my purpose was just to experience. To do what I do, and just experience what’s in front of me. No larger goal, no great accomplishment, and in fact - no way to fail. I just don’t buy into the whole “define your purpose” idea. At the time, I felt I needed to give some answer to the question of “What is my life’s purpose?”, so the answer of just experiencing this reality seems like a great one.

One day I was talking to my friend, and we wandered on to the subject of purpose. He told me that he had spent months trying to figure out his purpose, and all it did was depress him. I was amazed! I told him the same thing happened to me, and that my eventual conclusion was to just relax and experience reality. His eventual conclusion was just to let it go, and forget about it.

I think that defining your purpose might be a useful tool for some people. For me, it wasn’t useful at all. All it did was make me feel forced to move in one direction, when what I really felt was that I wanted to move in all directions at once. The idea of defining a purpose for me felt like it restricted my freedom. Any time I would come up with a purpose, I always looked at the opposite of that purpose, and felt like I would be missing out if I forced myself in a direction.

For example, I read Steve Pavlina’s blog, and he has a lot of ideas that have helped me, and provoked thought. His purpose is: “to live consciously and courageously, to resonate with love and compassion, to awaken the great spirits within others, and to leave this world in peace”. That sounds pretty nice. But when I tried it on for myself, my response was: what if I need to make a cowardly decision at some point? What if I need to be mean and selfish at some point? What if I wake up, and one day I don’t feel like awakening any great spirits in others? What if I need to leave this world in anger?

Then my purpose wouldn’t be serving me at all! You might say to yourself: “Well gee, is there a point when you really want at make a cowardly decision?” No, of course not. I would love it if I were the most awesome courageous person in the world. Nonetheless, life isn’t that simple. A lot of my worst decisions led to my best realizations. Why would I want to force myself to make good decisions just because my purpose says I should? What’s so bad about making bad decisions anyways?! Shit, we’re human!

Overall, I felt that this idea of a purpose was really bringing me down. There’s so much in this world I’d like to do and experience, I really don’t want to limit myself by defining one direction to move in. If that means I die alone and homeless, then so be it. At least I would have experienced being alone and homeless :-). If you have found your purpose, then great! If you are like me, and thinking about defining a purpose just makes you feel depressed, then at the very least - you’re not alone :-). Both my friend, and myself felt the same way. If it doesn’t feel good, then don’t force it.

I might have a slight advantage when it comes to talking with your subconscious, because I’ve always talked to myself, ever since I was a little kid. However, it’s never too late to pick up a crazed habit :-).

Now, in the past I have claimed that the internal dialogue was between your conscious mind, and your subconscious mind. Which is true in a sense. However, I’ve experienced some odd events that make me think it also might be a little more. In this experience, I asked for help during an OBE from what I thought was my subconscious mind, however - two pairs of hands actually grabbed me and yanked me out. In this experience, I had made a deal with my subconscious mind, and experienced hands pulling me along during the following OBE as well.

The point being: sometimes when I communicate with what I think is my subconscious mind, I get external help from “someone else” during OBEs. So I might not just be communicating with my subconscious mind when I talk to myself. Judge for yourself.

Either way, until there is some more evidence that I’m talking to an external entity, we might as well just continue using the label of “subconscious”. So anyways… how DO you talk to your subconscious?

Talking to your subconscious is easy. Just use that internal voice you have, inside your head. Let that voice speak for your entire mind. By that I mean - don’t be thinking about a million things, and also try to talk to your subconscious mind. Focus on what you want to say, and say it with your entire mind. No side thoughts. Straight, clear, and to the point.

That’s the easy part. Now how do you hear a reply from your subconscious mind?

Well, first, you have to listen. Some people have zero listening skills. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone, where you were trying to tell them something, but they just didn’t listen? They kept interrupting, trying to make their own point, and wouldn’t really give any consideration to what you were saying? Pretty annoying stuff. That’s how your mind works when you first start trying to listen to your subconscious. Your mind keeps trying to interrupt.

So you have to learn to just SHUT UP AND LISTEN. This is a passive state of mind. You shouldn’t be thinking, “Ok, gotta be quiet, gotta listen… ok be quiet… time to listen.” No. Just like in a normal conversation, you have to drop what you’re thinking, and start taking in what the other person is saying. Same idea here. Shut your mind up, and just wait and listen for a response.

A lot of people get to this step, and don’t hear anything. Chances are you won’t hear a voice, so don’t wait around for one. If you’re just starting out, instead of waiting to hear a voice, listen for an emotion. We’re used to listening for words, or talking, or something vocal. Take that same action of listening, but instead of listening for words, listen for an emotion.

