I was reading my past couple posts, and noticed that I’m ragging on intention manifestation quite a bit. I want to clarify exactly what I think intention manifestation is, and exactly what parts I take issue with.

First, for those that don’t know: the idea of intention manifestation is basically that if you think good thoughts, and follow your emotions, then you will attract good things. It became popular for a short time with the movie The Secret, especially once it got the Oprah bump. It’s a very empowering mindset, that states we attract whatever we think and feel about. If we think/feel bad things, then we attract bad things. If we think/feel good things - then we attract good things.

Using that, the next logical step is: whatever you want in your life, you can attract it, by thinking positive thoughts about it as though you have already attained it. Visualize. Feel. Get into it. And you’ll send out the attraction-vibes out to the universe, and then the universe will respond.

Ok.

Here is where I take issue: there is a distinct difference between attaining results, and explaining results. If you can attain something, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can explain how or why you were successful.

For example, I am really good at math. When I was in high school, I could learn math very easily, and I advanced quickly through the grades. Can I tell you WHY I’m good at math? I have some ideas - but really, I don’t know. I was born this way, I suppose. I really don’t know exactly why I’m good at math.

What if I was convinced that I’m good at math because I eat a lot of chicken? People might ask me for help in math, and I would instruct them: eat chicken! That’s what I do, and look at how good I am! I might conclude that there is a chemical in chicken that helps stimulate the part of the brain responsible for logic and math.

Now the idea is silly - but the point is very valid. Just because I’m successful at something doesn’t mean I can give a reason WHY I’m successful. Back to intention manifestation…

I believe that a lot of smart people started to notice that weird things happen in reality. “Coincidence” simply couldn’t explain the weird events in their lives. So they invented an explanation: intention manifestation. It’s a wonderful theory that can explain weird events without relying on the idea of “coincidence”.

I believe the theory is incorrect. When I say that, I’m NOT saying that people don’t experience weird things. I don’t believe the theory of “coincidence” is correct either. I DO believe we can manipulate reality in some metaphysical way, to produce results. I’ve seen that with my own eyes. But there is a difference between attaining the results, and explaining the results. I have attained the same results others have - I simply don’t like the explanation of intention manifestation.

I am not skeptical of the results - I’m skeptical of the explanation. I’m not saying, “Prove to me that intention manifestation can produce results!” Not at all. What I am saying is: “Prove to me that intention manifestation is the correct explanation for these results.”

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I offer an alternate theory for explaining the weird results we see using intention manifestation techniques. My theory is that intention manifestation techniques are actually sending out a telepathic broadcast, that others pick up on subconsciously. These telepathic transmissions influence our decision making process.

Now, if you’ve been paying attention, your response might be: “Prove to me that telepathy is the correct explanation for these weird results.” I can’t offer that much proof, except personal experience as evidence.

I have been successful with intention manifestation when using it on things that humans affect. For example, I have been successful using intention manifestation on attracting females, helping out friends and family members, getting more play time in soccer, meeting new people, etc. Each successful application of intention manifestation has had a human mind in the equation that could be influenced telepathically to help me achieve my goal.

I have had extremely limited success with intention manifestation when using it on things that humans have very little affect on. For example, I have been mostly unsuccessful using intention manifestation to make red lights turn green, win scratch off lottery tickets, and win drawing-based lotteries.

This leads me to conclude that the normal explanation for intention manifestation must be incorrect. If it was as simple as letting the universe fulfill my desires, then I should have had equal success across the board. Instead, the human-related attempts were overly successful, and the hard-reality-related attempts were mostly failures. This leads me to believe that a human being is important in the equation, and that telepathy of some sort could then be involved.

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In conclusion, when I attack the idea of intention manifestation, please understand that I am attacking the theory. Not the results. I completely agree that weird things happen, and that doing intention manifestation techniques can produce results. What I am attacking is the reason WHY the techniques produce results. I do not believe the universe is listening to us, granting us our wishes based on what we think and feel. My results are not congruent with that theory. Instead, I believe a better explanation is some form of group telepathy, where one person’s strong desires can influence a group of people subconsciously.

