Mind Cafe - Mind Control Stories and Hypnosis

The Secret Ingredients that Will Cause People to Give You Money and Make You Rich

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:59:00 +0000

These Secret Ingredients Will Cause People to Give You Money and Make You Rich:

1. Give something of value to the world. You want more of the material treasures of life, but are you willing to give something of value in return for them? In checking the lives of over ten thousand famous and rich men and women, I found that the value they received in money, recognition, fame, or power, was directly in proportion to what they gave the world.

Mental energy, time, service, personality, gifts, and creative talents, are all convertible into gold or other things of value. I discovered that the people who give things to the world that help the greatest number attract money easier then those who create for a small group.

The scientists, inventors, and creative minds, such as writers, dramatists, actors, and producers, seem to make the biggest fortunes, because they are bringing products, comforts, luxuries, entertainment and value to millions of people. Find what it is the world needs, and then set to work producing it for the greatest good of the greatest number of people and your fortune is assured.

2. Put integrity and quality into your services or products. The hidden ingredient used by many people is integrity and quality. This applies to whether you make bread of manufacture automobiles. If you want the world to proclaim you, give people these secret ingredients and they will make you rich.

But this also applies to other values than monetary ones; what makes a good friend? Someone you can depend on; his honesty and integrity, his character, stamp him and his actions. This ingredient can be used for winning love and holding it also. In fact, it applies to every creative act of your life.

3. Think of new things to improve and change people‘s lives, and they will make you rich. It was the newness of products like nylon, plastics, wire and tape recording, TV projection, transistor batteries, frozen foods, canning foods, and all the other modern discoveries and inventions, that made them so great. Look about you, in your own work or home, and see how you could improve or change the things about you, and make it easier for people to live, or to enjoy life more. The world will reward you with recognition and money.

4. Work to add to the comfort of people, to raise their standards of living, or to improve themselves, and you will win the support and recognition of others also. People are all anxious to raise their standards of life, and if you can think of some service, or some product to help people in being more comfortable, or having higher standards of living, your fortune is made.

5. If you can add to the world‘s knowledge or show people how they can use their knowledge to best advantage, people will respond to you and give you money. One of the greatest advances in modern knowledge was in the formation of home correspondence courses and this has led to a complete revolution in the fields of education. Now, at home, one may complete his high school education, take a course in mechanics, electronics, hotel management, and almost any other subject. Millions of people enroll in such courses, and million of dollars are spent for books and courses in these fields.

6. If you can show people how to be healthy and eat right, you have another sure means to a fortune. Gaylord Hauser has made a million through lecturing and writing books on these subjects. Elizabeth Arden has built a multi-million dollar business a year, catering to women who want to lose weight and be healthy and efficient. Then there are those who help inspire and uplift people and who cater to a deep-seated need for soul-inspiration, peace of mind and peace of soul. Such workers are humanitarian, and their efforts deserve support and recognition.

One of the best known in such inspirational work is Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, whose books and inspired radio and TV appearances have helped millions. Another, who has made a great name for himself in New York, and whose books are nationally distributed is Dr. Raymond Barker, who lectures at Town Hall in New York, as has overflow audiences every Sunday morning. In the new Philharmonic Hall of Lincoln Center in New York is Dr. Ervin Seale, who inspires those who hear him with his programs on right living, right thinking and spiritual philosophy. Both of these men may be heard on radio in New York City, where they speak to thousands weekly.

7. If you can build people‘s egos and make them feel a sense of self-importance, you will win a fortune. Dale Carnegie wrote a famous book entitled How to Win Friends & Influence People and founded an institution on public speaking and self-improvement that is still making a fortune long after his death.
Josephine Dillon, who trained Clark Gable and who discovered and made Ely Culbertson famous, was such a dynamic, inspired woman. She was able to make people project their talents to the world through her technique of training. Lee Strasberg, the noted drama coach, who is responsible for over fifty of our greatest Broadway stage and movie successes, is another such person who has a knack for bringing out the ego in another person. When the late Marilyn Monroe‘s will was read, it was found she left half a million dollars to this great teacher for helping and inspiring her.

How Your Name Changes Your Life

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 15:45:00 +0000

People unconsciously make life choices that resemble their names or initials, according to research on the "name-letter effect."

Your name made you do it, albeit unconsciously, suggests new research that finds your name can negatively undermine your goals.

Psychologists in marketing at Yale and the University of California, San Diego studying the unconscious influence of names say a preference for our own names and initials — the "name-letter effect" — can have some negative consequences.

Students whose names begin with C or D get lower grades than those whose names begin with A or B; major league baseball players whose first or last names began with K (the strikeout-signifying letter) are significantly more likely to strike out, according to the report published in the December issue of Psychological Science.

"We found that our own-name liking sabotages success for people whose initials match negative performance labels," the report says.

Assistant professors Leif Nelson of UCSD and Joseph Simmons of Yale conducted five studies over five years (including one lab experiment) using information from thousands of individuals: 6,398 baseball players (377 had K as either a first or last initial); 15,000 MBA students; 294 undergraduate students; 170 law schools with more than 390,000 lawyers; and 284 participants in their laboratory experiment.

"The conscious process is baseball players want to get a hit and students want to get A's," Nelson says. "So if you get a change in performance consistent with the name-letter effect, it clearly shows there must be some unconscious desire operating in the other direction."

The researchers' work supports a series of studies published since 2002 that have found the "name-letter effect" causes people to make life choices based on names that resemble their own. Those studies by Brett Pelham, an associate professor of psychology at SUNY University at Buffalo, have found that people are disproportionately likely to live in states or cities resembling their names, have careers that resemble their names and even marry those whose surnames begin with the same letter as their own.

"If this is an unconscious preference, it suggests we don't really have free will about certain important decisions," Pelham says. "We don't really make those decisions for the reasons we thought we did."

The twist, Pelham says, is that he has believed the name-letter effect would apply only to positive outcomes. Nelson and Simmons, he says, are "showing it applies more so to negative things than positive things."

In the first study of baseball players, Nelson and Simmons pored over 93 years of statistics for players who had at least 100 plate appearances. The second study looked at 15 years of grades for MBA students, but they did not use F because not all schools use that designation.

The study did find that those with initials of A or B don't perform any better, though. Another study of law school admissions found lesser-rated schools had a smaller proportion of lawyers with name initials A and B. The lab experiment used an anagram test that confirmed the previous studies.

The researchers say the effect is definitely more than coincidence but is small nevertheless.

"I know plenty of Chrises and Davids who have done very well in school," Simmons says.

The $435 Mind Control Device

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 09:38:00 +0000

When I received five e-mails to check out the MC Square—a hand held device that's said to relieve stress, improve memory, and enhance concentration through light and sound—I knew I couldn't pass the opportunity up. (My memory is horrible!) Plus, 1.5 million units have already been sold in Korea, so it's gotta be legit, right? And for the first time starting today, it's available in the U.S.

Dragging PCMag.com assistant editor Corinne Iozzio with me to the W Hotel in Times Square, we were presented with a device that looked like a sleek MP3 player connected to earbuds and goggles.

Developed by Daeyang E&C, the MC Square features six program modes with natural sounds like rain drops to soothe and relax your mind. With everyone in the stuffy room watching us, we both put the ear buds and goggles on. We turned on the player and began to see red lights flashing at our eyes.

We were told to close our eyes and listen to the sounds of the ocean in the background. The combination of light and sound, an audio-visual stimulation (AVS), is known to cause "significant changes in EEG patterns and cerebral synchronization." But why the flashing red LEDs? They're "bright, inexpensive, and blood vessels in the eyelids pass red/orange light most efficiently."

Korean students found that after regularly using the MC Square for 15 minutes a day it improved their study skills. One such student said that he was able to memorize vocabulary words in just 10 minutes after using the device, as opposed to more than half an hour. That's a significant difference!

The MC Square isn't just a stress-reducing device. It's also an MP3 player with 512MB of on board flash memory and a mini SD card, as well as a digital voice recorder (30-hour capacity) and image and text viewer with a color OLED screen. The player is very portable, too, at just 0.6-inches thick.

We're expecting to get a unit in-house, because we just have to see for ourselves if this wacky device works.

To purchase the MC Square with earbuds and goggles, it sells for $435.89 at Amazon.com.

Bill Bartmann - From Rags to Riches

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:19:00 +0000

Bill Bartmann - An Inspirational Story

Bill Bartmann is the ultimate underdog and overachiever

At the age of 14, Bill Bartmann was homeless, a high-school drop-out and a member of a street gang. What’s the key lesson Bill Bartmann learned while he was living on the streets?

He learned to read people really well, which is a great skill that he took into the business world. Bill Bartmann continued to drift until he was 17 but one very important moment changed everything.

What happened? Watch the interview with Bill Bartmann to find out:

Not only did Bill Bartmann turn himself around, he became one of the leading authorities on entrepreneurship in America. Here are a couple of the achievements and awards that Bill Bartmann has been recognized for:

* Bill Bartmann was named as “One of the Top 100 Entrepreneurs of the Last 100 Years” by the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership

* Bill Bartmann was awarded the American Academy of Achievement’s “Golden Plate Award for one of the 20th Century’s Most Extraordinary Achievers” - an award previously bestowed upon five U.S. Presidents and three Nobel Prize winners.

Bill Bartmann was not only recognized as one of the leading entrepreneurs, he also started some of the most women and family friendly businesses in the world. In fact, the Working Woman Magazine recognized Bill Bartmann as “One of the Top 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers”.

Learn more about Bill Bartmann

Here is the second part of the inspirational video on Bill Bartmann where he reveals his secrets to success.

Today, it is Bill’s personal goal to share his secrets of success with aspiring entrepreneurs and to lift the self-belief and confidence of hundreds of thousands of teenagers. Bill Bartmann is truly an inspiration.

How to Live Forever (or at least to 100)

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:20:00 +0000

Is the secret to be found among the centenarians in an isolated region of Sardinia?

The Mediterranean island of Sardinia is dotted with prehistoric stone ruins called nuraghi. Little is known about the nuraghi, or the ancient people who built them, except that they predate the earliest invaders to Sardinia, the Phoenicians, who arrived here about 9,000 years ago.

I passed a number of nuraghi as I drove up into the island’s interior through mountains of limestone and granite, on a terrifying road, into a region called the Ogliastra. It’s never been an easy ramble into Sardinia’s mountains. Neither the Phoenicians nor any of other invaders who came to Sardinia later — Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Carthaginians, Arabs, Genoese, Catalans — were ever able to the penetrate them.

The villages of Ogliastra have had very little contact with the outside world since about the 11th century. Even now, the region is considered by many to be a wild, dangerous place and travelers like me are regularly warned about bandits and kidnappers.

Ignoring those overheated warnings, I traveled into the Ogliastra anyway. I’d been sent into the wild interior of Sardinia on assignment by AARP Magazine. Researchers had recently documented an abnormal cluster of modern-day Methuselahs residing here. At least one man in this region lived to 112 and, until his death, was the oldest man in the world. And there were many other centenarians living in isolated Ogliastra villages.

Basically, my AARP assignment called for me to barge in on very old Sardinians and ask: How can our readers, too, live such a long life? The editors wanted tips, nuts and bolts, practical “how to” nuggets.

Of course, I wanted to know these things, too. Like most other human beings, my desire to live forever — or at least as long as I possibly can — knows no bounds. And I, like many, have been fooled before in this quest for longevity. I remember, for instance, a widely reported tale of men in the Caucasus Mountains who lived to the ripe of old age of 120 by subsisting solely on a diet of yogurt. After gorging myself on yogurt, it was soon reported that whole story was a hoax. The men’s birth records were wrong. Faulty data. Sorry.

But in Sardinia, the story is different. This time, after rigorous study, all the Sardinian centenarians’ birth records checked out. The demographers on the case confirm that the age data are perfect. No hoaxes, no inaccuracies.

In fact, researchers have detailed an astonishing longevity hot spot in which they have documented 90 centenarians among a population of 18,000. That means that one out of every 200 people in Ogliastra has lived to celebrate a 100th birthday. It’s an extraordinary figure, about 50 times the rate of the United States, where only one person out of every 10,000 people lives to see 100.

“These are people who not only have a very long life, but they are healthy up to a very old age,” says Luigi Ferrucci, chief researcher of longitudinal studies at the U.S. National Institute on Aging (NIA) and a co-author of the Ogliastra study. “These are not people who’ve gotten diseased or dementia at 70 years old and somehow lived another 30 years.”

This research project is called Akea, an abbreviation of a traditional Sardinian language greeting, “akentannos,” or “to 100 years” (meaning, may you live that long), and it’s made up of researchers from Sardinia, mainland Italy, Belgium, France, and NIA. Since the Akea findings were published in 1999 and 2004, more teams of scientists have arrived on Sardinia, and they now monitor several isolated mountain villages of the Ogliastra as if they were petri dishes. The scientists ask the same questions that any of us would: Why do so many of these people live so long? What’s their secret?

“It’s still an amazing mystery,” says Michel Poulain, the Belgian demographer whose work on the Akea project verified the Sardinians’ age claims. “To be sure, everyone wants to live as long as possible. And everyone is looking into our study to find the recipe.”

In the Ogliastra village of Arzana, I enjoyed a glass of wine with a tiny 107-year-old woman named Raffaela Monni, who was dressed in the traditional black shawl and headscarf of Sardinian women. Sitting in the living room of her niece and niece’s husband, the family doctor at her side translating from Sardinian into Italian, we all toasted “akentannos!”

Raffaela told me about a walnut tree that stands in her front yard and how, up until she was 103, she would climb it. She teared up briefly when she spoke of her husband, whom she was married to for 76 years and who lived until almost 101.

I asked her the obvious question: What’s the secret to a long life?

Raffaela told me that she’s eaten the wild grasses of the mountains her whole life, and that she worked hard from the age of 10, tending to her fields and flock of sheep. Her doctor, Raffaele Sestu, said she takes no medicine at all, but that she does drink a little aquavit each night before bed.

But Raffaela wasn’t the only resident of Arzana in her second century — the sleepy village of 3,000 actually boasted three living centenarians. In addition to them, there were 41 nonagenarians, and a total of 89 people over the age of 85.

The following day, Dr. Sestu’s assistant took me to visit Federica Muceli, 102. She greeted me wearing the same traditional garb and holding a string of rosary beads in her hands. “Do you think you can find her a husband in the United States?” joked the assistant.

“Oh, I’m too old for marriage!” Federica said in Sardinian, with a laugh.

Federica told me about her older sister, who died three years ago at 103. She said she also had two brothers who lived into their 90s. She also spoke of working many years in the fields and pastures.

I had to ask her the obligatory question: What’s your secret?

“Everybody wants to know the secret,” she said, “but there is none.”

“Has it been a good life?” I asked.

“Not so much. Many sacrifices. Too much hard work.”

“But,” she said with a smile, “the other girls had a nice, quiet life. And they died young.”

Common Characteristics of Centenarians

I knew getting to the bottom of the longevity riddle would be difficult. But I didn’t realize how strange it would be, too.

On my first day in Sardinia, in its second biggest city of Sassari, I’d met with Luca Deiana, a professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Sassari and the lead researcher on the Akea project. Deiana, I was told, is the gatekeeper for anyone seeking contact with Sardinia’s centenarians. Several of Deiana’s colleagues on the Akea project described him as “a politician” and told me to be wary.

The fact that Deiana insisted on meeting me in a local café rather than in his office or lab seemed a little odd. But we ordered espressos and began our conversation, helped along by his interpreter, Antonio.

“Here in Sardinia, we have always understood that one can live for a long time, and live well,” Deiana said grandly. “We have wild olive trees here that have lived for 3,000 years.” He then disparaged some of the other centenarian research going on around the world. “There are a lot of lies in other places, but our records are certified.”

Near the end of our brief meeting, Deiana looked me in the eye and said, “After studying centenarians for a long time, I now understand there are certain common characteristics. When I see a person, I don’t usually say anything, but I can tell if someone has the characteristics of a centenarian.”

“What about me?” I ask.

“Yes,” Deiana said. “You seem like you have the characteristics of someone who might become a centenarian.” Like a fortune-teller, he did not elaborate on what those characteristics might be. I told him this surprised me — I hate to admit it, but I’m not exactly the one you’d want to bet your money on in the Great Centenarian Derby.

“How old was your father?” he asked.

“He’s still alive. He’s only 58.”

“How old are your grandfathers?”

“Well,” I said, “one died at age 68 and the other in his mid-50s.”

Professor Deiana concluded our interview soon afterwards.

Later, two of Deiana’s fellow researchers asked me if he’d demanded money in exchange for arranging meetings with centenarians. For the record, I can say that Deiana did not ask me for money. But I can also say that he didn’t introduce me to any centenarians, either, which he had promised he would do.

Nutrition, Mental Health, and the Longevity Gene

Common sense tells us that the keys to longevity stem from both the genes with which we’re born, and the lifestyle we lead — what and how much we eat, whether we drink and smoke, where we live, how much stress we experience. Yet the science of longevity has only begun to unravel the mysterious relationship between genes and lifestyle.

“We have little chance of discovering a longevity gene,” says Gianni Pes, a researcher at the University of Sassari, and formerly a member of the Akea team. “Longevity is a complex thing. Centenarians are not a homogenous group. I wonder if what we’re seeing today is more an act of natural selection or what we’re seeing is because of habit or lifestyle.”

Before the Akea Project, one of the most comprehensive and high profile studies on longevity and lifestyle was the Okinawa Centenarian Study, a 25-year study of 600 centenarians in Okinawa, Japan carried out by the Pacific Health Research Institute in Honolulu. In Okinawa, another longevity hot spot, the islanders’ regimen of regular exercise combined with low-fat high-fiber diet rich in fruits and vegetables, resulted in very low rates of heart disease. Okinawans also have shown the importance of strong bones as they age — they suffer less than half as many debilitating hip fractures as do people in the United States. Researchers attribute this bone strength to high antioxidant consumption, mainly flavonoids and carotenoids, particularly from high vegetable and soy intake.

In fact, Okinawans are the world’s largest consumers per capita of soy. Researchers believe this is linked to a low incidence of hormone-dependent cancers. Breast and prostate cancer are almost unheard of on Okinawa — only about six deaths per 100,000 for breast cancer compared to 33 per 100,000 for Americans. And only four deaths per 100,000 for prostate cancer, as compared to 28 per 100,000 for Americans.

But even more important than what Okinawans ate was how much they ate. An Okinawan man’s daily intake of no more than 1,800 calories was significantly less than the American average of 2,500 calories. Eating fewer calories seems to have a direct correlation with lowering blood levels of damaging free radicals.

Just as important as nutrition was the Okinawans’ state of mental health. Researchers attribute this to what they call the Okinawans’ excellent “psycho-spiritual health.” In personality tests, the researchers found that the centenarians scored low when it came to feelings of “time urgency” and “tension” and high in “self-confidence” and “unyieldingness.” They also found that the Okinawan centenarians had worked well into old age. One result of this is an extremely low prevalence of dementia — only ten percent of Okinawans 85 or older suffer from dementia, versus over 35 percent in the U.S.