Your subconscious mind is going to deliver an emotion to you. It’s one big lump of solid emotion. No words attached. Sometimes pictures and videos will be attached, but when you’re just starting out, chances are it will just be a big emotional turd.

This emotional turd is the response. Now, when you feel this emotion, it will pass by pretty quickly. Even the longer responses pass by in just a few seconds. The quicker responses pass by in a second or less. If you’re listening for that ball of emotion, then you will feel it enter into your awareness.

If you don’t feel any emotions, or it passes by to quickly, then just ask again. And again. And again and again and again. Keep asking. Your mind will start to whine and complain about how annoying it is to keep asking the same question over and over again. Keep asking. You’ll tire your mind out eventually :-). That little voice that complains is just a little bitch. Show that bitch whose boss. YOU ARE BOSS. Not that whiny voice. If you demand an answer, and refuse to think about anything else until you get an answer, then you will be delivered an answer. The louder you ask, the louder it returns. By “loud”, I don’t mean the volume of your internal voice. I mean the amount of energy you put into it. And by asking the same question over and over, you keep adding more and more mental energy to the same question.

Once you receive an emotional response, you can either take this emotional ball as the answer, or you can try to translate it into words. I personally like to translate it into words most of the time. Sometimes the emotions are too complex to translate into words, so the best I can do is to translate it into pictures, or experiences I’ve had in the past. And sometimes I can’t translate it to anything… I’m forced to just deal with the pure emotion. No problem.

Think of this emotional ball as a meal that you’re digesting all at once. You can taste everything in one instant. You can taste some chicken, some mashed potatoes, some french fries… all at once. Now, if you want, you can pull apart this taste, and experience each taste by itself. Or you can just take one big gulp. With the emotional ball, you will feel a dash of happiness, some alertness, some laughter, some guidance, and a bunch of other emotions that simply don’t have words. All at once. Pull it apart if you wish, and try to find the right words for the feelings… or just take the response in one big gulp.

Don’t think about it too much. A lot of this is emotional in nature, and if you become over-analytical, then it sort of defeats the purpose. You should have an analytical side, and an emotional side, both working together. Don’t let the analytical side dominate, and smother the emotional response.

It is a strange process to describe. However, it can be learned. I know this - because I learned it myself :-). When you first start off, there is going to be a lot of uncertainty. Don’t worry about it. It took me a good month to start getting something going for sure. Once you get over the initial uncertainty, then it becomes easier, because you can pinpoint what you need to work on. When you first start off, there will be a lot of confusion over whether you’re making the answer up yourself, or whether it’s coming from your subconscious. It’s ok to be confused. Just keep practicing, and it’ll become more clear as time goes on. Don’t let the temporary confusion stop you from continuing. You will work through it if you keep at it.

As you become better at this listening process, you will begin to notice a lot of mental functions that you didn’t even realize you could perform. When I look at what goes on inside my head, it’s not just thoughts. It’s not just words. It’s an entire universe of acrobatics using pictures, emotions, experiences, colors, voices, metaphors, structure, thought patterns, belief systems, pathways, translations, and a bunch of other functions that have no words. I didn’t use to be like this. I’ve come to this point with a lot of practice communicating with my subconscious, and watching the internal working of my mind.

Keep practicing, and keep asking questions :-).

Logic is a wonderful tool.  Some people are under the impression that we should use logic for everything.  Perhaps that’s a nice ideal, but logic can’t work in every situation, and actually fails quite a lot.

A lot of times when people use logic, they are thinking theoretically, and in their own little mental universe.  They have a hard time seeing the fact that they’re talking about a fantasy world that’s inside their head.  Usually when someone is too logical, their real life is emotionally damaged to the point where they would prefer to live in this theoretical universe in their minds, where everything makes sense, than to step outside their minds and deal with the illogical nature of the real world.

Hey - I’m not perfect either - so don’t get me wrong.  But there’s an important point to be made here.

Logic is a great tool, but we are all capable of misusing logic.  It’s important to know where logic is weak, so we can use logic properly, and gain it’s benefit without falling into the mental traps.

Logic is a creative process.  By that I mean: given a situation,  our minds are capable of creating a logical explanation for it.  Sometimes we forget that the logical understanding we have about something exists inside of our head.  Sometimes it feels like that logical understanding just exists on it’s own, and is self-evident.  This is where logic gets dangerous.

For example, let’s look at a simple phenomenon: time.  We all have our watches and clocks, and we know that there are 24 hours in a day, and there are 365 days in a year, and an extra day is added for Leap Years.  We know that there are different timezones on Earth, and that while it’s 9:12am for me, it’s 2:12pm in London.  We know this breakdown of time comes from the rate at which the Earth spins, and we know that years come from how long it takes for the Earth to complete one orbit around the Sun.