I love using the term “dangerous thoughts”.  It encapsulates precisely what I feel the need to describe.  A dangerous thought is a destructive thought that is tempting, but ultimately not true.

For example, racism.  Imagine if you grow up, and know a lot of black criminals.  A dangerous thought would be to think that black people are criminals.  From your perspective, it seems true - your experience has led you to believe it.  In reality, the thought is very destructive, and is ultimately not true.  Crime doesn’t originate from skin color, it originates from social conditions (and some other things probably).

Racism is an easy example though.  There are much more clever dangerous thoughts though.

What about intention manifestation?  I believe that intention manifestation is a dangerous thought.  This is why:

Intention manifestation says that: “You get what you think about, in accordance to the law of attraction.  If you aren’t getting what you want, then you need to change your thoughts.  If you’ve changed your thoughts, and you STILL aren’t getting what you want, then really you haven’t changed your thoughts… you are canceling yourself out with other thoughts.”

Why is this dangerous?  Well, first - it’s tempting.  We would all love to think that we can wish and get whatever we want.  It’s a really nice idea!  I want a genie too!  All I have to do is think the right thoughts (and listen to my emotions), and I’ll get what I want!  Hurray!

But there’s a much larger reason for why this thought is dangerous.  Any failure is a failure of the believer - never a failure of the theory.  Now, forget that we’re talking about intention manifestation for a second.  Imagine we are talking about some random theory about reality.  And imagine that this random theory states at the end, “If you observe this theory to be untrue, then this theory states that it is a result of you not believing entirely in this theory.”

If the theory is, in reality, untrue - how could you prove it?  What if my theory was, “Trees have learned to speak English.  If you cannot hear a tree speak English, it’s because you don’t believe they can, and trees can also read minds and become offended by people like you, so they refuse to talk to you.”

Now, of course trees can not speak English, nor are they capable of such highly accurate telepathy :-P.  But how can you disprove such a theory?  Any attempt to disprove it will result in “well, of course you never hear the trees - they won’t allow disbelievers to hear them.  You just proved the theory is true!”

You can see how ridiculous this is.  And hopefully you can also see why I label this sort of thinking as “dangerous”.  You can easily get caught in a loop - forcing yourself to believe something in order to test the theory.

I propose a new thought-suggestion:

Thought Suggestion 132: I will not attempt to test theories that require belief in the theory in order to be tested.  It is the fault of the theory for not providing a way for healthy thinkers to verify the theory without mandating a belief system.

You’ll notice that a lot of religion gets cut deep with this suggestion as well.  “If you observe Christianity to be untrue, then really you’re just being fooled by the Devil, and you must believe even more in Christianity in order to overcome the Devil.”

Ouch :-P.

My understanding of intention manifestation (IM) has evolved quite a lot over the years. Ironically, my current understanding of IM has come full circle, and is now the same understanding I had when I first began experimenting with it, at age 16.

When I was 16, we didn’t call it “intention manifestation” - we called it transmitting. The idea was to broadcast a telepathic intent to the universal unconscious. I’m not sure where the term “transmission” came from - perhaps Rainsong or Myriad came up with it. Or maybe they just taught me the term, and it was coined by someone else. Either way, that was my original understanding of the skill: as a telepathic broadcast. But since the term “intention manifestation” has become somewhat mainstream, I’ll continue to use that, since I do believe it is the same skill.

“Universal unconscious” comes from Carl Jung (also known as the “collective unconscious”, or “objective psyche”). The idea - as I understand it - is that we all share a common unconscious mind. From this common mind, our conscious minds are just a small part sticking out. Think of it like a big ocean - the waves are our conscious minds, which perceive from our location to be independent and separate. But in reality, we are connected by a huge mass of common unconsciousness beneath us.