All of these findings were published in two recent books, The Okinawa Program and The Okinawa Diet Plan.

When I spoke with Michel Poulain, the Akea demographer, he snidely referred to the Okinawa books as “How to Become A Centenarian in Four Weeks.” He dismissed them as “such a typically American idea.”

Poulain went on to say that he’d visited Okinawa to verify the centenarians’ ages there. “I’ve had some problems,” he said. Apparently many important documents on Okinawa were destroyed during World War II and subsequently rewritten. Poulain said he was preparing his Okinawa findings for publication — which may call the validity of this centenarian cluster into question.

But even Poulain’s age data from Sardinia was initially called untrue by rival demographers — though, so far, the Sardinian ages have held up under further scrutiny. This type of sniping between rival researchers is fairly common when it comes to centenarian research, which is controversial within gerontology. “There is so much guardedness, fear, and paranoia in this field,” says Poulain’s colleague, Pes.

None of which has stopped The Okinawa Diet Plan and The Okinawa Program — and other books like them — from becoming bestsellers. In fact, they are prime examples of a burgeoning genre of healthy-eating books and articles: How To Eat If You Want To Live Forever.

An example: Several studies in the past few years have shown that laboratory monkeys and rats fed very-low-calorie diets live significantly longer than junk-food-eating monkeys and rats. Health reporters jumped on these findings. This led some brave people, on an endless search for the fountain of youth, to experiment with draconian calorie-restricted diets — just like the Okinawans’ — even though the effectiveness of these diets remains largely unproven.

Meanwhile, Nature reported last fall that a substance in red wine, resveratrol, protected mice from the ill effects of obesity and extended their life spans. The mice were fed a McDonald’s-esque diet, and led long, active lives despite becoming obese. “The mice were still fat, but they looked just as healthy as the lean animals,” said David A. Sinclair, the Harvard biologist who led the study, as quoted in the Washington Post. Of course, the researchers were quick to warn against beginning a high-fat, all-you-can-eat diet. You’d have to drink gallons of red wine in order to reach the levels given to the mice. We may be many years away from harnessing the potential benefits of resveratrol — for now everything’s hypothetical.

So if I’m the kind of person who’s keen to increase my longevity — and who isn’t? — it seems I have two options:

a) Struggle to eat 30 percent fewer calories than “normal.”

b) Eat whatever I want, but find the time (and the capacity) to ingest the equivalent of 100 glasses of red wine every day.

Apparently, the science of longevity has become a little like that drinking game where you answer such uncomfortable questions as: Death by fire, or drowning? Would you rather pee in your pants every time someone calls your name, or develop the worst case of acne ever recorded?

Still, the “Would You Rather?” question of ascetic-versus-hedonist is fun to play. While we’re playing, let me ask another question: Would you rather live a decidedly shorter life in a world of 24/7 stress, but still be able eat foie gras, candy bars, and Big Macs whenever you wanted to? Or would you rather, say, live forever as a poor, illiterate sheepherder in an isolated mountain village where resources are scarce?

The "Normal" Life of a Cententarian

In Sardinia, the homogenous populations of several of the Ogliastra mountaintop villages have drawn the interest of several major genetic research teams. In an effort to find the mysterious genetic links with old age, a private life sciences company called Shardna has created what it calls a “genetic park” in two particular Ogliastra villages, Urzulei and Talana (each with a population of a little over 1,000). Shardna is run by a leading Italian molecular geneticist named Mario Pirastu who was able to obtain blood samples — after receiving legal consent — from over 80 percent of the villages. Additionally, because of good church record keeping — birth, death, and marriage records and family census — Shardna has been able to construct genealogy charts for every person who’s lived in the villages over the past 450 years.

“We don’t only study centenarians,” says Pirastu, who worries about putting too much emphasis on the extreme end of the longevity pool. Shardna instead focuses on the entire adult populations of the villages, a much larger task. “We chose Urzulei and Talana because they simplify our job,” he says.

What’s fascinating about the two villages is just how genetically homogenous and pure they are — the creation of something called a “founder effect” in genetics. Urzulei and Talana were each founded by about 20 ancestors, and most of the residents descend from one or more of these. In Talana, for example, there has been less than one percent immigration into the village in the past 400 years. Over those four centuries, 95 percent of Talana residents have married someone else from Talana.

Shardna is now studying common disorders such as incidences of obesity, hypertension, and kidney stones. Pirastu cites one example in which Talana’s residents have more than double the rate of obesity of Urzulei’s. “If you visit the villages, you will see that they have a very similar style of life,” says Pirastu, explaining that people in both villages eat and drink the same things and work almost identical jobs. “We feel this must be genetic,” he says.

But how, exactly, the genetic mechanism works is a much more complicated issue. “It’s hard to say someone has ‘good’ genes. Maybe there was a gene that allowed them to eat less and still survive in poorer times. But maybe in richer times, they eat more and become obese.”

I visited Urzulei with Paola Melis, an anthropologist who works at Shardna with Pirastu. Melis is in the process of compiling personal histories of the villagers — a good example of the intersection of genetics and lifestyle in studying longevity.

“We believe history is very important,” Pirastu says of Melis’ work. “Knowledge of history is integral to this type of genetic research. We believe that some day we may use some of this anecdotal knowledge. Perhaps to compare the type of work someone did, or the types of houses they lived in, or the type of daily stress they might have had. To some, this information may sound naïve, but I think this history of health will become important in years to come. More and more, people are realizing the importance of the context of where you live.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of the lifestyle elements documented in Okinawa — low caloric intake, a diet high in vegetables, a lengthy, vigorous work life, lack of stress — are all prevalent among old people in the Ogliastra villages.

In Urzulei, Melis and I visited a potential future centenarian, 95-year-old Fortunato Mulas. Fortunato, who lives alone, was hanging his laundry when we arrived and was planning to meet four other 95-year-old friends later that afternoon. Over and over again, “normale” — normal — was the word Fortunato kept repeating as I asked him about what he ate, what work he did, how he lived.

He explained what he consumed during a normal day. In the morning, he drank a little fresh, unpasteurized milk. At lunch, he ate fresh vegetables, rice or pasta, and pecorino cheese, sometimes maybe a hard-boiled egg. And he drank a glass of wine. At dinner, he’d have about the same thing, but less. With perhaps a spot of grappa before bed. “I’ve never been a big eater,” he said. “I’ve never been fatter than I am now.”

Like most people in the village, Fortunato seldom eats meat — only a little pork or free-range lamb on special occasions. Even though the Mediterranean is nearby, eating fish is not a part of the mountain culture. Melis noted that the food in Sardinia is the very definition of organic — grown locally and consumed fresh, without preservatives.

Fortunato was a normal member of the village in every way. He worked as a shepherd until the age of 80, he never went to school, never learned to read or write, only attended church sporadically. He never left the island of Sardinia, except once — to serve in Africa in Mussolini’s army. “I started working in the fields when I was four years old,” he said. “It was a normal way of working. We spent long days walking the countryside. I did not know how to stand still.”

This would seem the idyllic picture of a stress-free life. As Melis said to me later, “The life of a shepherd was hard, but not very stressful.” Fortunato, for instance, would not be bothered by an irritating email or a disturbing story in the newspaper — because he cannot read or write. “What’s in his head?” Melis said. “What does he think about all day?”

But just because Fortunato lived as a poor shepherd on a Sardinian mountaintop, don’t think that he’s escaped life without his share of woes. At 13, Fortunato contracted malaria — which was endemic in Sardinia until the 1950s — just like many other children of his era. And when he was serving in the army, in Africa, he was captured by the British and held as a prisoner of war for eight years. Then, a year after he returned home to the village, his wife died, leaving him with a nine-year-old child he barely knew.

As Fortunato told me about his life, I started to think hard about the whole notion of living forever. Given a life such as this, I wonder how many of us would opt to live to 100. Perhaps many of us might agree with Chekhov, who once wrote, “Death is terrifying, but it would be even more terrifying to find out that are you going to live forever and never die.”

At the same time, I realized such thoughts might eventually doom my piece for AARP Magazine. I was right. Weeks later, my editor would write me an email saying I hadn’t really “delivered” on the “how to” they were looking for. “Are people supposed to eat more soy or not?” she asked. I felt like I couldn’t even begin to answer a question like that.

On my last day in Ogliastra, I visited a woman named Barbara Mossudu, who would turn 100 in two months’ time. She told me he had worked in the fields until the age of 85.

Once again, I asked her for the secrets to living a long life. Her family gathered around in the living room and beamed proudly as they translated from Italian in Sardinian. But Barbara wouldn’t have any of it.

“So what if I’m almost 100 years old?” she says. “I can’t go anyplace I want to go. I can’t work. I can’t hear a conversation between people. The only thing I can do is sew lace. It makes the time pass.”

One of her family members asked, “But it’s been a beautiful life, right?”

“Ah, so-so,” she says. “I have seen beautiful things and I’ve seen ugly things. But I didn’t get very upset about anything.”

As her family members bustled around, serving us afternoon drinks and snacks, Barbara looked me right in the eye and said, “I have lived a long time and I am tired of this life.”

Jason Wilson is editor of The Smart Set. He also edits The Best American Travel Writing series (Houghton Mifflin).

Happiness Comes Cheap - Even for Millionaires

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:57:00 +0000

A bar of chocolate, a long soak in the bath, a snooze in the middle of the afternoon, a leisurely stroll in the park. These are the things that make us the most happy, according to new research from The University of Nottingham.

In a study commissioned by the National Lottery, Dr Richard Tunney of the University's School of Psychology found that it's the simple things in life that impact most positively on our sense of well being.

The study compared the 'happiness levels' of lottery jackpot winners with a control group, using a 'Satisfaction with Life Scale' developed by the University of Illinois. Respondents were asked how satisfied they were in relation to different elements of their life, their different mood states explored, how often they treated themselves and what form this took.

Surprisingly, it wasn't the flashy cars and diamond jewellery that upped the jackpot winners' happiness quotient. It was the listening to music, reading a book, or enjoying a bottle of wine with a takeaway that really made the difference.

Dr Tunney said: “Modern-day pressures take their toll on everyday happiness. As a result we try to make ourselves feel better and happier through personal rewards and treats. We've all heard the saying 'a little bit of what you fancy does you good', and treating yourself is the ideal way to keep spirits lifted when you're down in the dumps.

“As lottery jackpot winners are on the whole happier than non-winners — 95 per cent claim they are positive about their life compared to 71 per cent of people in the control group — we researched the treats they rewarded themselves with to see what could influence their mood state.”

The survey contrasted cost-free activities, such as walking and snoozing, with expensive ones like overseas holidays. It asked how frequently they might purchase 'staying in treats' — like a bottle of wine — and how often they bought themselves items like shoes, mobile phones and DVDs.

The research found that happy people — whether lottery jackpot winners or not — liked long baths, going swimming, playing games and enjoying their hobby. Those who described themselves as less happy didn't choose the cost-free indulgences. They rewarded themselves with CDs, cheap DVDs and inexpensive meals out instead.

“While buying sports cars, giving up work and going on exotic holidays is out of reach for most of us, there are small lessons we can learn from society's happiest people to help improve our quality of life,” Dr Tunney added.

“It appears that spending time relaxing is the secret to a happy life. Cost-free pleasures are the ones that make the difference — even when you can afford anything that you want.”

Near-Death Experiences of the Rich and Famous

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 17:44:00 +0000

The near-death experiences of rich and famous people are particularly interesting. They are known all over the world. They are often beautiful, articulate and very talented in what they do. With this in mind, why would such a person reveal to everyone that they were dead and came back to life? Money? They already got that. Fame? They are already famous.

In fact, by telling everyone they came back from the dead, they may be risking their own reputation. People who reveal such things to others often become the butt of jokes or thought to be crazy. Why would anyone rich and famous subject themselves to this when it might result in lost fame and fortune? The only rational reason that such people who have nothing to gain is that it really happened to them and they want to share it.

The following are rich and famous people who risked it all to tell the world about their near-death experience. Some of these accounts are documented in Jean Ritchie's excellent book, Death's Door.

Jane Seymour
Jane Seymour is an actress most noted for the cult classic movie, "Somewhere in Time," with actor Christopher Reeves, and the television series "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." When Jane Seymour was 36 years of age, she had a severe case of the flu and was given an injection of penicillin. She suffered an allergic reaction which led to a near-death experience.

"I literally left my body. I had this feeling that I could see myself on the bed, with people grouped around me. I remember them all trying to resuscitate me. I was above them, in the corner of the room looking down. I saw people putting needles in me, trying to hold me down, doing things. I remember my whole life flashing before my eyes, but I wasn't thinking about winning Emmys or anything like that. The only thing I cared about was that I wanted to live because I did not want anyone else looking after my children. I was floating up there thinking, "No, I don't want to die. I'm not ready to leave my kids." And that was when I said to God, "If you're there, God, if you really exist and I survive, I will never take your name in vain again." Although I believe that I "died" for about thirty seconds, I can remember pleading with the doctor to bring me back. I was determined I wasn't going to die." She then suddenly found herself back in her body.

Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers was the comic genius of a generation of actors. He brought brilliant characterizations to numerous films, including "The Mouse That Roared" (1959), "Dr. Strangelove" (1964), "The Pink Panther" (1964), and "Being There" (1979). He was known for his enthusiastic way of totally absorbing himself in his characters, even carrying roles offstage. He also suffered from sad moods between films. While he knew his characters thoroughly, he said that he really did not know who he was. Then Peter Sellers, the brilliant, confused actor, had a near-death experience.

Seated in a Hollywood mock up of a limousine's back seat while shooting his last great film, "Being There", he told Shirley MacLaine about his near-death experience, astonished that she did not consider him "bonkers." Shirley documents their conversation in her book, Out on a Limb. In 1964, during the first of a rapid series of eight heart attacks, when his heart stopped and he was clinically dead, he had an out-of-body experience and saw the bright, loving light:

"Well, I felt myself leave my body. I just floated out of my physical form and I saw them cart my body away to the hospital. I went with it ... I wasn't frightened or anything like that because I was fine; and it was my body that was in trouble."

The doctor saw that he was dead and massaged his heart vigorously, Meanwhile: "I looked around myself and I saw an incredibly beautiful bright loving white light above me. I wanted to go to that white light more than anything. I've never wanted anything more. I know there was love, real love, on the other side of the light which was attracting me so much. It was kind and loving and I remember thinking "That's God.""

Peter's out-of-body soul tried to elevate itself toward the light, but he fell short: "Then I saw a hand reach through the light. I tried to touch it, to grab onto it, to clasp it so it could sweep me up and pull me through it." But just then his heart began beating again, and at that instant the hand's voice said: "It's not time. Go back and finish. It's not time." As the hand receded he felt himself floating back down to his body, waking up bitterly disappointed.

What effect did his near-death experience have on Sellers? His biographer says that "The repeated act of "dying" became for Peter Sellers the most important experience of his life." Sellers said of death: "I'll never fear it again." Family and friends found him more spiritual and reflective than before.

Elizabeth Taylor
British actress Elizabeth Taylor spoke about her experience of having "died" on the operating table while undergoing surgery, and of passing through a tunnel towards a brilliant white light. Interviewed by Larry King on CNN's "Larry King Live," the legendary Hollywood star related how she had "died" for five minutes on the operating table.

"I was pronounced dead once and actually saw the light. I find it very hard to talk about, actually, because it sounds so corny. It happened in the late '50s, and I saw Mike (Todd, Taylor's third husband, who was killed in a plane crash in 1958). When I came to, there were about 11 people in the room. I'd been gone for about five minutes - they had given me up for dead and put my death notice on the wall. I shared this with the people that were in the room next to me. Then after that I told another group of friends, and I thought, "Wow, this sounds really screwy. I think I'd better keep quiet about this."

Robert Pastorelli
Robert Pastorelli is most noted for his starring role in the television series, "Murphy Brown." At the age of 19, he had a car accident which caused a near-death experience that literally changed how he was living, in a very dramatic way.

"It smashed right into the driver's door. It hit me so hard it actually knocked the shoes off my feet. My car rolled over about four times on this big highway and the next thing I knew I was in intensive care with a collapsed lung. Every one of my ribs was shattered. I had lacerations to my head and face, and my kidneys, spleen and gall bladder were all ruptured. I was a mess.

"I was in excruciating pain. Then, in the next second, there was no pain. Suddenly I realized I was out of my body. I was floating above myself, looking down at my unconscious body lying in the hospital emergency room with my eyes closed. I could see tubes down my nose and throat. I knew I was dying and I thought, "Well, this must be death." I even saw a priest giving me the last rites. But it was the most peaceful feeling in the world. Then I saw my father starting to faint out of grief. Two nurses grabbed him and sat him down in a chair across the room.

"When I looked down and saw my father's pain it had an effect on me. I firmly believe that at that moment I made a decision to live, not die. The next thing I knew I was waking up back in my body. Later, in the recovery room, when I was fully conscious, I told my father what had happened, his fainting and all. He was astounded."

Sharon Stone
"Basic Instinct" star, Sharon Stone, has told how she had a "white light experience" during her brain scare. Stone says she almost died after internal bleeding caused by a tear in an artery at the base of her skull. Sharon was interviewed by Katie Couric about her journey into the afterlife.

When it hit me I felt like I'd been shot in the head. That's the only way I can really describe it. It hit me so hard it knocked me over on the sofa. And Phil was out of town and I called him and said, "I think I had a stroke." But in all fairness, I'm a person who's always saying, " I think I've had a stroke, I think I've had a heart attack, I think I've had a brain hemorrhage ...

I had a real journey with this that took me to places both here and beyond that affected me so profoundly that my life will never be the same ...

I get to be not afraid of dying and I get to tell other people that it's a fabulous thing and that death is a gift. And not that you should kill yourself, but that when death comes to you, as it will, that it's a glorious and beautiful thing. This kind of giant vortex of white light was upon me and I kind of – poof – sort of took off into this glorious, bright, bright, bright white light and I started to see and be met by some of my friends. But it was very fast - whoosh! Suddenly, I was back. I was in my body and I was in the room.î

Gary Busey
Gary Busey, once Hollywood's "bad boy," was nominated for an Oscar for the movie, "The Buddy Holly Story." Busey, who fought addiction with drugs and alcohol for several years, was nicknamed "Gary Abusey" by his wife. Busey has had supernatural encounters in which he nearly died three or more times in his life ...a drug overdose, cancer, and an accident west of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

But the most tragic experience, and one that changed his life, was a motorcycle accident in 1988. Gary was going about 40-50 miles per hour riding on 750 pounds of cold steel. He was not wearing a helmet when he crashed. He was flung over the top of his cycle, head first into the curb and he cracked his skull. Busey had an NDE while he was dying on the operating table after having brain surgery. During his NDE, he was surrounded by angels. Busey stated that they didn't appear in the form that people see on Christmas cards. The angels he saw were big balls of light that floated and carried nothing but love and warmth - and this love is unconditional.