We all know this.

Have you ever researched time?  Where did this idea of 24 hours in a day come from?  What was life like back when there were no clocks?  I saw a program on the History Channel about how the first clocks were invented.  Before then, I had never really thought to myself what it would be like to not have this knowledge about time.  Think about it.  Reality would be the same, but our mental world would be drastically different.  No alarm clocks :-).  No concept of “15 minutes ago”.  No concept of “it’ll take about an hour”.  No age!  “I’m 24 years old”!

The point is that we take these things for granted.  We take the fact that time was created by humans for granted.  When we use time in our lives, it’s so natural and feels as if the fact of 24 hours in a day is etched into reality.  It feels solid.  It feels like a indisputable fact that would be true no matter where we go.  But it’s not.

This is how logic fails us.  The TRUTH is that we used logic to CREATE a system of time.  But what does it FEEL like?  It feels like time is an inherent truth about reality.  We have deceived ourselves.

But we do this all the time with logic.  Another example:

One of my friends loves logic, but he also lives a pretty crappy life.  He’s very cynical, and always criticizes other people harshly.  I wanted to get his emotions to feel something other than cynicism, so I tried to convince him to work on a video game with me.  I’m a programmer, and could do all the programming side of things, but I wanted him to do the story and art.  I wanted him to create something, and feel a sense of accomplishment, and a sense of ownership.  This way, he might be able to sympathize next time he thinks about criticizing someone else’s creation.

This challenge really short-circuited his logical mind.  I could easily convince him that working on the video game was the logical thing to do.  It’s fun, he had nothing better to do, he loves video games, it’ll be cool, it’s not hard, he can still sit on his computer all day :-), etc.  In fact, I had him convinced for a couple of days, because he couldn’t give me one logical reason why he shouldn’t do it.

Unfortunately, he eventually created a logical reason, and refused to work on the project after that.  He decided that he was lazy.  And being lazy, he obviously wouldn’t want to invest time and energy into a project.  Of course that wasn’t the real reason - the real reason was he feared being criticized by someone else over his creation.  But now that he had created a logical reason, and incorrectly assumed his logical creation was an inherent truth about reality, he had become convinced not to work on the project.

This is exactly how logic fails us.  We create a logical framework for something, then assume this framework must be true because it’s logical.  We forget that the logical framework exists inside of our heads, and could be incorrect.  We make the same mistake - it FEELS like the logic comes from the reality around us.  Just like it FEELS like time is an inherent truth about reality.  But, upon further investigation, we must concede that our logical framework was a creation that only exists in our own mental universe.

Logic is a great tool, but we need to use it correctly.  We need to be aware that just because something is logical doesn’t mean it’s true.  And we must identify the correct source of logic.  Reality isn’t logical.  Reality is just reality.  It’s our minds that try to make reality logical.

I like to think of beliefs as living organisms inside my head. They aren’t ME… they are external to ME… but I choose to buy into some of them, for one reason or another. My beliefs aren’t me is because I can change my beliefs drastically, yet I still exist, right here, same old me :-).

I also like to think of beliefs as fighting inside of my head. Beliefs that contradict each other battle it out in the desolate landscape of my brain :-P. Beliefs that agree with each other team up. When one belief-team beats another belief-team, it represents a shift in my personal beliefs - it means I no longer believe in the dead team, and I put more energy in believing the winning team.

Maybe the analogy is a little silly, but it’ll help to use it when understanding how beliefs become ingrained in our minds.

There is a “Natural Selection” process in our minds. The “strongest” will survive. And there is an evolution in beliefs as well. Over time, beliefs evolve towards stronger ideas. If they don’t evolve, they usually die off.

Now to the point: A lot of times, the things we believe in are only believed in because that belief has navigated our mental landscape effectively. Not because it’s true.

Let me give you an example to clear all this up. Let’s examine the belief, “Psychic abilities don’t exist.” This one I have a lot of experience with.

At some point, the idea of psychic abilities enters your head. It’s then divided into two beliefs - one, it exists, and two, it doesn’t exist. Each side starts building an army. Psychic abilities exist because… maybe… “My mom says they do, and my mom is smart.” Or, “The world is a magical place.” Or, “I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” Or, the classic, “They just do.”

Psychic abilities don’t exist because… maybe… “Science says they don’t.” Or, “It’s silly.” Or, “I’ve never seen it.” Or, “It wasn’t announced on the news.”

Now the two beliefs battle it out.

1. “My mom says psychic abilities exist… my mom wouldn’t lie, and she’s smart.”

2. “Yes, but, that doesn’t mean she can’t be wrong. She’s human, maybe she’s made some mistakes. Besides, science says psychic abilities don’t exist.”