With this model, we can see how telepathy could be explained (in general). Since we are all connected on an unconscious level, all we need to do is build a link between two extensions of consciousness (aka “people”), and communication will be the same as thinking to ourselves.

Hopefully I haven’t confused you too much. It’s harder to explain than it is to understand :-P.  Here’s a picture!

Either way, a transmission (or intention), is basically broadcasting out a thought on the entire universal unconscious. Impressing the common mind with a thought. Burning an image into the collective brain. Once this broadcast has happened, then all conscious beings will receive it via intuition and gut feelings, of something they should act on. That’s the idea.

Now why is this important? Well… in the mainstream version of intention manifestation, you basically get whatever you want. You just visualize it, and POOF! It appears randomly some day! This is incorrect, in my opinion.

If intention manifestation is limited by the ideas presented above, then really the only way intention manifestation can affect reality is by altering everyone’s collective intuition. To do such a thing would be extremely useful for certain goals! For example, if you’re looking for a lover, then by broadcasting your intent, all humans will unconsciously see that you are looking for a lover, and it will attract some people to you also looking for love. If you’re looking for a business, or advice, or a parking spot, or anything where telepathy can serve you - then intention manifestation will be useful. (Intending a parking spot could be telepathically telling people to hurry up and get in their car so they’ll leave in time for you to take their spot.)

However: if intention manifestation is a telepathic broadcast, then there are certain things it wouldn’t be useful for. Mainly things that can’t be affected by an intuitive human. Like the lottery.

With the lottery, I could be the best telepath in the world, but that won’t affect the lottery balls. They aren’t conscious (right?!). The procedure for drawing lottery balls is designed to remove the human element from the equation. Which means I can visualize all I want, and I can scream my intention out to the unconscious all I want - but no one can do anything about it. No one can help me. No one can come to my rescue.

So - it is my belief that you can not win the lottery using intention manifestation. And my results confirm this.

However, all is obviously not lost :-). There must be some metaphysical way to win the lottery, because I still can’t explain how people win the lottery twice, and I can’t explain my own results with the lottery.

My conclusion is that I should have taken the advice of a friend when I first dreamed up this goal. He told me that I either have to predict the lottery numbers (via ESP), or manipulate the lottery numbers (via micro-PK). Or maybe a combination of both. Either way - I have to pick at least one or the other. I theorized I had some more options - mainly intention manifestation and altering my beliefs about reality. However, as we see, these are dead ends for the lottery.

So, I have a choice. Either I can try to predict the lottery numbers, or I can affect the lottery numbers to a pre-determined set. I have a long history of predicting the future, reading people, “knowing” things that haven’t happened, “knowing” things that I don’t know, and basically be bored with reality’s linear nature. I also have a history of frustrating and unimpressive PK results. Well gee whiz. What should I do?

Prediction it is!

It should be noted that I don’t know how I won the MegaMillions back in March. I don’t remember if it was by prediction, or some other means. I do know it happened right after I had the breakthrough in realizing that randomness doesn’t exist… but that’s all I associate with those wins. So I don’t know if ESP has helped me in the past with MegaMillions.

However, my luck with the scratch off tickets may very well have been from ESP. When I first decided to go on my road trip to buy winning lottery tickets, I actually got a flash of the map I would end up driving before starting the trip. I didn’t record it at the time because I was trying to focus on intention manifestation - not ESP :-P. I didn’t want to “cheat” by using ESP :-P.

And finally, before I end this post, I should also note that I tried to win the lottery using Remote Viewing in the past, and failed. I did this when I was around 20 years old, and the reason I believe I failed was because of lack of skill, incorrect technique, and bad experiment design. But hey, it was my first one, so I can’t be too hard on myself :-P.

Now it’s game time though :-P. I’m 200x more sensitive and accurate now compared to where I was 4 years ago. If I didn’t already know I would be correct, I would amaze myself :-P.