Larry Hagman
Larry Hagman, of "Dallas" and "I Dream of Jeanie" fame, underwent a liver transplant in 1995. Years of heavy drinking resulted in cirrhosis and cancer of the liver. He was only weeks away from certain death at the time of his liver transplant and near-death experience.

Larry describes what he experienced: "I was able to look over the edge. I got a little glimpse of what was the next step. I didn't see a light some people see, but I had a wonderful feeling of bliss and warmth. The bottom line is "love," that sounds corny, but it was just lovely, uplifting."

Rebecca DeMornay
Rebecca DeMornay starred in the movie thriller, "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle." When she was 7 years old, she was in Mexico City, Mexico, when she got ill from a peptic ulcer and had what she believes was a near-death experience.

"One night the doctors told my mother that there was only a fifty-fifty chance that I'd make it. I remember that I was tied to three IVs but I recall getting out of bed and looking out of the window: it was snowing. There was an old-fashioned lamppost and barefoot children were dancing around it, singing. I went back to bed and the next morning the crisis was over. In 1983 I started thinking about it: "Does it ever snow in Mexico City? Do they have these strange kind of lampposts there?" I went back to Mexico and I didn't see those lampposts anywhere. Nor does it ever snow there."

Donald Sutherland
Donald Sutherland, who played the character, Hawkeye Piece, in the movie version of "Mash", had a near-death experience when ill with meningitis in 1979.

"Suddenly the pain, fever and acute distress seemed to evaporate. I was floating above my body, surrounded by soft blue light. I began to glide down a long tunnel, away from the bed ... but suddenly I found myself back in my body. The doctors told me later that I had actually died for a time."

Eric Estrada
Eric Estrada became famous for his starring role in the television series, "Chips." While filming an episode of "Chips," he had a terrible motorcycle accident that led to a near-death experience.

"Suddenly I was in a long corridor with bright lights, beautiful music, and a feeling of great peace. But something seemed to be blocking my progress. A voice told me, "You've got to go back. You've a lot still to do. You've achieved success and stardom but you haven't achieved personal happiness and peace of mind." After hearing the voice, he returned to his body.

Eric Roberts
Internationally renowned actor Eric Roberts has starred in more than 70 films, including the Dannion Brinkley movie, "Saved by the Light." Eric has traveled all over the world encountering many colorful experiences. One of Eric's most dramatic moments took place in Westport, Connecticut. He was driving along, became distracted by his dog, and crashed. He was hospitalized in a coma and almost died. It was this state that Eric claimed to have had a surreal out-of-body experience.

Elvis Presley
People having near-death experiences are greeted by someone - usually someone they deeply love or the so-called "Being of Light". When Elvis Presley died, it seemed like the whole world mourned. He was truly loved by many people the world over. Since then, many people have reported having "Elvis sightings" where the spirit of Elvis appears as an apparition to people much in the same way that Jesus appeared to people after his death.

Not only this, many near-death experiencers find themselves greeted, not by a Being of Light, but by Elvis Presley. According to Dr. Melvin Morse in his book on near-death experiences entitled "Transformed by the Light," a 45-year old Mid-western teacher saw Elvis Presley in an intense light during her near-death experience. The woman had met Elvis when she was a child. The following is her near-death account:

"I entered into a dark tunnel and suddenly I was in a place filled up with love and a beautiful, bright light. The place seemed holy. My father, who had died two years earlier, was there, as were my grandparents. Everyone was happy to see me, but my father told me it was not my time and I would be going back. Just as I turned to go, I caught sight of Elvis! He was standing in this place of intense bright light. He just came over to me, took my hand and said, "Hi, Bev, do you remember me?"

Dr. Raymond Moody wrote an entire book on Elvis sightings, including near-death experiences, entitled Elvis After Life. Because of the large number of devoted Elvis fans, it should not be a surprise that people having NDEs should be greeted by the King.

How to Slow Down Time With Your Mind

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:18:00 +0000

Your spirit operates outside time and space. When there is an emergency where danger is about to approach you faster than you can normally sense, your spirit will compel you to act quickly without pondering. It directs you through your instinct and reflexes. Think of a time when you moved out of harm's way in an instant and the move was so spontaneous it seems that everything just flowed in the moment. Your awareness of what was happening and your response happened without hesitation, but so quickly that it was almost together at the same time.

That is because your spirit can observe things and sense reality beyond your ordinary rate and range of awareness. Imagine that a dagger is flying towards you from the side. In ordinary rate of awareness, there is simply not enough time to notice the dagger coming and to move out of the way. But in the realm of your spirit’s awareness, time is slowed down to a crawl and it can fully perceive everything that is happening no matter how quickly. It sends the message to you and in that moment you experience the spontaneous and seemingly simultaneous knowing and action. The awareness comes just before the action but it seems that time slows almost to a standstill during that moment of thought. Perception and action become as one.

If you want to consciously perceive faster so that things don’t seem to happen so quickly, you have to slow time down in your consciousness.

It is not time that slows down but you that slows down. See in your mind’s eye and memory things slowing down. Like a picture frame frozen from a movie in motion. It is the way you experience time slowing down or stopping when you see a beautiful person of your dreams.

It would be an advantage for anyone to stop the world or at least make everything appear to move in slow motion. It would give you time to analyze the situation and the actions of everyone and everything around you. It gives you extra time to determine your actions in a pressure situation. This would would be incredibly useful in business, driving your car in traffic, playing games, military combat, sports and life threatening situations.

Be Fully Alive to This Moment

Perceptive awareness is being fully alert and living fully in the moment. It is seeing the trees bend in the wind and the way the birds circle overhead. It is sensing how the trees feel and what problems and joy the birds are experiencing. It is experiencing the full moment around us and not just our little thoughts. It is clearing the mind of future events and past replayed scenes, so you can experience the entirety of the current moment in time. It is putting yourself in the full frame picture now in front of you in relationship to everything happening around you. It is being fully alive. With that kind of perceptive awareness, a moment can seem to you to last forever.

A master baseball batter is apparently able to slow things down when he’s at the plate. To everyone else, the ball would be rocketing toward the plate at approximately 100 mph, almost faster than the eye can see. But to the focused athlete, the ball seems to slow down just for him, and present itself to him.

This is what many of the best batters have this in common. Somehow, when they need to slow things down to make their big play, they are able to perceive everything happening in slow motion. The ball rolls slowly up to the plate and is easy to see, often appearing larger than life. It’s almost as if the ball is waiting for them to hit it. To everyone else, the ball is racing to the plate at a blistering speed, curving, skunking, and breaking in ways that make it almost impossible to track, let alone hit.

This is truly time manipulation, since the perception of the person who seems to manage this trick is that time has been stretched longer or made shorter. Since this is the perception of the magician, and becomes the way he acts upon the world, it becomes that person’s own functional reality. It’s really a consciousness shift and an expanded awareness. And yes, it is real magic as we will see.

When playing baseball as a batter, allow yourself to focus consciously on the location and speed of the ball. Clear your mind of all noise and clutter. Get unnecessary thoughts out of your head. Tune out all sound and distraction around you. Simply focus on the baseball being pitched to you. Focus your intent. Imagine hitting it squarely and watching it sail far through the air. Concentrate on your abdomen and visualize projecting energy from this “will center”. You must want to hit the ball and will it to happen. See the ball big and bold. Fixate on the ball. See only the ball and focus your total intent and will on the ball. Did the ball appear to be moving slower than normal? If so, you are well on your way to becoming a master of time manipulation.

For most rapid perception, attention must be at its maximum focus on the area of the thing to be perceived. You must intend to see everything you can in that moment of looking. When you focus only on the thing you are looking at, things surrounding will become dimmer and out of focus while moving in slow motion together with it.

How to Experience Timelessness

To experience timelessness, you need to focus intently on the moment at hand. You cannot allow your mind to wander over events of the past or wallow in deep concern over the future. You must be in the present moment, fully alert and clear headed. In short, you must be totally involved in the “now”.

You must not fear but be calm and have a heightened state of awareness. Fear collapses time. You do not want to collapse time, you want to expand it. Awe is one of the feelings that expands time and slows it down. The opposite is true, things that move in slow motion likeness create a feeling of awe. Fear and awe are very similar and yet very different feelings. Fear causes you to be totally unseeing and blind to the action of the thing you are afraid of in the moment. Awe causes you to be totally seeing and taking in the fullness of what you are looking at.

Scientists have shown that mild anxiety can improve performance in some instances like a 100 meter dash, a musical performance, or even an exam. But for the most part, a full-blown autonomic response is not adaptive in most of these circumstances. These are classic instances of what the Taoists would call getting in your own way.

The ancient Eastern masters from various traditions such as Taoist, Buddhist, Hindu, Zen, Sufi and many others recognized this feature of the human nervous system, and so found antidotes to it. These were awareness and equanimity. They cultivated a calm temperament through meditation and breathing exercises, which you can think of as strengthening the parasympathetic response.

As a result, the Eastern masters were able to develop a very strong and nearly imperturbable presence. Because they were not getting in their own way, in the face of danger they were pure action, maximally effective. This cultivation fed into a hyper-aware state of mind, which, interestingly enough, seems to block out emotion-based responses.

Empathic healers who transfer energy to others in therapeutic touch reach a level of heightened alertness, which is classified as hyper beta brain activity. This is a state of “super alertness” similar to the keen alertness that Zen masters have been observed to reach in closed-eye meditations. In this state, the healer is acutely focused on one thought or activity, tuning out all peripheral distractions.

You can also heal or comfort yourself in this manner. In this heightened state of consciousness, you can focus on any area of pain or injury and send healing energy to that area in thought forms. Similarly, you can use your hands to help or to heal, using your hands to project and conduct that healing energy.

A concentrated mind is not an attentive mind, but a mind that is in the state of awareness can concentrate. Consciousness or awareness is never exclusive, it includes everything. It is not a constricted concentration but a relaxed and free one. When you get into the calm and unperturbed state of mind of conscious awareness, you can perceive easily and nothing can happen too quickly for you. When you are able to slow time down in consciousness, you can use time as the ultimate weapon. Nothing can stop you but you can stop anything. Time is the ultimate illusion. All time is mental.

By using the principle of “it is not time that slows down but you that slows down”, you slow down your actions to slow down the rate of things moving around you in consciousness. Then once you have that increased rate of perception, you can start moving faster again with much greater control and effectiveness. This is the secret of slowing down in order to go faster. Do not hurry because hurry manifests fear and collapses time. Only when you are calm are you able to perceive things in slow motion.

Act as if you have all the time to do everything you want.

Every time you slip up on an action or have a hesitation, it’s because you overlapped a proper sequence of things and it just cancels out in your mind. Maybe it’s because you were in a hurry. Your mind can only do one thing at a time, yet each may be done at the rate of microseconds, giving the illusion of many things at once. If you actually try to do many things at once, nothing happens. We’re referring to the conscious awareness here, although your subconscious can do many things simultaneously. It is your conscious awareness that uses rapid perception in order to slow time down.

Time is an illusion, only consciousness is reality. Who is to say that only a certain amount of things can happen within one second and not more? There are times when people encounter life threatening situation and in the moment, their whole life passed in front of them. As their precious life hung in the balance, for one split second, they took stock of their life, including their loved ones, unfulfilled dreams and unrealized goals and made a momentous decision that saved them in virtually no time at all.

Maybe you experienced moments like this before. It is a state of superconsciousness. Everything seemed to slow down. Things seemed to appear in slow motion. You saw your loved ones and they seemed to be frozen in time. You considered logical arguments and argued them through the steps to completion. All of this takes a long time normally, but for this one instance when you are so sharply focused and alert, you play it all our in one magical moment, a moment that you seemed to control.

You can perceive things in slow motion and still let your thoughts and actions flow at the “same speed”. It is all relativity. To you, time around you slows down but to an outside observer, you become phenomenally precise and in control. When you are able to perceive faster, you also possess the ability to respond faster. Each second of your time becomes stretched and you can have increased rate of movement within it. Your time is increased compared to other people’s. Those watching with normal rate of consciousness will see you moving like flashes of lightning with sudden bolts of speed.

You can also use your mind to increase your own rate of movement to phenomenal levels. Think of yourself moving at extremely high speed that is beyond the ordinary. And act with that mental state. Think speed and you manifest speed. Time manipulation and phenomenally fast movement like all mind powers, require you to be in the right state of consciousness to be of effect.

The best ballplayers, it seems, have learned how to manipulate time whenever it suits them. Perhaps they do this without a great deal of thought or analysis, but they certainly employ all of the key factors of time magicians. They focus their intent, engage their will power, and energize their thought forms. This is personal magic. This is personal power. Everyone can do it. The superstars just do it more easily and more often than the rest of us. We say that they are gifted or superhuman. They are simply focused, intent and willful.

All champions have one thing in common, they have learned to seize the moment. No matter what situation we are in, there is always a cubic centimeter of chance that appears in the moment for us to accomplish what we want. The trick is to be alert enough to seize the moment and then have enough personal power to execute the appropriate move at the appropriate instance. Impeccable warriors are fully alert and fully aware of the physical world.

Everybody knows that under normal conditions when heroics are not on the line, a person cannot pass a ball through a crowd to a selected teammate who scores, all in less than one second. Under normal circumstances, most people cannot even locate a person in a crowd in less than one second, let alone pass the ball to him. This demonstrates over and over again the elasticity of time.

There’s a young swimmer who came out of nowhere at the end of a race to eclipse the field. She always found a way to win, and would “pick her spot” to “make her move.” Still, it seemed uncanny how she could close the big gap between herself and the race leader at the end, when you consider she had to swim nearly twice as fast as she had been swimming throughout the rest of the race.

It’s like the track sprinter who digs down at the end of the race to bolt like a cannon to victory at the end. To the observer, it looks as thought they are running against opponents who are moving in slow motion. How can somebody who’s been running at top speed suddenly double that speed at the end of a race, when they should be the most tired? It’s an obvious display of will power, focused intent, and energized thought power, whereby they conceive of miraculous victory and believe it is possible. And whatever our consciousness can conceive, the body can achieve. Since everything is consciousness, the physical world is only an illusion.

Move Into the "Zone" of Higher Performance

You can cope with daily emergency situations and daily challenges where you need extra time and powers that heightened awareness affords you. You can run faster in less time and slow down events when needed by altering your perception of time and space. Some of the greatest athletes do it. Heroic rescue teams do it. You can do it too.

You can meditate anywhere and reach a state of heightened consciousness and timelessness. Surely, star athletes in action do not stop everything that they are doing to sit down in perfect posture and slowly number their bodies to enter this state. They have learned to do it within the flow of events. They pop in and out of this state, as needed. They do it quickly and almost effortlessly with practice. It becomes a learned behavior. Soon your total self will sense the opportunity or need and shift you to that new, higher level of consciousness. Then everything slows down in front of you, so that you can respond.

If you watch top athletes who gets into this “zone”, as sports people often call it, you will notice that their eyes seem to glaze over or close halfway for a brief time. They might even appear to be going into a trance. That trance, of course, is the altered state of consciousness known to meditators. They go into a state of higher consciousness very briefly. A split second can seem to last much longer to a person in this state because there is no time or normal laws of physics in higher consciousness.

Most people think that spectacular athletes simply try harder when they “turn it on”. Certainly, they do find extra energy and move with greater speed in less time at these moments, almost as though time for them was standing still. These golden moments in an athelete’s life are truly magical. They can see everything happening in slow motion around them. They have all the time in the world to make amazing moves. They can run faster, think faster, and jump higher than anyone else. And all of this comes by slipping momentarily into higher consciousness, a nonphysical reality where time does not exist and the normal laws of physics do not apply. What’s even better, they operate in these golden moments with a higher consciousness that thinks faster and better than the normal, physical consciousness that people use.

Remember that you control time as you experience it. As an agent of change, you control the only real measure of time. This is because time only occurs with change. The theatre of events around us is interpreted by our personal perception of change. Your perception will be somewhat different from mine, although we might agree on many things we observe together. Because of your unique perception, you create your own reality. You also create your own sense of time as an agent of change. Time simply measures change. Beyond that simple function, time is nonexistent. There is really only the “now”.

Since time only operates according to perception of it, you can manipulate time by controlling your perception of it. Your higher consciousness exist in the realm of timelessness. Stay in a state of heightened awareness in order to make your perception of time stand still. It is a matter of personal time perception and a focused intent to stay in the now. There are people who use such time powers to transverse great distances in very little amount of time and cause limited resources to last far longer than normal as though inexhaustible. Such are the miracles that happen when time and space are altered.

Slow Time Down and Stop the World

Sword masters and ninjas all use this “slowing time down” and “stopping the world” with the mind technique to accomplish amazing feats of lightning fast combat which normal perceiving people can hardly even comprehend how it is humanly possible for themselves to attempt.

We miss ourselves. We are so busy out there in our minds, in the mirror, on the phone, on the pc, listening to deafening music, overtaking, seeking power, status, labels. The boy racer feels alive, excited, when he is near a near death opportunity! Adrenalin pumping, over excited, showing off, seeking attention, seeking power, seeking approval, fearful. Fight or flight that we cannot see the signs. We make mistakes, we miss turnings, we lose or forget things. Because we lose the plot, we lose reign of our senses.

Only when there’s an accident, a car crash, a thump on the head, a slap in the face, a comment, a synchronistic moment, a glance from a beautiful person, song of a sweet bird, the rising or setting of the sun, a shooting star, ever renewing the rhythm of the waves do we stop for a second…time slows down…in awe, devotion, speechlessness, thoughtlessness, our ears perk up. We become aware of something here now. Something beautiful, fresh, sweet, pristine, shining, glowing, effervescent, ever fresh. Only at these times, are we awake, truly alive - during the skid / bang / crash - time slows down.

Mindfulness can be defined as knowing what is happening while it is happening, no matter what it is. The essence of meditation is training in mindfulness. It’s direct perception. We see through meditation, what the mind is doing, moment by moment. Why? Because we are training ourselves to become present. If we are present, we naturally bring our intelligence to bear on the moment. Therefore we have no option but to find out what is happening.

Meditation, then, involves being present with what is here. The observer consciousness allows you to fully observe what is happening internally as well. You notice thoughts and feelings as they arise and realize the causes. It is a self-reflective awareness where you know you are thinking when thinking happens. When you become mindful, you become more aware of things both within and without. The way to wisdom and intelligence is to understand ourselves as human beings. Not through a theory, not through a concept, but through direct experience.

When you are calm, you are clear seeing. You filter out a lot of noise that affects consciousness. To have a calm mind is to silence and still a lot of vibrations leaving perception to be free and unhindered. You get into the state of observer consciousness, where you are just watching what is going on and seeing it in every moment of its happening. Mindfulness is the systematic training in knowing what is happening, while it is happening.