1. “What does science know anyway? Who cares what science says. If my mom could be wrong, then you have to admit science could be wrong as well. If you think that psychic abilities don’t exist, then you are taking the magic out of the world.”

2. “Science has a better track record than your mom. How ‘magical’ the world is really doesn’t play a factor into what’s true or false. The world can still be a beautiful and amazing place without psychic abilities. It’s just silly to believe in them.”

1. “Why is it silly? That doesn’t make sense. Besides, you can argue about this stuff all you want, but you have to remember that time when my mom knew Sally was pregnant before Sally told anyone. If psychic abilities aren’t real, then how did mom do that?”

2. “There could be a million explanations. Listen, just because I can’t explain every little thing in the universe doesn’t mean that psychic abilities exist. Maybe your mom just guessed and got lucky - who knows. Or maybe Sally told your mom, but your mom didn’t tell you. Maybe you’re just remembering the whole situation backwards.”

Now we hit one interesting point. Both the 1 and 2 beliefs are debating about a memory. What if a belief could rewrite memories? Then that belief would be pretty strong. A belief that could rewrite memories is more powerful than a belief that couldn’t - so, it’s natural for beliefs to evolve towards editing your memory. Those that don’t edit your memory will die off. Those that do edit your memory can literally create evidence in it’s favor. Let’s suppose the #2 belief discovers how to edit memories :-).

2. “In fact, if you remember specifically what happened, your mom received a phone call right before she told you that Sally was pregnant. I bet either someone told her, or someone hinted it to her over the phone.”

1. “Hmmm. I do remember that. I don’t think the phone call was related though.”

2. “Yes, it was related. She told you right after she got off the phone. I’m surprised you didn’t think of this before!”

And now our #1 belief is about to die off… unless it also evolves. So our clever #1 belief decides to get some help from surrounding beliefs - specifically, the belief that “My mother is honest.”

1. “Wait a second. If you’re telling me that my mother purposely lied to me, then that simply isn’t true. My mother is an honorable person who would never deceive me. She doesn’t lie. If what you’re saying is true, then you also have to admit that my mother is a liar.”

2. “Well, your mother did lie. You have to face the facts.”

1. “Absolutely not. The only fact here is that my mother is honest, and that if I don’t believe in psychic abilities, then I’m calling my mother a liar. Since she isn’t a liar, then I must believe in psychic abilities. Simple as that.”

2. *Croak*

Alrighty! So our #1 belief lived to see another day (for all the wrong reasons!).

These mental tricks are performed all the time. A belief will grow stronger and stronger, using tricks like altering your memory, aligning itself to other beliefs, name calling, social conditioning, altering your perception, “selective hearing”, becoming emotional, using pride and the ego, etc. All these strategies are effective.

One way to stop these dirty tricks from occurring in your mind is to sit and listen to two beliefs battle it out. A lot of times these battles will take place subconsciously. Sit and listen. Make these battles conscious. For example, when our #2 belief tried to alter our memory, we could consciously see this happening, and intervene. Perhaps you keep a diary or journal. Look at the entry from that day, and force your beliefs to play by the rules. Whatever your journal entry is, then decide that it must be the way it happened. Tada - no more memory alteration. (Of course, this still encourages beliefs to alter your perception of experiences, which would in turn alter how you would record it in your journal.)

Another example - notice how the #1 belief makes the statement: “If I don’t believe in psychic abilities, then I’m calling my mother a liar.” Our beliefs do this ALL THE TIME (another example, “If you’re a republican, you’re not a democrat. I’m a democrat, and I’m smart. Therefore, if you’re a republican, you aren’t smart, and therefore stupid.” - sound familiar?) When I notice a belief trying to do something like that, I always interject: “Surely we can have it both ways. It doesn’t have to be one way or the other. You can not believe in psychic abilities, and your mother can still be honest. You can be a republican, and still be smart.”

Over time, the strongest beliefs in your mind are probably in that position because they have the dirtiest tricks. Not because they hold any truth. An even bigger problem is when you believe in something that’s true, yet you believe in it for all the wrong reasons. In those cases, the belief can attach a lot of negative baggage to something you have to admit is true. You’ll feel obligated to also believe in the negative baggage as well, and it will feel like you MUST believe in all the baggage, even though you don’t want to.

Watch for these dirty tricks. Your beliefs will only use them if you allow them to use them. Hold your beliefs accountable, and force each one to make an honest case for itself. And if you ever notice a belief become too ingrained, let that fact set off an alarm in your head. If a belief is really strong, chances are it got that way by doing something dirty. This is why the “Beginner’s Mind” is treasured in Zen — in the beginner’s mind, there are no overpowering beliefs that dominate the mental landscape.