Also: if you saw my last post, then you saw my sweet ass lottery machine. It’s in development, and not completed yet. I shall be posting more videos as I build it. It’s gonna kick ass :-). Oh goodie…

Oh goodie!

I took a month off from the lottery, due to the low jackpot amounts over the course of October.  And it couldn’t have come at a better time - October has been especially stressful for me for many reasons.  Changing jobs, changing shifts, changing apartments, and in general just changing my whole day-to-day activities.  But that stress is finally equalizing itself, and life is starting to get back into a pattern, so I’m free to experiment with more fun ideas on reality.  And it just so happens that the lottery jackpot has gotten within my acceptable range :-).

I played on Friday, but didn’t get any numbers, unfortunately.  But that’s ok.

I’ve come to accept that I’ve failed over the summer (in terms of the lottery).  If you remember… the lottery motivated me to start living my ideal life right now (instead of waiting around for a huge jackpot).  That meant learning more about music, exercising and eating healthy, investing, and thinking about tough subjects like value, choice, faith, etc.  So the lottery was a success in terms of motivation and life-stuff, but the act of winning was a failure.  I didn’t win the jackpot.

However, I now think that it was better that way.  I’ve come to reject the ideas of personal development and intention manifestation.  And I think that it’s important to reject those ideas.  They served me well for quite a while, but now it’s time to move on.  Had I won the lottery in the summer, it would have validated the ideas of personal development and intention manifestation… which would have been incorrect, and messed with my head.  So it’s better this way.  Or at least - that’s how I currently rationalize my failure at the moment ;-).

Now that I have finished my rejection, I feel more free to win the lottery without all the intellectual baggage associated with it.  During the summer, success of the lottery project was directly linked to correctness of my belief structure.  That’s a wonderful way to inject emotional stress into a situation :-).  However, now I feel like my success with the lottery is independent of my beliefs.  So I can relax.  I feel more playful and curious, as opposed to forceful and frustrated :-P.

We’ll see how long this lasts ;-P.

Either way, I want to do more experiments, and gather actual EVIDENCE to figure out how I can pull off this win.  I most definitely believe it’s possible and plausible to win the jackpot.  I stand by my rejection of modern statistics and probability, and my rejection of randomness.  That’s sound logic right there - and the evidence supports it.  Now I just need to keep reminding myself to focus on the evidence, and not any willy nilly emotion or philosophical idea that flutters across my creative mind.

Hurray :-).

Science is great.  And I’m not just saying that.

I used to consider myself very scientific… but really I never understood why science was correct.  I just knew that it was suppose to be the best system of discovery, so I should trust it.  It came down to trust.

When I discovered that psychic abilities were actually real, I felt like my trust was betrayed.  I felt like science had led me down a faulty path, and that path had turned out to be incorrect.  Science had failed me.  My trust was broken.  So I started to look towards other things to trust in.

Nothing really grabbed my eye, though I did try a lot of belief structures over the years.  I would always end up rejecting it because it wasn’t scientific enough :-).  Eventually I did settle somewhat on the idea of personal development.  It was scientific to a point, but there was a lot of intuition and psychic ideas in it as well.  Sounds perfect :-).

But lately, I’ve come to discover that the personal development mentality is flawed as well.  The flaws are very clever and creative, and very hard to detect.  Ideas like meta-beliefs can really screw your mind over… Intention manifestation is a very clever idea as well.  Ultimately, I do not believe in intention manifestation, and the things that are incorrect with the intention manifestation model can be detected by being scientific.

Which is why I feel that science is the best method for discovery.  At this point, it doesn’t feel like before - I don’t feel like I “trust” science, instead I feel like I’ve derived the scientific method by trial and error.  Every other belief system I’ve tried out has failed because there are gaping holes that are easily prevented using logic, reason, experimentation, and evidence.