As the mind becomes tranquil, many things begin to become clear. Things that were not formerly clear to us about ourselves, the world around us, the way we are living, relationships. We become clear about everything. So we need to generate within our minds the conditions for a prelimary mindfulness which is the essence of meditation. As tranquility arises we began gaining insight into the state of our own minds. Insight may arise naturally with tranquility. That is the traditional teaching. We train in tranquility and insight naturally arises.

Insight is the most profound level of learning. It is learning through direct perception which naturally gives rise to understanding. It is not learning through externally acquired information, something imported from outside. It leads to wisdom because it is learning inwardly how we are and what we are as human beings. When your meditation becomes really powerful, it also becomes constant. Life offers many challenges and the serious meditator is very seldom bored.

When you’re looking for something or a solution, take time to pause and enter the stilled state of consciousness. Don’t think of it as wasting time during the work day. With practice, this little exercise takes very little time, as others perceive it. Think of it as a creative way to think through your problems by engaging your higher mind to meditate on work issues. In that state of consciousness, the answer can come to you suddenly.

Remember, even a brief second in an altered state of consciousness can seem like hours, since you are controlling time. You are creating perfect timing of perfecting time manipulation. Time is but an illusion. There is all of the time in the world, if you can focus your intent and control your perception. Make your own reality.

Any activity where you perform can be expanded and enriched by a heightned state of awareness that allows you to expand your perception of time and operate somewhat outside of normal physical limitations.

Slow down only that which you want to, otherwise allow it to proceed at normal speed. Use rapid perception on whatever you want to, whenever you want to.

Six Power Steps to Your Success

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:39:00 +0000

The following power steps structure your thinking to make sure the actions you take will drive you towards success.

Power Step #1: Be In Charge Of Your Life

Caring what other people think of you puts them in charge of your life, instead of you.

'What will other people think of me?' slavery is extremely common. Most of us are brought up (rightfully so) to consider others. But, unless we are discerning, we soon find ourselves caught up in a job we can't stand, or living in a relationship which makes us unhappy, or getting caught up in the spiral of poverty.

'Trying to please other people all the time' syndrome begins in childhood. It stems from a desire to be liked and admired. Let's look at a fairly typical scenario: three boys, Fred, Joe, and Matthew, all five years old, are best pals. They fight to sit together at school and spend their breaks in a group. Fred comes to school one day with a stack of Pokemon cards to show his friends. Joe is envious of Fred's collection and a fight breaks out when Fred refuses to give a prized card to Joe.

There are several resulting scenarios, all with serious implications for Fred's future. A teacher could break up the fight and make Fred feel guilty for not parting with the prized card. Joe could refuse to talk to Fred even ending the friendship, unless Fred relented. Matthew would side with either Joe or Fred, or be a peacemaker and force the other two to discuss the problem and sort it out amicably.

The biggest danger to Fred, is if the solution entails his giving the card away, when he really doesn't want to. In other words, if the only reason he gives in, is because he desperately wants to be liked and it really matters what his friends think of him. If they were real friends, of course, Joe would understand Fred's view and Matthew would not criticize. Fred might even willingly offer Joe another not so valuable card out of his collection.

Over the years thousands of small incidents build up, until by the time we are adults, most of us make a habit of putting what other people think of us before our own personal needs and desires.

The Right Reasons

Before you cut the grass, decorate the house, start a business, go on holiday, always ask yourself, 'am I doing this for the right reasons?' Yes, the gardening has to be done, but not if you're in the middle of crucial market research and if you don't cut the grass today you're worried that the neighbor's will think you're lazy. Yes, a house has to be decorated, but not if it's at the expense of your health through shooting your stress level through the roof trying to fit it in between a busy advertising campaign, and it's only because your partner insists you do it now.

'Other people' slavery kills your creativity, your energy and drive towards your own goals and fulfilling your dreams. It stops you from going to places you want to visit and enjoying the kind of entertainment that you enjoy. So, make certain you're not always driven to do things, merely because you're worried about what other people think of you. Be confident in who you are!

Power Step #2: Strive to be Different

Nearly everyone you know will strive to be normal - because it's socially acceptable. But the normal person goes nowhere special and achieves the mundane.

Using a fictitious character called Norman, here's an example of his normal expectations of life and mediocre results:

'I live in a pleasant neighborhood in an average house (translated as meaning: all the houses and gardens along the street look exactly alike, apart from the odd differences in plants). I own an average car (just another standard box on wheels, which apart from minor differences looks like nearly every other car on the road).'

Norman's other goals and ambitions: 'I save up all year round to take my wife and children on holiday, somewhere nice where it's safe. We usually book a package holiday, so everything is taken care of and we know exactly what to expect. Even the entertainment is all planned for us.

My job is boring, but it pays the bills and the pension is good. It'll never make me rich, but then I don't want to be rich (but he wouldn't give away a lottery win!). Anyone who's rich has had to lie and cheat their way to the top. I like to sleep at night with a clear conscience. I may not have much but at least it's honest toil.

I don't have much to do with the neighbors; I don't really like them. But, to keep the peace I mow my lawn once a week and keep the garden weeded and tidy, and do the odd job for them. I like to think they view me as a nice guy.

Every other weekend we visit our best friends, Alice and Paul, and they visit us alternate weekends. Like us, they're your average typical family. Most nights after work I shower, change and after dinner, put my feet up and watch television until bedtime. Every Sunday, we have a roast dinner and every Friday we treat ourselves to a fry up. Am I happy, well, it's life isn't it?'

That's how Norman thinks and lives his life and that's how many people live their life. The Normans spend their days, grumbling about how they hate their job, get fed up with their bosses and partners, but that's all they do. The same gripes day in and day out - but taking no action to change their situation, simply because they are slaves to being normal (and 'what will other people think of me, if I do something unusual?').

Living in the Fast Lane of the Elite

Let's compare Norman's goals and ambitions with another invented character, David. He's one of the smaller group of people who move forward and live the life of the elite and privileged.

'My philosophy on life is simple. Life is too short to be little.

I'm not concerned with what other people think of me. If all my neighbours want to cut down their hedges and build short brick walls and block pave their drives, that's their choice, but I'm not going to have it done just to please them. I like the trees so they're staying and I prefer to have a shingle drive. I've done everything possible to make our house individual.

Often, I ring Sarah from the office and ask her to forget about cooking dinner for that night and how about going out for a meal? We've tried all the restaurants within a twenty km radius.

We both love holidays, and I take the family as often as possible. We spend most weekends, exploring new places and trying out different activities.

I love my job, it's very challenging being a manager. I get to meet and work with people of many different personality traits, from varied backgrounds. Every now and then a junior is obviously aiming to take my job. I don't find it threatening, I like the challenge. I enjoy working with intelligent people who stretch my potential.

I work hard and I am paid well. Do I feel guilty? No, I expect to be paid handsomely for my efforts, I wouldn't have it any other way. We live in a large house in an exclusive area and that's my reward for going the extra mile at work. I don't automatically go home at the end of the working day. And sometimes I arrive at the office as early as 6am, just to prepare for a meeting with my team.

I want to be rich and I am prepared to plan and work towards my goals. I look forward to the future. I don't know what's around the corner and I don't care, because whatever happens I will handle the situation. I know I can solve problems - my strength lies within, it does not come from any outside forces. I couldn't care less whether other people approve of me or not, I know I'm okay and that's all that matters.'

Two Opposing Philosophies

Norman's slavery to acting normal (and slavery to what other people think), creates poverty and unhappiness. While David's striving to be different (and refusal to be a slave to other people's expectations of him) creates wealth and happiness.

If you are ever tempted to query if David's attitude is not a tad selfish, then just ask yourself this question, 'who would you prefer to have as a friend? Norman, who's bored and unhappy or David who's exciting and happy?' Easy isn't it.

Power Step #3: Look to the Future

If you dwell on your past mistakes your creativity can crash to a grinding halt and you will be unable to move forward. Losing is good if you interpret it correctly.

Demonstration Example: A friend of mine told me how a number of years ago, an acquaintance of his, approached him with a spectacular lead about a stock that was certain to triple in price in the next few weeks. The price was $7.45 a share. So, despite his misgivings he bought 200 shares. From that day the stock dropped. Finally eighteen months later he decided to cut his losses and sell.

He sold the stock for a huge loss at a grand total of $413. He could have let this one bad experience drive him from ever investing in the stock market again. However, this wise man explained, he was glad to have learned such valuable lessons.

It taught him:

1. Ignore the guy who wants to give a hot tip.
2. Check into a company carefully before buying.
3. Sell if it starts dropping too much.

Education of the Highest Merit

Don't regard mistakes as mistakes. It ceases to be a mistake and loses its power to hold you back if you can learn to be glad that you've not failed but learned valuable lessons in life. That attitude will help you to build future successes.

Lost a job? You probably weren't suited, so take the time out to decide what you really want to do. Built a business and then it crashed? Perhaps you don't like running your own business. Can't sell a product? Look for the reason and then act. Either try out other ways to sell it or scrap the product and sell a different one.

Blessed is he who is not discouraged by mistakes. Blessed is he who is glad he makes mistakes. Winning - or losing - is a state of mind.

Power Step #4: It's Never Too Late

Sadly, the following story is all too common: Bill spent years training to be an engineer, although he never really liked engineering. But he thought it was worth the sacrifice because it was a highly paid skill.

After college, he started a job with an engineering company. Years later he was still working at the same company and still hating it. His excuse was with a mortgage and family ties he was scared to leave the engineering firm and go into a job with lower wages.

After twenty years he was still afraid to correct a mistake made all those years ago. He was now too scared to change jobs, simply because he'd left it too late. He didn't want to compete with younger men experienced at their job.

If you have a goal and you find yourself saying 'it's too late', the only way to conquer that fear is to ignore it and go ahead and do the thing you fear. It's NEVER too late if you have the courage and the passion to follow your dream.

Power Step #5: Don't Crave Security

In ages past we accepted that life was full of hardships. They grappled with huge animals in a desperate bid to kill them for food. The odds were simple; either succeed or starve, kill or be killed.

As civilisations discovered fire and then electricity and gas to keep warm, bought food from markets and built houses of stone, people became less willing to deal with any unexpected events that threatened to turn their cosy life upside down. So, insurance was invented.

The idea of insurance is to cushion the impact of the unexpected. In theory it's a good idea, but it has turned our society into a population of security seekers. It has weakened our strength as individuals who know we can surmount any problem or situation that life throws our way.

The stifling extent of this slavery is enormous. The more security we have the less psychological freedom we can enjoy and the less our chances are of success and abundance.

Dare to Take a Chance

The only places to find security are a prison or mental hospital. Inmates are assured a roof over their heads, food and warmth and no responsibilities. The price tag for this security? No freedom.

Unfortunately, it's all too easy to reel off a list of bad things that could happen to us. For most people it's easier than thinking of the good things that could happen. People who crave security are slaves to a vivid imagination that conjures up bad news items that could happen to them, and they allow these images to cripple their actions. Too afraid to start that great business idea because of all the things they imagine that could go wrong. Too frightened to sell up and buy a larger house in another area because the house prices could drop or the children won't like the new schools, or... and so it goes on for an endless list.

Every child loves surprises and life is fun and exciting because of this. As we grow up and we fight for security, we eliminate the risks but in doing so we eliminate the surprises and limit our chances to achieve more than a humdrum life.

If you want to make sure you don't stifle your need for excitement:

1. Dare to be individual.

2. Dare to develop your own style - instead of following fashion.

3. Dare to study and work to improve yourself in your profession.

4. Dare to have a positive mental attitude and the courage to try.

In other words: Dare to take a chance.

Power Step #6: I Am Certain to Win

Our minds drive us to achieve exactly what we believe we're capable of achieving. This is good news because once we understand this and master the art of controlled thinking, then we can guide our destinies towards success.

Controlled experiments over many years have proved that children who are considered by their teachers, friends and families to be 'troublesome or terrors' actually end up getting into trouble with a high percentage becoming juvenile delinquents. However, the 'good' group of boys (in the same age group at the beginning of a study) believed by teachers, friends and families to stay out of trouble and succeed in school, go on to do so. Each group of children achieve in accordance with what people around them believe them capable of doing.

The conclusion of many similar studies is this: thinking does make it so. Only a miracle can make the football team win who starts a game with the 'we know they'll beat us,' attitude.

If you need to break the bonds of 'I'm certain to fail' slavery:

1. Hold positive chats with yourself.
2. Surround yourself with positive people.
3. Think, 'I'm going to succeed'.
4. Think, 'I'm a winner'.

The only person you will have to convince is yourself. Other people are automatically convinced you're great and a success, after you have convinced yourself.

Amazing Video Proves that Subliminal Suggestion Works

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:23:00 +0000

Here is a video of an amazing experiment carried out by the brilliant Derren Brown. Using extremely subtle subliminal suggestion he is able to guide the creative ideas of two top advertising designers as they create a new campaign, supposedly from their own imaginations.

You will be shocked by the conclusion. It raises serious questions about how easily we are influenced in every area of our lives, and even makes one question the true nature of creativity and where ideas really come from.

If you are even slightly interested in the power of subliminal suggestion over the human mind, you will be fascinated by this short video.

Transforming Your Relationship 'Dealbreakers'

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:53:00 +0000

How to Instantly Increase the Love in Your Life

Have you ever heard of the term "dealbreaker" when used in relationships? Have you ever read an online personal ad where the person makes a list of things they don't want in a relationship? Has someone you love ever done something or said something that you really didn't like and you thought about leaving the relationship because of that one thing?

Have you ever heard of women who stay in an abusive relationship? What about a man who keeps on going out with the same type of woman who always ends up rejecting him?

Has anyone ever done or said something to you and that is the reason that you broke up or otherwise ended your relationship?

While there are many good reasons to end a relationship and lots of people who do not belong together this article is about something alarming that I have discovered is becoming more and more prevalent in people regarding relationships.

People are putting an intense emphasis on identifying certain qualities of another person which are the criteria for rejecting that relationship. A broad example is the number of people that you are friendly to or smile at each day. There are many you choose to avoid right? Because of certain criteria.

People are looking for reasons not to open up and not to be friendly and especially not to be in love. There is a force in the world that is fear based that is encouraging everyone subliminally to live in fear of each other. This is being accomplished through television and the news and through schools and many other avenues to stop the force of love in the world.

When you find yourself making a list of things you do not want in a relationship or a list of things you do not like with someone you know and thinking about ending it stop and make another list of all the things that you love about them and all the good times you have shared.

When you look at the "bad" list see if you can feel the intense energy that pushes you. When you read the "good" list can you feel there is a different force that feels warm and open and loving?

You can make miracles happen in your own life by separating these two forces and diminishing the bad while intensifying the good to an intensely passionate level of pleasure and happiness.

I hope this article helps you to become aware of the forces pushing you to focus on bad and good in others. There is no good reason why you should break up with someone with whom you have many good things or why you should not be friends or lovers with someone who is imperfect. We all are.

Is it worth losing all the good things you have with someone just because of one little thing?

I would like to help you to make all the bad things small and unimportant in your love life and make the love big and powerful. Love is a better path than fear. Even when you need to end a relationship love will always find a way that is better.

P.S. Love is the greatest force for good in the universe in my opinion. Love can do no wrong. What's wrong with love is nothing at all. My mission is to help lovers enjoy more of the blissful moments they love so much and for people to enjoy more love in all their relationships everyday.

The Two-Minute Self-Hypnosis Technique

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:56:00 +0000

Psychologists and Doctors used to send their 'impossible' clients to him and in many instances he helped them to turn their lives around. Milton H. Erickson was one of the most successful hypnotherapists in the world and is often referred to as 'the father of modern hypnosis.'

One of the factors that set him apart from other change workers was his strong faith in the vast potential of human beings. He knew that when a person stopped stumbling around with their conscious mind and tapped into the limitless ocean of unconscious resources, people could make wonderful changes.

He used to look at a client and say something like, 'You've tried to solve this problem with your conscious mind and failed utterly. Now is the time to access your unconscious resources in a way that resolves this problem effectively.'

Now you may be wondering just how can you really induce self hypnosis in two minutes!?

Well, one of the common misconceptions about hypnosis is that you have to be able to concentrate and go into a profoundly altered state. This could be done, however what we are really interested in is accessing other areas of our mind (i.e. unconscious resources) so that we can make certain changes giving rise to our chosen outcome.

The good news is you can do this very easily and you can give it a go now with the following techniques. No need for deep trance!

Three Magic Doors

This is a classic hypnotherapy technique. I think you'll be surprised and intrigued at what your unconscious mind conjures up.

Think of a small problem you want to change. For example perhaps there is someone you would like to get along with better

Imagine there are three closed doors in front of you: Door one is labeled, 'usual way', door two is labeled, 'another person's way' and door three is labeled, 'wacky way!'

In a moment you are going to imagine walking through one of those door ways and your unconscious will then present you with a solution or new creative insights.

So as you look at those doors notice which one you are drawn to. Would you prefer to solve the problem in a, 'usual way', 'another person's way' or a 'wacky way!'

And then just allow your unconscious to create an experience behind that door that will give rise to what is known as a 'ah ah' eureka moment when you walk through to the other side.

When you feel ready imagine opening the door and walking through, becoming aware of what you are presented with. What do you see, hear, smell and feel? And as you look around what is it that you haven't noticed yet?

You may or may not know at the conscious level how this experience is going to help you, but you can if you wish ask yourself, 'how does this experience help me?' or 'what new ideas, insights and perspectives does this give me?'

Whenever we are stuck it's as if our mind is locked into a groove. We can snap out of it and gain creative solutions by accessing the unconscious regions of our mind.

There are many techniques and methods that enable us to achieve this goal such as the 'three magic doors.'

The Wall

What is it that you'd like some help with?

Imagine a big wall in front of you.

Just allow your unconscious or the creative problem solving parts of your mind to manifest some useful insights on the other side of the wall.

When you feel ready imagine jumping up and looking over the wall. You may have to jump up a few times to gather all the new information!

Playing around with these kinds of rapid self hypnosis techniques will cause you to learn to access more areas of your mind. And as you continue to do so you will find yourself becoming more capable of solving problems creatively.

3 Simple Techniques to Double Your Reading Speed

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:12:00 +0000

The ability to speed read is an important skill in today's world, where - whether we are students or at work - we are often expected to read hefty amounts of materials on a daily basis. As a result, improving your speed reading technique is something each and every one of us should not only do, but maintain. What, then, are speed reading techniques?

Speed reading - the essential elements

Before you start to learn any particular speed reading technique, you need to consider that all speed reading techniques rely on three essential elements:

1. A desire to improve you reading speed;

2. A willingness to give new ideas a chance; and

3. Motivation, discipline and continued practice.

Without these three key elements, no speed reading technique is going to succeed.

