Created April 7, 2023
Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.
To read Powerful Mind Pt. 4, click here.
The good news is that every negative emotion is a Get out of Jail Free Card to learn something profound. While you’re figuring out what to do to fix whatever caused the negative emotion, you can turn the negative emotion off by saying to yourself, “Hey, I’m already doing all that can be done.” Just make sure that’s true – don’t lie to yourself.
What you’re here to do is to wander around, do what comes naturally, within an established decorum that has evolved naturally over the ages. Learn what you love to do and are talented at, and focus on developing and expressing in that medium. Treat other people right – the Golden Rule. Don’t incite difficulties. Enjoy. Give encouragement and support and lend a helping hand whenever you can. Keep an open mind.
Now, whereas this would probably do it for someone born into the 15th century, I think we need special training today. We venture the following further advice in this imagined User’s Guide…
Expect there to be too many things coming at you. You will be trying to keep up with it all, which will result in you having almost no time to yourself, to just figure it all out. Even before that, simply to sort it all out.
There will be no compelling evidence (if you’re lucky) to have to go figure it all out. As a youth, you may pretend several times in a day that you know something better than you really do, and never have the time or reason to reflect upon that pretense. You may go on doing little things like that for years without realizing exactly what you are doing. You will at some point realize this, and with a shock, realize that you have been literally out of your own control.
But long before you get to any such awakening — realizing that you had been fooled by thinking things were one way when they were really another way — you will be having too much fun to break away from the party. It would also seem odd for you to be spending an unhealthy amount of time by yourself, as perceived by the current culture. This will contribute to you losing your free will to a self-propelled reaction system.
You will have to call upon all thirteen of your weapons to battle this situation and win.
Better however to look at it as a delightful game. You will actually experience it based on what you think it is.
Q. It doesn’t work. I just tried your trick. I wanted it to turn out one way but it turned out another. You lie.
A. You wanted it but you didn’t believe you were going to get it. You can’t simply want it to happen with your intellect — you have to accept that it not only can happen but is happening. This is a “trick” you do with many of your faculties working together, principally the willpower and imagination. Remember to use everything you’ve got. Come back to this User’s Guide as many times as you need in order to make sure that you have not forgotten some part of yourself when you are making an important decision.
The more that all parts of you are in internal communication with one another, the better off you are. It may seem funny to be talking to your cells, or your body, or to some part of your body, but it demonstrates the right attitude internally. Your cells have tiny intelligences but enough to pick up on an attitude of kindness to oneself and one’s parts. Stress turns into distress and starts in the mind then infects the body. This is not the way it has to be. Internal communication starting early will probably increase your physical health. Whether it does or doesn’t is not the point. The point is that it is an idea worth testing. It does you no harm to be kind, respectful, and attentive to every part of yourself. See if it works for you.
All of the things that can go wrong with your mind come down to some degree of incomplete communication between these parts of yourself.
Be a voracious learner. Listen alertly and respectfully, even though inside yourself you may be choosing which bits to accept and which ones you have doubt about. Come back to these questions in your mind. Write them down.
Test ideas cautiously. See if they work before you rest your weight on them. But never stop testing new ideas. Test as many as you can handle cautiously at the same time. Testing new ideas will pay huge rewards in terms of learning. Keep track consciously of what you are testing. Read the results carefully.
A few cautions about your mind. Your mind has an impressive power to suck you in. You won’t realize how deep you’ve gone until something wakes you up. You can take something that is a very small part of your life and concentrate on it so much in your mind until it becomes something enormous in your mind. You no longer see it in its proper perspective. Until something or someone taps you on the shoulder. Breathing helps you stay calm and not get stampeded by your mind.
Be aware that it is easy to overcompensate. When you learn something, it assumes controlling importance in your mind (in this case, the intellect, also known as the rational mind). You never want to make the same mistake again. So you might wind up going to the opposite extreme, unless you realize from the start that this going too far tendency is built into the mind itself. When the mind has too much to think about, it just wants to oversimplify so as to get on with it. Oversimplifying means making everything black or white, so if generosity hasn’t worked, your mind tends to go all the way to stingy instead of dialing back to a balance point. And to bullying if kindness hasn’t worked, and so on.
Also keep an eye on your intellect’s tendency to become sneaky, rationalizing it as creativity. For example, if you are competing with someone else for a promotion, do not act on the clever idea of withholding information from them to give yourself the advantage. This is a mean and petty way to compete. The right way to compete is in a sportsmanlike fashion – unless you are being physically threatened. Best that all your actions would still be suitable if everyone could see them. Think of yourself – and think of each of us – as a role model for future generations.
The feelings – another part of your mind – have the same tendency to overcompensate. If a person feels under-appreciated for his or her gifts, he or she will be overly eager to take advantage of any moment to be a showoff. These self-traps are again just getting sucked into the mind’s self-hypnotizing power. Having a powerful mind means being in charge of your mind, not being hypnotized by it; channeling its power so all parts are integrated. If you know yourself well enough – if there is internal communication – then you will catch yourself before yielding to these emotionally-driven unconscious behaviors.
Chronic syndromes arise from overcompensations of the feelings. These syndromes have been called “attachments” for thousands of years. Something you love too much becomes something you cannot do without, and fear losing; you become angry at or threatened by those you feel may want to take it away. You can be attached to your status, your possessions, your good looks, any number of physical and non-physical things. The most undermining thing in your life will be these attachments. Learning how to develop a Powerful Mind by using all the parts of your mind is the only way to gain freedom from slavery to your attachments.
Be prepared for moments of frightening realization that you don’t have control over your actions, but that you share control with some other parts of yourself that seem to be traitors who betray your secrets by making you make stupid mistakes. This is just life. Don’t be frightened. The other parts of yourself – let’s call them your subconscious – are not out to undo you, they are on your side, but there is a lack of communication. You can establish that communication. Give your subconscious little assignments like “get back to me in three days with some ideas about problem X.” You’ll be surprised that your subconscious will get back to you with some really viable ideas. You will also be making a start at bringing these other parts of yourself out into your conscious mind where all parts are in full communication and synch.
Details to follow in the subsequent posts.
Love to all,
Bill