I can disprove intention manifestation pretty quickly.  Let’s make an experiment.  Intend to win the lottery for a month straight.  And if you win, then intention manifestation has some evidence to support it.  And if you fail, then intention manifestation has some evidence to disprove it.

It just so happens I did that exact experiment :-).  I believed 100%.  I visualized.  I intended.  I put my heart into it.  I got my emotions going.  I did this religiously for a month.  And I got zero results.

Now before everyone flips a lid, let me make something clear: there is evidence that the process of intention manifestation actually does affect reality.  I’ve seen it with my own eyes, with different intentions.  However!  It is NOT as simple as “placing your order” with the universe.  The universe is not a genie.  Or at least - that’s not what the evidence suggests.

In the future I may delve further into the raw evidence, and look for alternate explanations.  However, the point of this post is to express the simple point of view that: science produces the most accurate observations about reality.

Period.

The best way to learn about reality is to actually play around with reality and see what happens.  I know this seems obvious.  But that’s not what a lot of us do.  A lot of us form our opinion of how reality should function - and then we play around with reality until we notice the results that confirm our opinion.

Or we play around with reality until we form an opinion on something… then we only do things to confirm our premature assumptions.  There is actually an amazing idea in psychology that looks into this phenomenon - it’s called confirmation bias.  I recommend reading about the experiments they did to observe this phenomenon - it’s very interesting.

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It’s hard for me to express why science is important while in the same breath say that psychic abilities and intention manifestation do produce results.  But here I am :-P.

I think it’s important to separate skepticism from science.  The scientific method says nothing about skepticism.  The scientific method can be executed by a computer program.  But in the real world, we are humans, with emotions and opinions - and it’s very very hard to remain objective and judge the outcome of something fairly.  Especially once we start investing a lot of emotional energy into one outcome or another.  The skeptical person usually displays a heavy emotional tendency towards evading admittance of ignorance, among other obsessions.  But hey - no ones perfect :-P.

The scientific method - the idea that we need to objectively play around with reality to understand reality - and that we need to constantly change and evolve our understanding fairly and without bias - is a beautiful goal.  It might be impossible to be 100% scientific, but putting our focus on evidence, experimentation, playfulness, and objectivity (even if objectivity is inherently impossible), is the most rewarding belief structure for learning about reality.

So last Friday was a big day in my lottery world.  The drawing meant a lot for two main reasons: 1. I had been meditating on schedule for 3 weeks, putting a total of 4 hours and 13 minutes towards intending on winning.  2.  I was at $0 profit, so if I didn’t win anything, then I would officially be going into lottery-debt.

The results were: ZERO NUMBERS CORRECT.  Oi!

So that pissed me off :-).

I was bummed out all of Friday, and I was thinking to myself how crazy I was for trying to win the lottery, and how silly the whole goal is in general.  When I went to sleep on Friday, I was debating whether to keep the project going or not.

Saturday night I came to one important realization though.  The project isn’t silly :-).  I have won the lottery in the past, and my logic up until this point has been very strong.  I have evidence to support my beliefs - I’m not just plucking things out of the air.  I’ve beaten the odds.  I’ve proven modern statistics wrong already.  I accomplished 1 in 43,000 in the first 5 drawings.  So I still have another 42,947 losses before the statistics balance out.  Until that point arrives - I am beating the mathematical odds.

Sunday night I came to an even better realization.  I realize that I’ve been taking this project too seriously.  It used to be fun.  I used to be excited to just play and see the results.  But now when I check my numbers, I just prepare myself to be frustrated and pissed off.  So I want to take the next two weeks as a break (while waiting for the jackpot to reach $45mil), and just try to relax and not be so serious.