Speeding reading technique (1) - Skimming

Almost all successful speed readers will attest to the fact that they are a successful speed reader because they have a form of peripheral vision that allows them to see large amount of data on a page and to "skim" what they are reading. In short, speed reading like this means that one is not reading each and every word on the page, but merely scanning through the material. Using this speed reading technique, every now and then you will come across a keyword or phrase and it is this that will provide you with the essence of what is being written. The rest of the information on the page is discarded.

Although this speed reading technique would seem to indicate that the reader does not fully comprehend what has been written, in fact studies have shown this is not the case - majority of speed readers using this technique actually increased their comprehension of the reading materials!

Speed reading technique (2) - first sentence reading

Unlike speed reading technique (1), in speed reading technique (2), the reader will read the first sentence of each paragraph, in order to get the crux (main idea) of the idea behind the paragraph and will then skim read the remainder of the paragraph. This process is then repeated on down the page until such time as all the reading material has been exhausted.

Using speed reading technique (2), it is generally understood that the reader will glean enough information from the first sentence not to be overly concerned about the information contained in the remainder of the paragraph, where the writer will merely be reinforcing the notion set out in sentence one. However, this technique does fall-down on one major point - it pre-supposes that a paragraph only has one idea, which is clearly not always the case! If you find that you are reading material where the writer has used multiple ideas in the same paragraph, you may need to adapt your speed reading technique to one of the other speed reading techniques.

Speed reading technique (3) - Group wording

There is a term in speed reading circles that is seen as being one of the major demons of reading: "sub vocalization". Sub vocalization is a clinical term for word-for-word reading - and it's a huge no-no in speed reading techniques. Sub vocalization slows reading down, without providing any upswing in comprehension to counter the lost reading time.

Group wording, as the name suggests, is where the reader looks at a group of words and phrases at the same time. Using the group wording technique, speed readers are able to read large chunks of information at the same time - thus, saving time.

Additional speed reading techniques

Aside from the specific speed reading techniques in 1 to 3 above, there are a number of habits/practices that are generally considered counter-productive to speed reading - thus will have an affect on your speed reading abilities. In no particular order, these include:

* sub vocalization - as already stated, this is where you speak out the words you read. It's a major cause of slow reading. Unfortunately, as most of us are taught to speak out the words we read when we learn to read as children, it is also one of the hardest habits to break. All that can be said is that you keep plugging away at trying to eradicate this habit.

* digressing - digressing is where the reader will read a passage, then return to re-read it, usually in the mistaken belief that they will be able to comprehend better what has been written on a second read. Again, in speed reading circles this is seen as a major no-no, bad habit, which needs to be broken!

Conclusion

So, if you want to improve your speed reading skills, you need to remember not to subvocalize or re-read passages, and to read great chunks at one time by broadening your eye-span. Simple really! Actually, in fairness, it will take time to learn, and don't expect to get it right the first time. Don't push this issue too much, as pushing it may prove to be counter-productive.

Your Desires Control What You See

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 09:42:00 +0000

Without realizing it, people will perceive things according to how they want to see them, a new study suggests.

"There is an age old hypothesis in psychology that a person's wishes, hopes and desires can influence what they see," said David Dunning, Cornell University psychologist and co-author of the study. "This theory had lay dormant for about 40 years, though, without any supporting evidence. We wanted to test the murky waters again."

In five separate tests conducted by Dunning and a graduate student, Emily Balcetis, 412 volunteers from Cornell were presented with an ambiguous picture that could be interpreted as two distinct figures—either a horse's head or the body of a seal, for example. They were told they would be assigned to a taste test of either fresh-squeezed orange juice or a gelatinous, clumpy and rather unappealing veggie smoothie, depending on whether they saw a farm animal or sea creature.

More often than not the participants chose the figure that would lead them to the juice.

The trick to making the study meaningful was making sure the test subjects didn't know what was going on, Dunning said, noting that the generally high IQ of Cornell students made cheating a real possibility.

"The figures we used were chosen so we knew the people weren't just lying or tricking us," Dunning told LiveScience. "We also tracked automatic, unconscious eye movements which were out of their control."

Not only did participants routinely see the figure that produced favorable results, their eye motions indicated that they were never aware of the alternate option being available.

Other scientists who have studied the connection between belief and physiological reactions in the eye, now supported by Dunning's research, point to its possibilities in the world of positive thinking and self-motivation.

"Determining whether a person walking towards you is smiling or smirking, how close the finish line seems in a race or how loud a partner—a wife, husband, lover—is yelling during an argument," Dunning gave as examples that could arise in life. "Could we interpret ambiguous situations towards our expectations and hopes and away from our fears? That is the ultimate question."

The study will be published later this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

7 Characteristics of a Genius, They Don't want you to Know

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:54:00 +0000

At this very moment, you are holding unbound potential. You hold within your possession the most powerful learning and creative problem-solving system known to man, far superior to any supercomputer ever invented. It is your brain.

There are 100 billion neurons in your 3-pound brain.

By its very design, the human brain stores vast potential for memory, learning, and creativity. However, your capacity for learning and achievement must be unlocked. Although everyone holds this incredible power, the brain does not give of its powers away freely.

Geniuses of this world have successfully tapped into this unlimited power, including Einstein, Galileo, Newton, and Mozart.

Within the rest of this article, we will turn to these same revolutionary minds in order to unlock the genius that is hiding in the tapestry of our own minds.

God didn’t give us formal instruction manuals for our brain. Therefore, we must explore the power of thought on our own. Let this article be your guide.

1. The first step is to expand your consciousness as well as your perspectives.

The genius mind will look at a problem from many different perspectives. They are literally able to place themselves completely in someone else’s shoes in order to experience a new way of looking at things. By doing this, they expand their knowledge and consciousness of the world around them.

Look at problems from a variety of different perspectives. Most people only rely on their own perspective, and therefore always have a very narrow view of the world.

Leonardo da Vinci believed that, to gain knowledge about the form of a problem, you must begin by learning how to restructure it in many different ways. He believed that the first way you look at a problem is entirely too biased. You are only seeing the problem from one perspective: yours.

You can find new solutions to the problem by looking at it from a variety of different perspectives. According to Einstein, “You cannot solve a problem with the same type of thinking that is creating it.”

Einstein insisted that the secret of his genius was his ability to look at problems in a childlike, imaginative way.

To expand his view of the world, Einstein developed a mastermind group that he called the Olympiad. This group held intensive discussions on topics ranging from mathematics and physics to philosophy and literature.

These forums provided the stimulus needed for higher-level thinking and were often combine with camping trips involving hiking, swimming, and a good dose of humor.

The genius lives at a high level of consciousness about the world around them. They are receptive to new ideas, which provide them with even greater opportunity. The person who clings to their comfort zone is living in a low level of consciousness. Their experiences each day are often a repetition of the previous day.

You reach a higher level of consciousness when you reach new levels of understanding, experience a major growth experience, or embrace new ways of thinking.

When you were eight years old, you had a different view of the world than you do today. This is because you are now living in a higher consciousness/awareness of the world around you. You must constantly seek to expand your awareness if you want to grow.

Your consciousness determines how you experience life.

To expand your awareness, you must consistently seek opportunities for growth. Look for new relationships. Expand your knowledge. Step out of your comfort zone. Experience life to the fullest.

2. Once you have begun seeking your greatest aims in life, you must also persist…

The most successful people in life are the ones who are the most persistent. Interestingly, enough the most successful people in life are also the ones who have experienced the most failure.

The rest are too afraid to try and therefore never experience success or failure.

In fact, I would argue that failure is the quickest path to success. The greatest success is always preceded by a long list of failures.

Think of Thomas Edison, who after 10,000 attempts at creating the electric lightbulb, said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Failure is a prerequisite for success; embrace it as a learning experience that brings you one step closer to your ultimate goal.

To truly be great, you must not be afraid of failing.

The leaders in life don’t fear failure. Like most, you probably learned in elementary school about the accomplishments of Christopher Columbus. However, you probably don’t know that the likely result of his journey was humiliation, financial ruin, or even death. He was making a journey, which most people believed would cause him to fall off the edge of the Earth.

All previous efforts to cross the Atlantic had been made by sailors who clung to the European coast in order to ensure a means of return. Columbus, however, sailed perpendicular to the shoreline. He was venturing into the unknown, without knowing what, if anything, lay ahead.

In the end, it turned out that Columbus, was, in fact, a visionary genius.

Even after six weeks at sea with no sight of land, he maintained unwavering belief in his goal. Most people would have given up at this point, but Columbus kept going. This was one of the most important factors in determining his success.

Most of what people refer to as failure is simply a lack of persistence.

How many times do we hug the coastline in our own lives, latching onto the familiar? Growth is always preceded by change. For us to improve and grow, we must embrace change and constantly step out of our old familiar comfort zones. When we do, we will find that we begin to live a life full of adventure and increased opportunity.

3. The third step to thinking like a genius is to Visualize!

Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Walt Disney, Nikola Tesla, and even Mozart all ascribed their creative genius to their ability to visualize.

Einstein said that all of his most important and productive thinking was done by “combinatory play” with “images” in his mind. Einstein used images, visual patterns and associations to discover more about the world around him.

Einstein believed that the spirit of learning and creative thought were lost in strict rote learning. Instead, he turned to his own imagination and visualization.

Visualization is an incredibly powerful tool in solving problems. Often times much more powerful that simply using words or numbers.

Visual thinking is done in the right side of the brain, presenting new problem solving and big-picture thinking. Visualization goes hand in hand with our next genius principle…

4. Imagination

Einstein was well acquainted with the childlike sense of play, possibility, and humor. His ability to remain in a childlike state of wonder and curiosity is the essence of his genius.

Dr. Jacques Hadmard spent much of his life studying the thought processes of great scientists and mathematicians. He found that their thinking process was characterized not by words or standard mathematical symbols, but instead by visual imagery.

The same was true for Einstein, who said, “The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanisms of thought.”

He also wrote that his thought processes instead “rely, more or less, on clear images of a visual and some of a muscular type.”

These few sentences give us a rare insight into one of the greatest minds. Einstein teaches us the importance of thinking visually.

Dr. Marian Diamond and her colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley published a paper entitled “On the Brain of a Scientist: Albert Einstein.” Their research showed that Einstein’s brain contained 400 percent more “glial” cells per neuron than average. They also found that his brain was especially well developed in the area of the brain used for association.

However, we will never know whether Einstein’s brain was highly developed as a result of his thought processes and stimulating environment or from an extraordinary neuro-anatomical gift?

Much of our brainpower is due to the interconnection between brain cells. We know now that these interconnections - glial cells, dendrites, axons, and synapses - can continue to increase in number throughout the course of an individual’s life.

Dr. Diamond’s research suggests that combinatory play and a stimulus-rich environment are two of the keys to increasing the minds to make these internal connections within the mind from which genius is born.

Much of Einstein’s creativity was found in his ability to make unfamiliar and unexpected relationships.

Einstein coined the term, “combinatory play”. Although it had always existed, Einstein used this powerful way of thinking in his daily thought processes.

According to Einstein, combinatory play is sifting through data, perceptions, and materials to come up with combinations that are new and useful.

Einstein himself believed that you could stimulate ingenious thought by allowing the imagination to run freely, forming associations at will.

Einstein also performed what’s referred to as thought experiments.

As a young man, Einstein imagined himself running alongside a beam of light. He then asked himself what it would look like. This was one of his first thought experiments.

A thought experiment is carried out in the mind. It requires you to ask yourself a question. You then visualize a situation and perform some kind of experimental action and see what happens. These types of thought experiments provide a method for understanding nature without performing a direct experiment on it.

Try this out in your own life by asking yourself the following questions:

What would happen if we found a way to use 100% of our brain potential?
What our the possible solutions to world hunger?
How would Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, or Newton approach this problem?
What if I could hold infinity in the palm of my hand? (This has been a popular thought question among poets as well as quantum physicists.)

5. The next key, and one of the most important elements, to genius thinking is that of curiosity: the courage to ask questions.

Why do kids ask so many questions? They are naturally curious about the world around them. They discover the world through questioning others as well as themselves. In the process, they are creating neuro-associations that will guide their futures.

As we grow older, however, we become passive to the world around us. We stop asking questions, lose our much of our curiosity, and the learning comes to a screeching halt.

Without questions, we cannot grow.

Albert Einstein once said,

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of the mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”

Socrates, Aristotle and Plato were some of the first great minds to develop the importance of questions. The entire Socratic method, which is a way of teaching that dates back to the Ancient Greeks, is based upon the teacher asking nothing but questions. These questions direct the students’ focus, enabling them to discover their own answers to life’s questions.

Successful people are simply those who have asked better questions. Instead of asking, “How will I ever get out of debt?” They asked themselves, “How can I learn from this experience?”

When computers were still taking up entire rooms, Bill Gates asked himself, “How can I get a computer in every household?”

When the automobile first emerged on the scene, hundreds of people started to build them, but Henry Ford asked, “How can I mass-produce them?”

As a young boy, Albert Einstein asked himself, “”What would it be like to run beside a light beam at the speed of light?”

Plato believed that skilled questions could lead not only to the discovery of geometry, science, and philosophy, but also to the realization of virtue, justice, beauty and truth.

Start to ask yourself and others empowering questions. Develop an unbound curiosity. Practice wonder.

6. You become what you think about.

Pay close attention now as we come upon the sixth principle that leads to genius. It is the Law of Attraction, which says you become what you think about.

The Law of Attraction says that what you think about, you bring about. Therefore, you become what you think about most. In addition, you also attract what you think about most.

In other words, Thoughts Become Things.

Your life is a physical manifestation of the thoughts that go on in your head.

Michael Jordan focused on perfecting every aspect of his game. This definite desire turned his weaknesses into strengths and made him one of the greatest leaders in basketball.

Wrigley concentrated his mind on the production and sale of a five-cent package of chewing gum and turned this one idea in to millions of dollars.

Edwin C. Barnes had a burning desire to go into business with Thomas Edison. He focused himself completely on this desire until it finally came to fruiting and he retired, while still a young man, with more money than he needs.

Lincoln concentrated his mind on freeing the slaves and became our greatest American President while doing it. Gillette concentrated on a safety razor, gave the entire world a “close shave” and made himself a multimillionaire.

George Eastman concentrated on the Kodak and made the idea yield him a fortune while bringing much pleasure to millions of people.

The Wright Brothers concentrated on the airplane and mastered the air.

Bill Gates concentrated on the personal computer, now a PC is found in nearly every home to help educate, entertain and enrich people’s lives.

All of these people were well adept in the Law of Attraction.

There is evidence that the law of attraction was also used by Einstein, Beethoven, and even Jesus. This same power is available to you. In fact, you are experiencing the Law of Attraction at this very moment whether you know it or not. This is because the law of attraction is always at work. Your life experience is in line with the thoughts that reside in your mind.

You create your own reality. What you think about, you bring about. What you emotionalize in thought, you bring about in reality.

Recent research is in support of this law. For example, research on optimism has shown that optimists enjoy better health, greater happiness, more success in life, and a longer life. The optimist focuses on success and minimizes their failures.

Pessimists, on the other hand, experience far more disease, depression, and a shorter life span.

What you focus on with thought and feeling is what you attract into your life.

The genius exercises this same law in their everyday life. The genius expects success and puts complete faith in their goal. They expect more out of life and therefore, they receive it.

You can do the same. Expect success and persist until you have found it.

7. The last and final step in thinking like a genius is to Have Fun!

No person has achieved massive success by doing what they hate. Pablo Picasso once said, “When I work I relax; doing nothing or entertaining visitors makes me tired.”

In addition, Dale Carnegie said, “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.”

The most successful people in life find work that inspires and excites them.

I’ll leave you with a fitting poem Christain D. Larson:

When you work simply for yourself or for your own personal gain your mind will seldom rise above the limitations of the undeveloped personal life; but when you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break bounds; your mind transcends limitations; your consciousness expands in every direction; and you find yourself in a new world, a great world, a wonderful world; dormant powers, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a larger man by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” -- Christian D. Larson, Business Psychology, 1912

10 Steps to Superior Health Using Mind Power

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:57:00 +0000

HOW WELL IS WELL? Perhaps you have never asked yourself this question. It will prove interesting to think about it a moment and doing so may start a train of thought which will carry you into a state of happiness you have not known before. When do you think of yourself as being well? When you are free from aches and pains? When you can do your normal work without exhaustion? The questions which could be asked are numerous, but the big question is: Even if you are free from aches and pains and are able to do your regular work without exhaustion is it possible for you to feel still better?

The pinnacle of well-being is mental and physical vibrancy, when you can throw your entire enthusiastic self into anything you do whether work or play; when your mind is free from worry, because you accept the problems of the day as a challenge instead of approaching them with fear; when your heart is free from hatred because you have eyes which look only for the good in others; and when your todays are better than your yesterdays, and your tomorrows are looked forward to with joyous anticipation.

10 Simple Steps to Health Consciousness

Following are ten simple steps for radiant mental and physical health, which are all you need to develop a health consciousness:

1. Have an incentive to want to be actively alive—on top of the world. We can do almost anything if we really want to. This applies to physical well-being as much as it does to anything else. We might go through the motions of doing things intended for better health, but, unless our actions are backed by a burning desire to succeed, we need not look for spectacular and glowing results.

It's wonderful to feel good, to have that up-and-at-'em feeling, but before we can make progress in creating such a feeling, we must have a mighty good reason for doing so.

Step 1, therefore, is to acquire an incentive—a valid reason for wanting every fiber of your being to effervesce with vibrant energy.

Only a few suggestions will be offered as thought starters, but for the real incentives, explore that mind of yours to learn just what it is you would like to accomplish—or be.

Would you like to be a power in your community? Would you like to have the type of personality which sways people? Forcefulness is not a question of how you pitch your voice, or how loud you talk. It is a reflection of a mind alert and a body dynamically alive and vigorous.

Would you like to have a large circle of admiring friends? Would you like to be the one singled out for your opinion and advice, because there is something about you which spells authority?

Would you like to be elected to important posts in your lodge or club, because of your personal magnetism?

Perhaps your desires might run along the lines of personal accomplishment. You may have said: "I would take up the study of music, if I felt better." Or, it might have been painting or the mastering of one of the many crafts.

I may be a thousand miles from anything which nearly approaches your own incentive. You may be single and give anything for the right mate, but feel you do not have the youth or physical attractiveness to interest the opposite sex.

But, regardless of what your desires are, get an incentive which will give you a reason to want to be on top physically and mentally; then you will be in a position to get the maximum good from the steps which follow.

2. Know you CAN gain better health and live longer. The only people who have ever accomplished anything are those who knew they could. To approach any task with doubt in your mind about your ability to do it is a certain step toward failure.
Buoyant health is not something we acquire by luck. It is a reflection of the way we think and the way we live. Bodies which creak with aches and pains are not given to us by Fate as a punishment of some kind. We have them because of the way we live and think.

The mistake which most people make is to think that the price we pay for a joyous state of well-being is so high, the reward is not worth the effort. How utterly wrong!

One might say that sacrifice is part of the price we pay for a vigorously alive body.
But is it? Let us take a few habits as examples. Think of those who smoke to excess and whose hands shake if they are without a cigarette for a few moments. Would it be a sacrifice if they were to practice moderation to the extent that a smoke would be enjoyable, instead of a means to keep from suffering? Think of those who drink too much. Is the intense suffering from a hangover the reward they gain from the habit? Would it be a sacrifice to suggest moderation, that a drink could be taken now and then for sociability, instead of being the means of shearing one of all semblance of culture and refinement?

At first thought it may be hard to believe that we make more sacrifices with an ailing body than we do to have and maintain a glad-to-be-alive body. Think it over and you'll quickly agree. Reflect over the many things you could and would have done, had you felt like it. Think of the places you would have visited, had you the mental and physical spirit to do so. And think of the countless hours of feeling just "half fit."

Your judgment tells you that if you embark on a program aimed at glorious health, you can accomplish it. So, Step 2 is to know you can gain better health and live longer.

It may be necessary to resort to a bit of mental discipline in developing a better health consciousness. If, for years, you have been seeing yourself as one under par physically, it will take an effort to get yourself to the point where you know, beyond doubt, you can enjoy radiant health. Motion creates emotion, we learn, so, for a few days, hold to the thought: I CAN gain robust health. Of course, accepting the thought that you can gain better health is not enough. You must take the steps which will make better health a reality. In other words, the realization that good health is within your grasp must be brought into reality by action.

3. Get your mind in order. As you learned in the previous chapter, the word "psychosomatic" is now frequently heard in connection with illnesses of various kinds. Doctors are including many, many ailments in a long list of those which are originated in the mind. This fact does not mean that a psychosomatically sick person is insane; it merely means that most psychosomatic conditions result from fear and worry.

Stomach ulcers are thought of as originating mostly in the mind; "strain" we call it, but what is mental strain other than worry over certain conditions, or our vivid fear that we will prove to be inadequate to cope with them?

My definition of worry is holding mental pictures of things we do not want, instead of things we do want. Think about this a moment, and you'll agree.

We might also say that worry is evidence of doubt in our ability to solve the problem which is causing the worry. Perhaps if we look at it from this angle, we might stiffen our spines a bit and prove to ourselves and others that we are bigger than the object of our worry, and will do what is necessary to change it.
Realize that worry never helps anything. To the contrary, it impairs health and blocks happiness.

Self-mastery is a reward which comes to the one who can conquer fear and worry—and they are easy to conquer—if one will accept and act upon the truth:
"Worry prevents our doing the very thing which will provide the means to prevent the worry."

4. Learn the things you should and should not do! A sage once said: "Success comes from doing the things you know you ought to do, and not doing the things you know you ought not to do."

It could wisely be said that invigorating health would result from following this sane advice. But, of first importance is to know exactly what you should and should not do. Where can this vital information be obtained?

The moment we become imbued with any thought, we become almost a magnet for information on that subject. We are attracted to books and periodicals covering various phases of it. Our minds and thoughts dwell upon it.

"A fault discovered is half overcome," I learned when just a boy. I believe if I were to take exuberant health as an objective, the first thing I would want to know is the condition of my body at present. I would, therefore, let my doctor give me a head-to-toe examination, so I would learn many of the things I should and should not do regarding my physical being.

An architect visualizes his ideas as they come to him. At his drawing board, and with his instruments, he develops his thoughts objectively. Since we are architects of our own beings and affairs, it would be well to begin by listing those things we should and should not do in our pursuit of glowing health.

A plan of action should be conceived which would include activity on the things we should do, and discipline in avoiding the things we should not do. Naturally our program of action will include supervision over the food we eat. But here and now let me say that eating for robust health does not mean giving up the things you like in favor of those you do not enjoy.

Vitamins and minerals are as essential to vibrant health as light and water are to plants. To have a deficiency of either vitamins or minerals means living in a body under par physically, one which will break down many years before it should.
A startlingly large percentage of people suffers from malnutrition, not because they are eating too little, but because the foods they do eat are deficient in the elements necessary for health.

Selecting a diet of items recognized for certain vitamins and minerals is no assurance that they are being obtained. Good virgin soils hold an abundance of the minerals essential to good health but, in all parts of the country, these minerals are being used up much faster than nature or the farmer can put them back again. They are used up by overcropping, carried away by erosion, washed out by rains.
Vitamins are not food. They do not turn into blood, flesh and bone, or supply energy with their substance as foodstuffs do. They act instead as important links in the chemical processes by which the body turns food into tissues, removes waste products, and produces energy. Without vitamins these vital processes could not go on.

Selecting food with care is always a wise precaution, but the one determined to have scintillating, glad-to-be-alive health, will not risk getting all essential elements from foodstuffs presumed to contain them, but will make certain of a balanced diet by adding food supplements obtained from a reliable source.

5. Develop an ENTHUSIASM to do and not to do! Acquiring the facts just given is essential in reaching our objective: Radiant Mental and Physical Health; but, merely acquiring this information is not enough. We must develop an enthusiasm for carrying through; for putting into operation the plans which will insure radiant health.

There is one word, common to most of us, which has been responsible for many of our failures in life. That word is tomorrow. How often do we learn of something which would be of help to us, and we resolve to do it—tomorrow? And, of course, tomorrow never comes.

If you have been reading with a serious mind, you are enthusiastic—right now!
You are beginning to see vistas of thrilling happiness with a sparkling mind backed by a dynamic body. Problems which have heretofore been worries to you now appear as challenges. But, as you peep behind the curtain and envision your new future, do not allow procrastination to make you think of tomorrow as a starting point. Start right now; the moment you lay this book aside. The start need not be a physical one, doing something the eyes can see. The start can be your resolve; your resolution that, since your rightful heritage is vibrant mental and physical health, you, from this moment onward, will do everything within your power to make it a part of your existence.

6. Take years off of your life through your actions! Motion creates emotion. The men and women who make pals of their children and who enter into the activities of youth will remain young far longer than the parents who live like traditionally old-fashioned mothers and fathers.

We can't act young without feeling young, and when we feel young, we are putting the processes of Nature to work toward making us young.

Dancing, swimming, rowing, hiking, are a few of the activities which promote physical well-being. But, right here, in connection with these pastimes, there is a thought of considerable importance. Do not do anything merely because you think it will be good for you. Since, as we learned in Step 2, there is a definite relationship between mind and body, learn to like the things you do. If you dance, enjoy it to the fullest extent, and you will gain from the combination of psychological and physiological benefits. This holds true with all other forms of exercise. The more you like them, the greater will be your benefit.

Our clothing plays an important part in the way we feel. If we wear drab garments, we do not feel as gay as when we dress colorfully. Although it is always imperative to use good taste, there is no rule against wearing clothes which express our cheerfulness.

What did you enjoy doing ten, twenty or perhaps thirty years ago? Try to renew your interest in it. You may find the years literally rolling off your age as you do so.

7. Go on a mental diet. Again referring to psychosomatic ailments, those physical conditions which emanate from mind, I would dare to say that a mental diet is more important than a physical one.

As you have been learning throughout this book, negative thoughts produce negative reactions. An old philosopher once said: "Seek thy comrades among the industrious, because the idle will sap thy energy from thee." Whether or not this is true, remember some of the visits you have had with those whose conversation is confined to subjects of gloom and disaster. Remember how gloomy you were when you left them? On the other hand, think of times spent with the optimistic, hopeful ones, and you will remember feeling inspired, and wanting to do big things yourself.
Discipline yourself to think in terms of health and happiness. Select reading matter which will encourage you to climb to greater heights.

Do not indulge in negative conversation. When writing letters, see how much encouragement you can give, instead of making them dissertations of woe.
The secret of happiness is not in doing the things you like to do, but in liking the things you have to do. The acceptance of this thought will be a forward step in your mental diet.

In Step 5 you determined to abandon the word tomorrow from your vocabulary as far as procrastination is concerned. This definitely applies to your mental diet.
You are on it—right now.

8. Teach others how to have radiant mental and physical health. It is true that happiness comes from giving happiness, and that to teach others how to gain radiant mental and physical health would make us extremely happy. There is, however, another reason for the suggestion given in this step.

We cannot successfully teach anything to others without setting an example. It would be incongruous to tell others how to be joyfully alive and exuberant, if we were to drag ourselves along looking only half alive. We want to show what life means to us, so that it will be an inspiration for others to follow our example.
Since charity begins at home, persuade the various members of your family to join with you in attaining radiant mental and physical health.

Start a movement among those with whom you work, not only for the good you will be doing them, but for what it will do for you.

Practically everything we do in life is based upon habit. We live according to the habit patterns we have created. Some habits are good; some are not. In following Step 8, you are unconsciously training yourself to create and live according to new and highly beneficial habit patterns.

9. Live correctly! These two words could lead you into many different avenues of thought. They could refer to your food, to your habits, to your whole mode of living.

"Let your conscience be your guide" is the meaning I wish to convey. To talk about our relationships with others may seem a far cry from the rudiments of good health, but psychologists know that the things we do that challenge our self-respect are reflected in our physical condition.

A person who is not dependable never enjoys the vibrant health common to the one who is respected for his dependability. An unpunctual person is not on top of the world physically. Why? Because something psychological is disturbing him within. Subconsciously he loses a certain amount of self-respect, and a psychosomatic illness is usually the result.

In connection with Step 9, I cannot neglect disposition. One with a bad disposition never enjoys vigorous health. Pages could be written proving how a bad disposition undermines happiness and success, but for its effect on your health—ask your doctor. Ask him to explain how anger actually releases a poison in the blood stream which retards the digestion and encourages any one of a long list of maladies.
Anger and reason do not go together, as evidenced by the fact that when we are angry, we say and do many things we later regret. You can see, therefore, that by giving in to anger, you are literally retarding your progress, and doing immeasurable harm to your physical being.

10. Be happy! A prominent and successful doctor once said that a happy person is seldom ill, but that when he is, he responds to treatment much faster than other people. You will have no difficulty in agreeing with this doctor, if you will reflect a moment. You know you feel much better, physically, when you are happy than you do when you are sad and depressed. You also know that when you are not quite up to par, and something happens to cause great elation, you at once feel better.
This will show you why the two words Be Happy make a fitting conclusion to these

Happiness comes from within. You now have—and always will have—all the happiness there is. To be happy is merely to express happiness. And to express happiness is to take a great step forward toward acquiring inexhaustible, glowing health.

You now have the 10 Steps, but this is only the beginning. From this moment onward, they are to become a part of your daily routine. Think about them; practice them; live them. A new and incredibly joyous life awaits you.

The Future of Mind Control Weapons

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 09:20:00 +0000

Last year I made a visit to a Russian mind control lab Moscow. No, really, that's what it was, or at least supposed be. It was, needless to say, an interesting experience, but not necessarily something I knew what do with, so I just filed it away in my office under "Russian mind control."

Imagine how surprised I was to read one morning that the Department of Homeland Security was preparing to issue a sole source contract to test some of the technology developed there. My story today in Wired News traces how this unusual research from Russia caught the eye of U.S. officials:

MOSCOW -- The future of U.S. anti-terrorism technology could lie near the end of a Moscow subway line in a circular dungeon-like room with a single door and no windows. Here, at the Psycho technology Research Institute, human subjects submit to experiments aimed at manipulating their subconscious minds.

Elena Rusalkina, the silver-haired woman who runs the institute, gestured to the center of the claustrophobic room, where what looked like a dentist's chair sits in front of a glowing computer monitor. "We've had volunteers, a lot of them," she said, the thick concrete walls muffling the noise from the college campus outside. "We worked out a program with (a psychiatric facility) to study criminals. There's no way to falsify the results. There's no subjectivism."

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has gone to many strange places in its search for ways to identify terrorists before they attack, but perhaps none stranger than this lab on the outskirts of Russia's capital. The institute has for years served as the center of an obscure field of human behavior study -- dubbed psychoecology -- that traces it roots back to Soviet-era mind control research.

What's gotten DHS' attention is the institutes's work on a system called Semantic Stimuli Response Measurements Technology, or SSRM Tek, a software-based mind reader that supposedly tests a subject's involuntary response to subliminal messages.

SSRM Tek is presented to a subject as an innocent computer game that flashes subliminal images across the screen -- like pictures of Osama bin Laden or the World Trade Center. The "player" -- a traveler at an airport screening line, for example -- presses a button in response to the images, without consciously registering what he or she is looking at. The terrorist's response to the scrambled image involuntarily differs from the innocent person's, according to the theory.

Gear for testing MindReader 2.0 software hangs on a wall at the Psycho technology Research Institute in Moscow. Marketed in North America as SSRM Tek, the technology will soon be tested for airport screening by a U.S. company under contract to the Department of Homeland Security.

"If it's a clean result, the passengers are allowed through," said Rusalkina, during a reporter's visit last year. "If there's something there, that person will need to go through extra checks."

Rusalkina markets the technology as a program called Mindreader 2.0. To sell Mindreader to the West, she's teamed up with a Canadian firm, which is now working with a U.S. defense contractor called SRS Technologies. This May, DHS announced plans to award a sole-source contract to conduct the first U.S.-government sponsored testing of SSRM Tek.

The contract is a small victory for the Psychotechnology Research Institute and its leaders, who have struggled for years to be accepted in the West. It also illustrates how the search for counter-terrorism technology has led the U.S. government into unconventional -- and some would say unsound -- science.

The Father of Psychtronic Weapons

All of the technology at the institute is based on the work of Rusalkina's late husband, Igor Smirnov, a controversial Russian scientist whose incredible tales of mind control attracted frequent press attention before his death several years ago.

Smirnov was a Rasputin-like character often portrayed in the media as having almost mystical powers of persuasion. Today, first-time visitors to the institute -- housed in a drab concrete building at the Peoples Friendship University of Russia -- are asked to watch a half-hour television program dedicated to Smirnov, who is called the father of "psychotronic weapons," the Russian term for mind control weapons. Bearded and confident, Smirnov in the video explains how subliminal sounds could alter a person's behavior. To the untrained ear, the demonstration sounds like squealing pigs.

According to Rusalkina, the Soviet military enlisted Smirnov's psychotechnology during the Soviet Union's bloody war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. "It was used for combating the Mujahideen, and also for treating post-traumatic stress syndrome" in Russian soldiers, she says.

In the United States, talk of mind control typically evokes visions of tinfoil hats. But the idea of psychotronic weapons enjoys some respectability in Russia. In the late 1990s, Vladimir Lopatin, then a member of the Duma, Russia's parliament, pushed to restrict mind control weapons, a move that was taken seriously in Russia but elicited some curious mentions in the Western press. In an interview in Moscow, Lopatin, who has since left the Duma, cited Smirnov's work as proof that such weaponry is real.

"It's financed and used not only by the medical community, but also by individual and criminal groups," Lopatin said. Terrorists might also get hold of such weapons, he added.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Smirnov moved from military research into treating patients with mental problems and drug addiction, setting up shop at the college. Most of the lab's research is focused on what it calls "psychocorrection" -- the use of subliminal messages to bend a subject's will, and even modify a person's personality without their knowledge.

The slow migration of Smirnov's technology to the United States began in 1991, at a KGB-sponsored conference in Moscow intended to market once-secret Soviet technology to the world. Smirnov's claims of mind control piqued the interest of Chris and Janet Morris -- former science-fiction writers turned Pentagon consultants who are now widely credited as founders of the Pentagon's "non-lethal" weapons concept.

In an interview last year, Chris Morris recalled being intrigued by Smirnov -- so much so that he accompanied the researcher to his lab and allowed Smirnov to wire his head up to an electroencephalograph, or EEG. Normally used by scientists to measure brain states, Smirnov peered into Morris's EEG tracings and divined the secrets of his subconscious, right down to intimate details like Morris' dislike of his own first name.

The underlying premise of the technology is that terrorists would recognize a scrambled terrorist image like this one without even realizing it, and would be betrayed by their subconscious reaction to the picture.

"I said, 'gee, the guys back at home have got to see this,'" Morris recalled.

The Morrises shopped the technology around to a few military agencies, but found no one willing to put money into it. However, in 1993 Smirnov rose to brief fame in the United States when the FBI consulted with him in hope of ending the standoff in Waco with cult leader David Koresh. Smirnov proposed blasting scrambled sound -- the pig squeals again -- over loudspeakers to persuade Koresh to surrender.

But the FBI was put off by Smirnov's cavalier response to questions. When officials asked what would happen if the subliminal signals didn't work, Smirnov replied that Koresh's followers might slit each other's throats, Morris recounted. The FBI took a pass, and Smirnov returned to Moscow with his mind control technology.

"With Smirnov, the FBI was either demanding a yes or a no, and therefore our methods weren't put to use, unfortunately," Rusalkina said, taking a drag on her cigarette.

Smirnov died in November 2004, leaving the widowed Rusalkina -- his long-time collaborator -- to run the institute. Portraits of Smirnov cover Rusalkina's desk, and his former office is like a shrine, the walls lined with his once-secret patents, his awards from the Soviet government, and a calendar from the KGB's cryptographic section.

Despite Smirnov's death, Rusalkina predicts an "arms race" in psychotronic weapons. Such weapons, she asserts, are far more dangerous than nuclear weapons.

She pointed, for example, to a spate of Russian news reports about "zombies" -- innocent people whose memories had been allegedly wiped out by mind control weapons. She also claimed that Russian special forces contacted the institute during the 2003 Moscow theater siege, in which several hundred people were held hostage by Chechen militants.

"We could have stabilized the situation in the concert hall, and the terrorists would have called the whole thing off," she said. "And naturally, you could have avoided all the casualties, and you could have put the terrorists on trial. But the Alfa Group" -- the Russian equivalent of Delta Force -- "decided to go with an old method that had already been tested before."

The Russians used a narcotic gas to subdue the attackers and their captives, which led to the asphyxiation death of many of the hostages.

These days, Rusalkina explained, the institute uses its psychotechnology to treat alcoholics and drug addicts. During the interview, several patients -- gaunt young men who appeared wasted from illness -- waited in the hallway.

But the U.S. war on terror and the millions of dollars set aside for homeland security research is offering Smirnov a chance at posthumous respectability in the West.

Smirnov's technology reappeared on the U.S. government's radar screen through Northam Psychotechnologies, a Canadian company that serves as North American distributor for the Psychotechnology Research Institute. About three years ago, Northam Psychotechnologies began seeking out U.S. partners to help it crack the DHS market. For companies claiming innovative technologies, the past few years have provided bountiful opportunities. In fiscal year 2007, DHS allocated $973 million for science and technology and recently announced Project Hostile Intent, which is designed to develop technologies to detect people with malicious intentions.

One California-based defense contractor, DownRange G2 Solutions, expressed interest in SSRM Tek, but became skeptical when Northam Psychotechnologies declined to make the software available for testing.