Also, I think that intention manifestation - as presented by popular sources - is bullshit.  I don’t think that those who teach the popular view of intention manifestation are purposely misleading people.  I think that we saw some strange shit, and we were too quick to try and explain it.  We wanted to show everyone the weird things we experienced, and when everyone else demanded an explanation, we felt obligated to give one.  I now believe the correct response should have been: “I don’t know how it works, but it’s pretty weird, huh?” :-).

We always have to be careful with our minds.  When we want to believe something we are in a very dangerous position of altering our perception in order to see what we want to see.  The second we let our guard down is the second a false belief sneaks in under the guise of truth.  Everything must be questioned.  The jeweler doesn’t appraise rocks in bulk… each one is put under the magnifying glass, and judged individually.  I feel as though intention manifestation is a box of rocks.  It’s time to pull out every idea - one by one - and figure out exactly where the gemstones are hiding.  And have fun in the process :-).

Lately I’ve been getting sick of self-help stuff.

When I first became interested in self-help and personal development, it seemed pretty kick ass.  I bought some books, read a lot online, and watched some movies.  It was great :-).

But it’s starting to wear on me.  Now when I read self-help stuff, I feel annoyed.  It strikes me as very arrogant.

It’s sort of a push and pull thing, I suppose.  We try to become better people, and we try to figure out the reality around us.  But in doing so, we eventually come to a point where we think we have things figured out.  Over time, this solidifies into a world view.  We lose beginner’s-mind.  I don’t like that.

For those that don’t know, beginner’s-mind is the mental state we are in when we feel as though we don’t know anything about a subject.  We are very open to ideas, and absorb a lot of information in this state.  Zen Buddhism values beginner’s-mind, because there are no expectations, no assumptions, no false beliefs.  Just emptiness, openness, and curiosity.  “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”

A lot of times it feels like that people who offer advice have lost beginner’s-mind.  Which is a shame, because a lot of times their advice is pretty good :-).  A mini-paradox.

I guess I’m just sick of all these ideas.  Too many ideas, and not enough action.  Does the guru want you to succeed?  The minute you walk on your own two feet is the same minute they lose a customer.  I’m not sure if it’s wise to let peoples’ weaknesses drive your income.

But is it wrong to try and help people?  Surely it can’t be.

The blind leading the blind?  Heh :-).

We’re all blind.  It’s just a question of how much an individual recognizes the blindness inherent in themselves.  Hello!

There is a deeper meaning connecting all of our life events together. Everything in our lives happens for a reason, and that reason is tied directly with our core being.

Now… I understand that when I start talking about “deep meaning”, that it sounds sort of spiritual and mystical… but please realize that I’ve come to this conclusion based on what I’ve seen. It’s the only logical conclusion I can come to based on the evidence I’ve been presented with. This isn’t a spiritual realization - this is an observation. Everything does have meaning.

Reality is just like a dream. When we dream, all these symbols and archetypes mesh together to form a strange experience. We wake up, and we might brush it away… or we might look for the deeper meaning. If I dream about building a tree house, this could mean that I’m trying to build an emotional sanctuary to escape to, in order to get away from my problems and feel at peace. There’s meaning. Reality is just like this.

For example, in my car I have two small rubiks cubes hanging from my rear view mirror. The heat made the stickers curl and fall off - so now they are just blank cubes. The rubiks cube represents difficult - but solvable - problems in my life. The stickers falling off represents that I won’t solve these problems in a conventional sense. I will solve the problems by transcending the rules of the game. The stickers fell to the floor in my car, and made a mess. This represents that by transcending the rules, I will create a mess as a result. The stickers had been on the floor for weeks in my car, and yesterday I finally took the time to pick them up and throw them out. This represents that I have finally cleaned up the resulting mess, and everything will work out.

Now - on the surface it just looks like I had some rubiks cubes in my car, the stickers fell off, and I didn’t clean it for a while. Who cares. But when you start treating things as if they have deeper meaning, then they start to actually have deeper meaning :-P.