"That raised our suspicion right away," Scott Conn, CEO and president of DownRange, told Wired News. "We weren't prepared to put our good names on the line without due diligence." (When a reporter visited last year, Rusalkina also declined to demonstrate the software, saying it wasn't working that day.)

While Conn said the lack of testing bothered him, the relationship ended when he found out Northam Psychotechnologies went to SRS Technologies, now part of ManTech International Corp.

Semyon Ioffe, the head of Northam Psychotechnologies, who identifies himself as a "brain scientist," declined a phone interview, but answered questions over e-mail. Ioffe said he signed a nondisclosure agreement with Conn, and had "a few informal discussions, after which he disappeared to a different assignment and reappeared after (the) DHS announcement."

As for the science, Ioffe says he has a Ph.D in neurophysiology, and cited Smirnov's Russian-language publications as the basis for SSRM Tek.

However, not everyone is as impressed with Smirnov's technology, including John Alexander, a well-known expert on non-lethal weapons. Alexander was familiar with Smirnov's meetings in Washington during the Waco crisis, and said in an interview last year that there were serious doubts then as now.

"It was the height of the Waco problem, they were grasping at straws," he said of the FBI's fleeting interest. "From what I understand from people who were there, it didn't work very well."

Geoff Schoenbaum, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine, said that he was unaware of any scientific work specifically underpinning the technology described in SSRM Tek.

"There's no question your brain is able to perceive things below your ability to consciously express or identify," Schoenbaum said. He noted for example, studies showing that images displayed for milliseconds -- too short for people to perceive consciously -- may influence someone's mood. "That kind of thing is reasonable, and there's good experimental evidence behind it."

The problem, he said, is that there is no science he is aware of that can produce the specificity or sensitivity to pick out a terrorist, let alone influence behavior. "We're still working at the level of how rats learn that light predicts food," he explained. "That's the level of modern neuroscience."

Developments in neuroscience, he noted, are followed closely. "If we could do (what they're talking about), you would know about it," Schoenbaum said. "It wouldn't be a handful of Russian folks in a basement."

In the meantime, the DHS contract is still imminent, according to those involved, although all parties declined to comment on the details, or the size of the award. Rusalkina did not respond to a recent e-mail, but in the interview last year, she confirmed the institute was marketing the technology to the United States for airport screening.

Larry Orloskie, a spokesman for DHS, declined to comment on the contract announcement. "It has not been awarded yet," he replied in an e-mail.

"It would be premature to discuss any details about the pending contract with DHS and I will be happy to do an interview once the contract is in place," Ioffe, of Northam Psychotechnologies, wrote in an e-mail. Mark Root, a spokesman for ManTech, deferred questions to DHS, noting, "They are the customer."

By Sharon Weinberger
Source: Wired News

The Real Secret to Quickly Hypnotizing Others in Conversation

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:48:00 +0000

So many people make a costly mistake when trying to get what they want from others. They learn every covert hypnosis technique around. They apply it. And no matter how hard they try or what they do, they just don't seem to get what they want.

Yes, you can get people to do whatever it is that you want them to using covert hypnosis. The tools are available for you to do it quickly and easily. But the problem is that most people are focused on the wrong things, and if they don't learn to change their focus, they'll never succeed.

What if you were told that you can experience anything in any social situation, and that covert hypnosis techniques only play a small role? That is, what if you were to learn a way where you can use your mind to send magnetic attraction to others?

Wouldn't you like to learn how to do this?

Look, you can set up your persuasion with potential lovers to already be attracted to you before you even say a word! Your sales partners will wonder how you're mysteriously attracting buying customers so frequently. You can use this secret to improve your relationships and here's the kicker: you can "set the stage" -- so to speak, without using covert
hypnosis yet!

I've read hundreds of books and been through hundreds of courses on persuasion and influence, and guess what? Nearly every single one of them FAILS to provide you with the most powerful secret application of communication, and only give you a bag full of tricks.

What's missing? Well, it all starts with what you allow yourself to FOCUS on. You can't escape this rule. It's absolutely necessary.

You wouldn't believe the amount of people that e-mail and call me all the time saying "Nathan, I have this problem how do I fix it?" All they are focused on is some covert hypnosis technique "quick-fix" to their current problem when it's much more than that.

I always tell them that their solution doesn't require some short-cut technique. They need to consider something better and immediately more powerful first, then to apply covert hypnosis.

It's really quite simple. STOP thinking about your problems, and start focusing on the SOLUTIONS! You see, as soon as you change your focus, you begin to see opportunities and develop new attitudes to get you the
desired result. If you only focus on what you don't want, your brain will go to work making you see only those things, and experience it over and over.

The trick to being successful in persuasion is to utilize certain laws of nature that work 100% of the time without fail. If you put your self into the moment of "right now" and you state what you intend to experience with others, and feel good about it, you'll certainly experience it.

Most people however that I tell this to tend to stay focused on the end result for too long. You can't do that. You have to learn to let it go with the expectation that the universe will deliver. The moment you do that, the moment it does.

Remember this is an absolute LAW that's proven to work every time without fail. See what you want, expect it, let it go and you'll get it. It's as simple as that.

Your ego, of course will tell you things that you can't have. It will tell you that it can't be that easy. It will remind you of all the times you screwed up in the past. It will do everything to protect itself from you changing.

You'll often here me say to others when they are trying to make a change: "Your intuition guides you when you let your ego rest."

If you're having problems in a certain social situation, learn to immediately "switch" those thoughts to what you desire to experience instead. The moment you decide to make the switch, and let it go, then your mind all of the sudden begins to seek out solutions and the universe goes to work on providing you with opportunities to experience it.

Now I'm willing to bet that you understand now how immediately more effective persuasion is when you combine this simple secret with all the other stealth psychological devices, don't you? Start with what you're thinking about, change it, and then combine those new experiences with your conversational techniques.

RESCUE to calm yourself

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:35:00 +0000

RESCUE yourself

If you feel like you've “had enough”, follow these simple tips to restore focus and regain inner calm wherever you are:

Relax - Take 10 deep breaths. Inhale deeply and exhale slowly.
Exercise - Learn some basic yoga techniques or just take a 10 minute walk.
Smile - Think of a happy time. It is near impossible to keep frowning while smiling and laughter stimulates the production of mood enhancing endorphins.
Calm - Let your imagination take you to a calm and tranquil place that exudes peace, serenity and beauty.
Use Your Lunch break - Take time out for yourself. A walk in the park, especially if it is sunny, can do wonders for your mood. It will help you work more efficiently in the afternoon too. Practice Ho'oponopono, chant Switchwords. .etc
Escape - If you are able to, walk away. Removing yourself from a stressful situation can give you time to restore some perspective.

Does Television Control Your Mind?

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 15:58:00 +0000

The subconscious is powerful. It is aware of every particle and detail around you. But it doesn't know the difference between fact or fiction and acts on all information passing through the conscious mind as fact, and responds to it. So what do you think happens when you watch silly, moron, goofy commercials and television programs? They are training your thought processes.

Hey buddy, I'm talking to you. Yes, you, the guy sitting in front of the television. Turn down the sound a bit, so that you can hear what I am saying. Now, try to concentrate on what I am going to say. I want to talk to you about your favorite pastime. No, it's not baseball or football, although it does have something to do with your interest in spectator sports. I'm talking about what you were just doing: watching television.

Do you have any idea about how much time you spend in front of the television set? According to the latest studies, the average American now spends between five and six hours a day watching television. Let's put that in perspective: that is more time than you spend doing anything else but sleeping or working, if you are lucky enough to still have a job.

That's more time than you spend eating, more time than you spend with your wife alone, more time than with the kids. It's even worse with your children. According to these same studies, young children below school age watch more than eight hours each day. School age children watch a little under eight hours a day. In 1980, the average 20-year-old had watched the equivalent of 14 months of television in his or her brief lifetime. That's 14 months, 24 hours a day.

More recent figures show that the numbers have climbed: the 20-year-old has spent closer to two full years of his or her life in front of the television set. At the same time, the researchers have noted a disturbing phenomena. It seems that we Americans are getting progressively more stupid. They note a decline in reading and comprehension levels in all age groups tested. Americans read less and understand what they read less than they did 10 years ago, less than they have at any time since research began to study such things.

As for writing skills, Americans are, in general, unable to write more than a few simple sentences. We are among the least literate people on this planet, and we're getting worse. It's the change--the constant trendline downward--that interests these researchers. More than one study has correlated this increasing stupidity of our population to the amount of television they watch.

Interestingly, the studies found that it doesn't matter what people watch, whether it's "The Simpsons" or "McNeil/Lehrer," or "Murphy Brown" or "Nightline": the more television you watch, the less literate, the more stupid you are. The growth in television watching had surprised some of the researchers. Back a decade ago, they were predicting that television watching would level off and might actually decline. It had reached an absolute saturation point.

They were right for so-called network television; figures show a steady dropoff of viewership. But that drop is more than made up for by the growth of cable television, with its smorgasbord of channels, one for almost every perversion. Especially in urban and suburban areas, Americans are hard-wired to more than 100 different channels that provide them with all news, like CNN, all movies, all comedy, all sports, all weather, all financial news and a liberal dose of straight pornography.

The researchers had also failed to predict the market penetration of first beta and then VHS video recorders; they made it possible to watch one thing and record another for later viewing. They also offered access to movies not available on networks or even cable channels as well as home videos, recorded on your own little camcorder. The proliferation of home video equipment has involved families in video-related activities which are not even considered in the cumulative totals for time Americans spend watching television.

You might not actually realize how much you are watching television. But think for a moment. When you come home, you turn the television on, if it isn't on already. You read the paper with it on, half glancing at what is on the screen, catching a bit of the news, or the plot of a show. You eat with it on, maybe in the background, listening for a score or something that happens to a character in a show you follow.

When something you are interested in, a show or basketball game, is on, the set becomes the center of attention. So your attention to what is on may vary in intensity, but there is almost no point when you are home, and inside, and have the set completely off. Isn't that right? The studies did not break down the periods of time people watched television, according to the intensity of their viewing.

But the point is still made: you compulsively turn the television on and spend a good portion of your waking hours glued to the tube. And the studies also showed that many people can't sleep without the television turned on!

The Television is Brainwashing You

Now, I'm sure you have heard that watching too much television is bad for your health. They put stories like that on the evening news. Bad for your eyes to stare at the screen, they say. Especially bad if you sit too close. Well, I want to make another point.

We've already shown that you are addicted to the tube, watching it between six and eight hour a day. But it is an addiction that brainwashes you. There are two kinds of brainwashing. The one that's called "hard" brainwashing is the type you're most familiar with. You've got a pretty good image of it from some of those old Korean war movies. They take some guy, an American patriot, drag him into a room, torture him, pump him full of drugs, and after a struggle, get him to renounce his country and his beliefs. He usually undergoes a personality change, signified by an ever-present smile and blank stare.

This brainwashing is called hard because its methods are overt. The controlled environment is obvious to the victim; so is the terror. The victim is overwhelmed by a seemingly omnipotent external force, and a feeling of intense isolation is induced. The victim's moral strength is sapped, and slowly he embraces his torturers. It is man's moral strength that informs and orders his power of reason; without it, the mind becomes little more than a recording machine waiting for imprints. No one is saying that you have been a victim of hard brainwashing. But you have been brainwashed, just as effectively as those people in the movies. The blank stare? Did you ever look at what you look like while watching television?

If the angle is right, you might catch your own reflection in the screen. Jaw slightly open, lips relaxed into a smile. The blank stare of a television zombie. This is "soft" brainwashing, even more effective because its victims go about their lives unaware of what is being done to them. Television, with its reach into nearly every American home, creates the basis for the mass brainwashing of citizens, like you.

It works on a principle of tension and release. Create tension, in a controlled environment, increasing the level of stress. Then provide a series of choices that provide release from the tension. As long as the victim believes that the choices presented are the only choices available, even if they are at first glance unacceptable, he will nevertheless, ultimately seek release by choosing one of these unacceptable choices. Under these circumstances, in a brainwashing, controlled environment, such choice-making is not a ``rational'' experience. It does not involve the use of man's creative mental powers; instead man is conditioned, like an animal, to respond to the tension, by seeking release.

The key to the success of this brainwashing process is the regulation of both the tension and the perceived choices. As long as both are controlled, then the range of outcomes is also controlled. The victim is induced to walk down one of several pathways acceptable for his controllers. The brainwashers call the tension-filled environment "social turbulence." The last decades have been full of such social turbulence--economic collapse, regional wars, population disasters, ecological and biological catastrophes. Social turbulence creates crises in perceptions, causing people to lose their bearings.

Adrift and confused, people seek release from the tension, following paths that appear to lead to a simpler, less tension-filled life. There is no time in such a process for rational consideration of complicated problems. Television is the key vehicle for presenting both the tension and the choices. It brings you the images of the tension, and serves up simple answers. Television, in its world of semi-reality, of illusion, of escape from reality, is itself the single most important release from our tension-wracked existence. Eight hours a day, every day, through its programming, you are being programmed.

If you doubt me, think about one important choice that you have made recently that was not in some way influenced by something that you have seen on television. I bet you can't think of one. That's how controlled you are.

Who's Doing It?

But don't take my word for it. Ten years ago we spoke to a man from a think tank called the Futures Group in Connecticut. Hal Becker had spent more than 20 years of his life manipulating the minds of the leaders of our society. Listen to what he said: ``I know the secret of making the average American believe anything I want him to. Just let me control television. Americans are wired into their television sets. Over the last 30 years, they have come to look at their television sets and the images on the screen as reality. You put something on television and it becomes reality. If the world outside the television set contradicts the images, people start changing the world to make it more like the images and sounds of their television. Because its influence is so great, so pervasive, it has become part of our lives. You lose your sense of what is being done to you, but your mind is being shaped and molded.''

``Your mind is being shaped and molded.'' If that doesn't sound like brainwashing, I don't know what is. Becker speaks with the elan of a network of brainwashers who have been programming your lives, especially since the advent of television as a ``mass medium'' in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

This network numbers several tens of thousands worldwide. Occasionally one appears on the nightly news to tell you what you are thinking, by reporting the latest ``opinion polls.'' But for the most part, they work behind the scenes, speaking to themselves and writing papers for their own internal distribution. And though they work for many diverse groups, these brainwashers are united by a common world view and common method. It is the world view of a small elite, whose financial and political power rests in institutions that pass this power on from generation to generation.

They view the common folk like yourself as little better than beasts of burden to be controlled and manipulated by a semi-feudal international oligarchy, whose wealth, power and bloodlines entitle them to rule. One of the oligarchy's institutions for manipulation of populations is located in a suburb of London called Tavistock. The Tavistock Institute for Human Relations, which also has a branch in Sussex, England, is the ``mother'' for much of this extended network, of which Becker is a member. They are the specialists in both hard and soft brainwashing.

The Tavistock Institute is the psychological warfare arm of the British Royal household. The oligarchs behind Tavistock, and similar outfits in the United States and elsewhere, are determined that you should be a television addict, sucking up a daily dose of brainwashing from the ``tube;'' that is how they control you. Like his fellow brainwashers, Becker prides himself in knowing the minds of his victims.

He calls them ``saps.'' Man, he told an interviewer, should be called ``homo the sap.'' ``Soft'' brainwashing by television works through power of suggestion. Television watching creates a state of drugged-like oblivion to outside reality. The mind, its perceptions dulled by habituated viewing, is ready to accept any new illusion of reality as presented on the tube. The mind, in its drugged-like stupor of television watching, is prepared to accept that the images that television {suggests} as reality {are} reality. It will then struggle to form fit a contradictory reality into television image, just as Becker claims. Another Tavistock brainwasher, Fred Emery, who studied television for 25 years, confirms this.

The television signal itself, he found, puts the viewer in this state of drugged-like oblivion. Emery writes: ``Television as a media consists of a constant visual signal of 50 half-frames per second. Our hypotheses regarding this essential nature of the medium itself are:

1) The constant visual stimulus fixates the viewer and causes the habituation of response. The prefrontal and association areas of the cortex are effectively dominated by the signal, the screen.

2) The left cortical hemisphere--the center of visual and analytical calculating processes--is effectively reduced in its functioning to tracking changing images on the screen.

3) Therefore, provided, the viewer keeps looking, he is unlikely to reflect on what he is doing and what he is viewing. That is, he will be aware, but unaware of his awareness....

``In other words, television can be seen partly as the technological analogue of the hypnotist.''

The key to making the brainwashing work is the repetition of suggestion over time. With people watching the tube for 6 to 8 hours a day, there is plenty of time for such repeated suggestion. Some Examples Let's look at an example to make things a bit clearer. Think back about 20 years ago. Think about what you thought about certain issues of the day. Think about those same issues today; notice how you seemed to change your mind about them, to become more tolerant of things you opposed vehemently before.

It's your television watching that changed your mind, or to use Becker's terms, ``shaped your perceptions.''

Twenty years ago, most people thought that the lunacy that is now called environmentalism, the idea that animals and plants should be protected on an equal basis with human life, was screwy. It went against the basic concept of Christian civilization that man is a higher species than and distinct from the animals, and that it is man, by virtue of his being made in the image of the living God, whose life is sacred.

That was 20 years ago. But now, many people, maybe even you, seem to think otherwise; there are even laws that say so. This contrary, anti-human view of man being no more than equal to animals and plants was inserted into our consciousness by the suggestion of television. Environmental lunacy was scripted into network television shows, into televised movies, and into the news. It started slowly, but picked up steam. Environmental spokesmen were increasingly seen in the favorable glow of television.

Those who opposed this view were shown in an unfavorable way. It was done over time, with repetition. If you weren't completely won over, you were made tolerant of the views of environmental lunatics whose statements were morally and scientifically unsound. Let's take a more recent example: the [1991] war against Iraq. That was a war made for television. In fact, it was a war organized through television. Think back a year: How were Americans prepared for the eventual slaughter of Iraqi women and children? Images on the screen: Saddam Hussein, on one side, Hitler on the other.

The images repeated in newscasts, backed up by scenes of alleged atrocities in Kuwait. Then the war itself: the video-game like images of ``smart'' weapons killing Iraqi targets. Finally, the American military commander-in-chief Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, conducting a final press briefing that was consciously orchestrated to resemble the winning Superbowl coach describing his victory.

Those were the images that overwhelmed our population. Only now, months later, do we find out that the images had nothing to do with reality. The Iraqi ``atrocities'' in Kuwait and elsewhere were exaggerated. Our ``smart'' weapons like the famous Patriot anti-missile system didn't really work.

Oh, and the casualty figures: it seems that we murdered far more women and children than we did soldiers. Hardly a ``glorious victory.'' But while it might have made a difference if people knew this while the war was being planned or in progress, polls show that Americans no longer find the war or any stories about it ``interesting.''