You may argue that it’s my mind that’s creating this deeper meaning. That reality is random, and I’m just seeing something that isn’t there. You are correct - in a sense. You are correct that my mind is creating this deeper meaning. But the mistake is thinking that reality is random.

Reality is a mirror. There is no better way to put it. In fact, I was at the book store and I read a story highlighting this exact observation. I picked up a “random” book, and started reading “random” pages, and “stumbled” upon the following story (which I will attempt to recall from memory):

A dog entered a room. He spent some time in there, and upon leaving, he was gnarling, barking, growling, and overall just filled with anger. Another dog entered the same room. Upon leaving, he was happy, wagging his tail, with a huge smile on his face. What was in the room? It was a room of mirrors. THIS IS REALITY.

Some might argue that this is no big deal. I mean… everything has meaning. That’s great and everything, but ultimately - so what? That’s nothing new. I disagree with this apathetic response.

This is a big deal. The reason it’s a big deal is because it’s true :-P. This isn’t some philosophical inquiry about how reality might function. This isn’t some pot head drunk moment of clarity. It might come to the same conclusion - but the path is very different.

This is observable - 100% of the time. This is you reading this post. This is me writing this post. This is the keyboard under my fingertips. This is the fan next to my monitor. This is my roommate’s cats. This is my car. This is my relationships. This is my mother and father. This is my bed. This is my job. This is my body. It’s a reflection of myself. I am looking at myself. And therefore, all I can see is deep meaning.

So what’s the practicality of this observation? How does this realization actually help me? How can I actually use it in real life?

Well, for one, I’m going to use it to win the lottery :-P. I may go into the “how” in another post.

Ultimately, this realization helps me become a better person. By looking around me, I see where I am. Who I am. And the small problems that spring up in my life are reflections of problems in my own mind.

For example - I went through a time period of playing chess a little while ago. I bought chess books, studied chess, and tried to improve my chess skills. Looking back, I see deep meaning associated with this. I was attracted to chess for a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones was because I felt a lot of personal responsibility for where I was in my life. Chess intrigued me because in chess - you make all your own moves. No one forces you to move anywhere. The only difference between me and a Grandmaster is how we move. It’s not like poker, where we have to play the “cards were delt”. It’s not like trivia, where our knowledge dictates our success. It’s not football, where our physical strength is what counts. In chess, it’s a simple game, where we have to combine our intuition with our calculating abilities to make simple moves that win. That resonated with me. It’s a reflection.

By studying chess, what I was really trying to do was study the laws of reality. Figure out the game. Use intuition and reason to win.

Now - how does this observation help me? Well - let’s look at chess. For one person to win, another has to lose. As with most games. If I felt a strong connection with chess, and knew that my interest in chess was a reflection of my desire to learn the laws of reality and “win”, then I can see a problem. The problem is that in reality, I don’t have to make someone else lose for me to win. Everyone can win in reality. But if I feel that I must make someone else lose in order for me to win, then that uncovers an unhealthy belief that needs to be dealt with. So - by seeing the interest I had in chess, I can quickly see that I need to inspect my beliefs about the duality of winning and losing, and figure out why I feel that I need to make others lose in order for me to win. And once I root out the problem, I will stop resonating with chess, and become uninterested in it. Which is what happened.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t play chess :-P. Chess means different things to different people, at different times in their life. When I was younger, I used to play chess a lot. I played against a computer. That probably had a completely different meaning at the time :-P.

I’ve outlined two examples in my life on how simple things have deeper meaning (rubiks cube, and chess). I’ve made these observations in dozens, if not hundreds of things in my life in the past month. I am amazed at how everything fits together seamlessly. When we see one or two connections, things become curious. But when we start to unravel the entire web of meaning, then it’s … simply amazing at how accurate of a mirror reality is.

By looking at our interests, we can predict problems that will arise in different areas of our life. Why do we resonate with something? Are there some unhealthy reasons for why we enjoy what we enjoy? How will these unhealthy beliefs filter through to other areas of our lives and create discord? If I can predict all of this, can I start to actually create a better reality by making small - and seemingly unrelated - decisions in my life? Can I win the lottery by being nice to my roommate’s cat? (or am I just insane?! :-P)

Faith is tough.  Faith is something I struggle with.

Really, I believe there is only one application of faith.  Having faith that things will be ok.  Things will work out.

It’s interesting to see how different root beliefs will filter their way through to behavior.  I had a friend who was very controlling and manipulative.  She was two-face, and always had to take control of a situation and make things turn out exactly how she wanted them to.  One day we were talking about things we struggle with, and she mentioned that she knew she was controlling, but she couldn’t help it.

I asked her: Do you believe in God?  The question really threw her off balance.  She started saying that she was raised Christian, and while she didn’t take religion too seriously, she was pretty sure she believed in God.  I told her that her controlling behavior could be a byproduct of not believing in God - that when someone believes in God, they have faith that things will work out on their own.  But without a belief in God, things don’t work out on their own unless you control the situation and make them work out for you.

She looked at me in shock, then walked away.  (Telepathy, anyone?).

Without faith, we become controlling, or feel victimized.  With faith, we allow things to happen naturally, and we get through tough times knowing that everything will work out.  Faith is good.

I believe that modern religion has hijacked this idea of faith to include other things.  When someone doubts the Christian God, they are told to have more faith.  Faith shouldn’t be used to remove doubt about a subject.  If I start to doubt the existence of gravity, a scientist doesn’t tell me to have more faith.  If I doubt that President Bush is doing a good job, it’s not because I don’t have enough faith.  If you doubt something about Christianity, then explore the doubt.  Don’t bury it out of fear of not being “faithful”.

Faith in the future though… faith that things will work out and be ok.  That’s where the value is.  It stomps out fear and worry in a heartbeat.  It removes the desire to control everything.  It tells us that things happen for a reason.  It allows us to let go and move with time, instead of against it.

“We just had a near life experience.”

Let’s say you won a couple million.  What would you do with the money?

“Two chicks at the same time.”

Thank you Office Space.  Nonetheless, despite the cliché, it’s a good question to ask.

When I first thought about winning the lottery, I imagined myself back at the University of Georgia, learning about everything.  Music theory, engineering, brain science, math, physics, psychology, religion, astronomy, computer animation… I wouldn’t have to focus on one major, and could go at my own pace.

For my lifestyle, I imagined myself exercising every day, having a cool place to live, lots of books, lots of cool gadgets, perhaps some hottie college girlfriend.  I’d be living close to some of my friends from Georgia, and it’d be great hanging out with them, having a good time.  I’d love to travel as well… see the different cultures and landmarks around Earth.  I imagined opening a book store where people could go to hang out.  I would have different events that would be fun… group discussions, debates, guest speakers, activities, etc.

Anyways - back to the point.  The question immediately becomes: why not work towards that right now?

So lately, that’s what I’ve been doing.  I pick something off the list of “if I had a shitton of money…”, and do it.  A lot of the things on my list don’t require any money.  For example, I can study all those topics on my own.  I don’t need to pay a teacher.  In fact, when I was in college, I rarely went to class because the teachers always did such a piss poor job.  These past two weeks I’ve been studying music theory, and composing different songs.  It’s fun :-).

I also started exercising a while ago (which I mentioned in another post).  Why wait until I have a big number in my bank account to go running in the sun?

I guess it all seems really obvious though.  Especially in hindsight.  99% of the things I listed don’t even require huge sums of money.  A lot of winning the money is just a boost in confidence.  I bet I could even open a book store without a ton of money, if that’s what I really want to do.  Traveling isn’t that expensive either (right Matt?).

I mean… fuck.  We are free.  Am I looking for the courage to win the lottery, or looking for the courage to live my life how I truly want to live it?  *shrugs*

What would you do with large sums of money?