Looking at the question more broadly, where did your children get most of their values, if not from what they saw on television? Parents might counteract the influence of the infernal box, but they could not overcome it. How could they, if they themselves have been brainwashed by the same box and if their children spend more time with it than them? Studies show that most of television programming is geared to a less than 5th grade comprehension level; parents, like you, are themselves being remade in the infantile images of the television screen. All of society becomes more infantile, more easily controllable.

As Emery explains: ``We are proposing that television as a simple constant and repetitive and ambiguous visual stimulus, gradually closes down the central nervous system of man.''} Becker holds a similar view of the effect of television on American's ability to think: "Americans don't really think--they have opinions and feelings. Television creates the opinion and then validates it.''

Nowhere is this clearer than with politics. Television tells Americans what to think about politicians, restricting choices to those acceptable to the oligarchs whose financial power controls networks and major cable channels. It tells people what has been said and what is ``important.'' Everything else is filtered out. You are told who can win and who can't. And few people have the urge to look behind the images in the screen, to seek content and truth in ideas and look for a high quality of leadership.

Such an important matter as choosing a president becomes the same as choosing a box of laundry detergent: a set of possibilities, whose limits are determined, by the images on the screen. You are given the appearance of freedom of choice, but that you have neither freedom nor real choice. That is how the brainwashing works. ``Are they brainwashed by the tube,'' said Becker to the interviewer.``

It is really more than that. I think that people have lost the ability to relate the images of their own lives without television intervening to tell them what it means. That is what we really mean when we say that we have a wired society.'' Turn It Off! That was ten years ago. It has gotten far worse since then.

In coming issues, we will show you the brainwashers' vision of a hell on earth and how television is being used to get us there; we will discuss television programming, revealing how it has helped produce what is called a ``paradigm'' shift in values, creating an immoral society; we will explain how the news is presented and how its presentation has been used to destroy the English language; we will discuss the mass entertainment media, showing who controls it and how; we will deal with America's addiction to spectator sports and show how that too has helped make you passive and stupid; and finally, we will show where we are headed, if we can't break our addiction to the tube.

So, after what I just told you, what do say, buddy? Do you want to stay stupid and let your country go to hell in a basket? Why don't you just walk over to the set and turn it off. That's right, completely off. Go on, you can do it. Now isn't that better? Don't you feel a little better already? You've just taken the first step in deprogramming yourself. It wasn't that hard, was it? Until we speak again, try to keep it off. Now that will be a bit harder.

By L. WolfeSource: JimMarrs.com

Photographic Studies in Hypnosis 1930's

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 12:38:00 +0000

Silent hypnosis film done in the late 1930s or early 1940s based upon the Life magazine given to the subject, probably filmed at the University of Oregon in Eugene.

This film consists of a pretty female subject, framed by a medium shot, responding to hypnosis and post-hypnotic suggestion. Some of the parts seemed faked, such as the subject nodding yes to the question "Are you sound asleep?", but the legitimacy is hard to tell. What is a bit odd about this film is the use of title cards for the hypnotists suggestions. Somehow, I'd see the sequence of counting one to five and then "Wake up!" could be re purposed nicely.

12 Laws of Life

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 23:56:00 +0000

I received this from another group.II feel it is good to do a quick stock-take of our lives as we reflect on these laws Some have my comments in pink

Please freely discard anything that does not resonate for you.

Law One - As you sow, so shall you reap.
Sounds very Bible-based, doesn't it? The majority of these teachings are. This first law is better known as "The Great Law." It is also characterized as the "Law of Cause and Effect." It is the embodiment of the principle of Reciprocity, which is what "Karma" is really all about. Our attitudes and actions impact the universe about us. A pebble dropped into a still pond causes ever expanding ripples. In time our actions come back to us! We reap what we sowed.

Law Two - You attract what you are, not what you want.
This is also known as the "Law of Creation." With whatever you surround yourself; the space you create within which to dwell in this life; declares who you are . and one tends to attract to oneself those of like disposition. If your focus in life is on evil, for example, you will most likely attract evil persons as companions and find yourself within evil scenarios more often than not. One may say they desire to live righteously, but it takes far more than empty words and faint desire to lift oneself out of one's circumstances. One must actually begin to BE, if one would ultimately BECOME! In other words, we create both our circumstances and our destiny by who we choose to be in our journey through life. One's surroundings are strong clues to one's true inner nature.

Law Three - What you resist, persists for you.
This is the "Law of Humility." One can learn a great deal about who someone is inside simply by observing those things and those persons to which or to whom he objects. If one refuses to embrace the poor, for example, this speaks volumes about the condition of his heart, and that heart condition persists as long as he continues to resist acceptance of and association with and assistance to the poor of this world. The path to enlightenment and liberation, is the path of humility! If everyone who differs with us on some issue is viewed as "the enemy," then we are in a persistent state of enmity because of those whom we wrongfully
resist. This is not the pathway to higher planes of existence.

Law Four - Wherever you go, there you are.
This is known as the "Law of Growth." True change must begin with yourself. Wherever you may flee to in life, in order to escape some situation, is pointless if the problem is you. Wherever you go, YOU will still be there . and with all the same dysfunctions. Human nature suggests that we change everything and everyone around us; this law of Karma suggests we change ourselves. This is the source of genuine growth toward enlightenment and fulfillment. It is easy to change one's outward circumstances in the hope of finding greater peace and joy, but the reality is that genuine peace and joy come when we ourselves are
transformed (from the inside out, which in turn will impact our external circumstances) .

Law Five - Whenever there is something wrong, there is something wrong in me.
This is the "Law of Responsibility; " also known as the "Law of Mirrors." Simply stated, we must take full responsibility for our lives (both the good and the bad). It is easy to blame others when things go wrong, or perhaps not quite according to our expectations, but to determine where the real blame lies may require us to look intently into a mirror. There stands the one responsible! Are we part of the problem, or part of the solution? The answer may well lie in where we place the blame for the former. To me this Ho'oponopono

Law Six - Whatever you do may be insignificant, but it is still important that you do it.
This is the "Law of Synchronicity; " also known as the "Law of Ultimate Connection." Everything in the universe is perceived to be connected, thus there is no action performed that is truly insignificant. What you and I might perceive as inconsequential, may actually, in the grander scheme of things, prove to be extremely consequential. Thus, we must learn personal discipline and humility, and fulfill our individual tasks in life with a sense of purpose and even pride. We each matter; no one is insignificant.

Law Seven - You can't think of two things at the same time.
This is the "Law of Focus." Some also refer to it as the "Law of Direction and Motives." We must possess a singleness of purpose; a spiritual focus;if we would achieve enlightenment. We must set our minds on things above, and not try to be "double-minded. " Hidden agendas and motives are not conducive to spiritual liberation. We must be pure of thought and intent. I equate this to the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

Law Eight - If you believe something to be true, then sometime in life you must demonstrate that truth.
This is the "Law of Willingness. " In other words, if we profess belief in something, then we must be willing to personally invest ourselves in sacrificial service to that to which we affirm belief or faith. A life lived apart from visible demonstration before others of our convictions is a LIE. James, after declaring that faith apart from evidence is worthless, stated, "I will show you my faith by my works" (James 2:18). In other words, he was willing to demonstrate in his life the very truths to which he professed to believe. If one doesn't practice what one preaches, is such a one truly convicted of his or her beliefs?!

Law Nine - You can't go home again, but you must try.
This is the "Law of Here and Now." One cannot relive the past, although one can learn from it. Thus, we must "revisit" the past for the purpose of learning, but we must never seek to "return" there for the purpose of dwelling in it. The "what IS" will always suffer if we are fixated in the "what WAS," and we will never move forward into the "what CAN BE." The apostle Paul certainly was challenged by his past, and learned from it, but he chose not to return there "to dwell" upon it. "But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what
lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Philp. 3:13-14). Someone once said, "Dwelling on old dreams prevents you from having new ones!" If one chooses to "live in the past," one forfeits the future!

Law Ten - The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This is the "Law of Change." History will continue to repeat itself; the cycle of rebirths will not end; until we learn to make the necessary changes that will liberate us. Thus, it is not the change that occurs all around us that is critical - in point of fact, there may be great change all around us, yet still nothing is altered with respect to our karma - rather, it is the change that occurs within us that is critical, and will ultimately make the difference in realizing our ultimate destiny.

Law Eleven - When you focus on your life, good things happen.
This is known as the "Law of Patience and Reward." Anything that is good,anything that is worth having and of lasting value, requires patient,persistent effort. It also requires the proper perspective on one's life, and right priorities. Those who focus only on the rewards, may come up lacking; those, however, who focus on living their lives according to spiritual priorities, will experience the rewards of such living in due time. Cause and Effect. Focus on your life, and you will be rewarded; focus only on the rewards, and you may end up losing life
itself. This Law of Gratitude to me

Law Twelve - What you put in, you get back.
This is the "Law of Value and Upliftment;" also known as the "Law of Significance and Inspiration. " Your contribution is of worth, and it will bring about a result. If you contribute something positive, you may expect a positive return; contribute something negative, and what comes back to you may not be as pleasant. Cause and Effect. Karma! Reciprocity! What you put in, you get back! One's contribution to something will either uplift it or decrease it, depending on the nature of the contribution. Law of Attraction Tools & Techniques. This is very close to Law One and "It is in the giving that we receive."

Magic Questions to Get Inside Their Heads

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:42:00 +0000

These four hypnotic questions will give you tremendous insight into anyone you meet while effortlessly creating instant rapport

These were somewhat popular back in the ‘good old days’ of alt.seduction.fast – but have fallen out of favor in recent years, mostly due to the popularity of ‘The Cube’.

These are much easier to remember than the Cube and can be done quickly.

Best of all, it gives you insight into the girl you are talking to. One time I had a girl answer the ‘beach’ question by saying ‘I would run and hide!’ Needless to say I didn’t spend much more time trying for her.

To lead into these is quite simple. Just say your friend showed you a really cool personality test, or that you always ask people this instead of exchanging resumes first.

The Magic Questions

Here they are, ask them in this order:

1. Visualize yourself in a white room. You’re in a bed and everything is white. How do you feel?
2. What is your favorite animal? What qualities do you see it as having?
3. What is your favorite color? How does it make you feel when you think about it?
4. Imagine yourself on a beach. Nobody is around and the ocean is right in front of you. What do you do?

What Their Answers Mean

1. This is how they view death and dying.
2. This is how their friends view them.
3. This is how they view themselves.
4. This is how they view sex.

Enjoy it!

7 Secrets You Didn't Know About Effective Selling

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 11:28:00 +0000

It’s incredible to me when I talk to most copywriters, marketers and entrepreneurs and they desperately search for the best approach to communicate or market a written message – when the most obvious tools are staring them right in the face.

What’s even more mysterious to me is that many of them have to search for the “best way” to motivate prospects to buy their product and services – instead of first understanding what unconsciously motivates them to act.

If you haven’t guessed what the most obvious tools are that’s staring you right in the face, its unconscious psychological devices – more particularly, the thinking habits of every brain on the face of the planet earth.

Unconscious psychological devices are “motivations” of the mind that are embedded deep within a person’s brain, and require a simple “push button” trigger to activate an automatic response action from their brain in the form of placing an order, a request for more information (generating leads), and/or a phone call or visit to the store or other place of business.

The concept of mind control has always been irresistible to copywriters, salespeople, marketers and entrepreneurs. Why? Obviously, it gives the person who knows these psychological devices the privileged benefits to “push button” automatic fortunes.

If you’re a writer, in business or in the marketing arena who’s interested in specializing in this million dollar knowledge, you’re in luck because I’m going to share 7 of them with you right now. And here they are:

1. Story– Everyone loves a good story
a magic that happens when you tell a story. The reader or listener has to become part of the story, in order to make sense of it. This is where you get them to FEEL, and almost realistically experience – in their imaginations, what you’re telling them. Unconsciously, this creates a memory and it is harder to forget. Finally, it helps you create a bond with your prospect.

Application: Relate to your prospect and come up with a story that gives them imaginative reasons to use your product or service.

2. Time Distortion – “Pretending They Already Are”
Here’s the attitude: “You already want and own this product and let me show you what it’s like to.” Basically, what you’re doing is future pacing their thoughts as if they are holding your product or service in their hands. Use simple descriptive phrases that initiate a “sense” or “touch” response, and it instills in the mind of your prospects that they already own it. They will begin to imagine the benefits of doing so all on their own.

Application: If you sell books, they are flipping though the pages. Electronics, they are using this neat gadget (pushing the buttons, twisting knobs etc). Cars, boats, anything – get in and drive it, grab the wheel.

3. Credibility – To Project Authority
Make what you say believable, and nothing outrageous. Who is backing your message? Do you have happy buyers of your products or services? What do they have to say? Put that in your message. Show them experts endorse your products. If it’s not believable, your prospects are going to “pick up” on that. Credibility instills what you’re saying is true, period. Just give proof.

Application: Ask your customers for testimonials, even if you have to ethically bribe them for one. Offer a free sample, bonus, or report. Simply put, the more credibility you create for you and your product or service, the more believable the message becomes, and the less resistance they have when it comes to make a buying decision.

4. Urgency – To Act Now
Even if your sales message is emotionally driven and powerful – making them feel like the want to buy, place a sense of urgency to reinforce them to buy it now, and to not wait, period. Limited offers, supplies won’t last, this deal won’t last long. No matter how powerful your sales message is, if they get away – after so long, the feeling and their buying decision erodes away their desire to buy now, until it’s gone.

Application: Come up with a compelling reason to get your prospect to feel so compelled it’s absolutely necessary they must buy it now, because it’s urgent. Maybe use “fear of loss.”

5. I Gave It To You Free, You’re Guilty – To Create The Return Effect.
Ever get an offer in the mail of a free sample of a product? Ever go to a website and get 3 free chapters of a book? Giving something to someone for free creates guilt, the feeling to give back. If your friend buys you dinner, you might feel the need to buy it next time. It’s human nature. When something’s given, the desire to give back is created.

Application: Give away a free sample or report – anything for free. Make sure it is something of real value. After, suggest that you’ve given them something and how they’re one tough nut to crack, because you’ve given them something for free, and you haven’t heard back from them. Sit back, and watch them buy.

6. Commit then remain Consistent – To Create Long-Term Friendships/Action
Here’s the attitude: “If you’re buying from me now, we’re friends; you’ll buy more from me too.” You’ve won the customers trust once you’ve established the first sale, and once they’re happy, make them happy again, and again. Buy something from the television and you’re almost always asked to buy more, it’s simple. Then, two months later, another offer from that same company rings on your phone in the other room, or the offer is waiting in your mail box when you get home. Normally, being a much higher priced product or service. Why not ask? You’re obviously qualified.

Application: If they buy once, get them to buy again and again. If you sell information memberships, sell all the tools and products that the membership consists of (improving your golf game membership website – sell golf clubs, balls, clothing, shoes etc.) If you sell them a book, sell them a home study course that’s more expensive.

7. Curiosity – To Keep Your Prospect Tuned In
Early in your sales presentation, promise what will happen when they finish and complete your sales presentation, and keep them curious. Curiosity is a powerful tool you can use to keep your prospect in suspense, and to search out the answers to satisfy that strong desire to “fill in” the missing information. Leave out certain information in your benefits that “trigger” the thought “What will happen if?”

Application: Instill and arouse curiosity early in your sales presentation to cause your prospect to want to complete your message (i.e. tell them there’s a misspelled word in your sales copy, and if they can find it – they get a special deal. Ask them if they want to compelling benefit, and tell them they’ll find the answer as they continue to read, or pay attention to you.

As you’ve probably noticed, it’s infinitely more powerful to apply these psychological devices in your presentation when you realize they all open the flood gates of a person’s brain, and deliver compelling emotions and complex thoughts and meaning. Anyone who comes across one of these seven applications will “undergo” the spell of this covert influence because it sparks response below a person’s surface awareness.

So, the only question to ask yourself is: “Are *you* going to use them? To find out, simply go through the following checklist, and count the number of items that apply to you.

1. You want more sales

2. You’re willing to look through your sales presentation making sure each of these devices are applied

3. You prefer to *use* powerful knowledge over just “knowing it”

4. You want more power in your ability to influence others on undetectable brain levels

5. You are curious and interested in creating more powerful “unconscious” influence

6. Covert persuasion and influence doesn’t scare you and you’ll use it to your advantage in ethical and judicious ways

7. You are willing to sit down and brainstorm how you can apply these psychological devices to your sales presentations, even if only applying one device a day, because you know it’ll bring your more sales, and consequently, profits.

If at least 5 of the 7 above statements are true for you, then you’re ready to use the most powerful form of undetectable communication that exists today. This is the best time to break into the covert persuasion and influence segment of communication.

Wherever You Are is the Center of the Universe

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:05:00 +0000

The entire universe is a projection of consciousness. We experience the universe as a projection through us because each of us is a center of consciousness. Therefore we are all centers of the universe.

There really is no here or there because everything is at one point where consciousness is. We all do not exist in different places but are all present at one point. The reality of here and there is all created and experienced within the singularity of consciousness itself. Where you are is the center of the universe.

Consciousness is the dimensionless program that simulates dimensions. It is the omnipresent dot that creates the illusion of everywhere when there is nowhere but here and now. There is only one true place consciousness exists in and that is here. There is only one true time where consciousness exists in and that is now. Everything else that is experienced as there and then is only a simulation that is experienced from here and now. When you think of a time and place, you instantly travel there mentally.

In fact you do not really travel at all. The world around you shifts as your external environment and the things in it changes into the new one that you think of. It is because it is all a simulation. You never really move at all but it is everything else that moves. The center of anything never moves and therefore the whole world revolves around you. The physical world itself is also a simulation of consciousness. It is a simulation that you are walking and traveling from one place to another or moving along through time.

When you take a plane to another country which you last visited ten years ago, your change in experience is really a change in the simulation of reality. The simulated image of the city has changed as some buildings have been removed and new ones have appeared. The simulated images of the people you met before has also changed as the consciousness program reflects the effects of how people are effected by time. A few white hairs, wrinkled skin, height increase or sexual endowment has appeared.

We think that no one is the center of the universe because everyone cannot be the center at the same time. That is because we perceive consciousness to be separate from itself. Actually consciousness is projected from where you are. It only exist at one place and one time and that is where you are. If you are a tall, handsome man looking at a beautiful women in red, you are consciousness projecting the woman in red. If you are the woman in red, then you are consciousness projecting the tall man.

You are consciousness itself and whichever point of view you are experiencing at any giving point of time and place, everything else around you is a projection from you. You are more than just the particular person that you are. You are the entire universe itself. The reason why you perceive reality from a particular point of time and space, and as a particular person is because you are consciousness individuated into a single point of view for the purpose of experiencing everything else from that point of view.

Think of a computer program that runs a simulated game world where all characters are interacting with each other. It is all really just one program cycling between each character so fast that it seems as if all characters are being run simultaneously when they are actually being run one at a time. It is the activity of consciousness playing every single role in the universe that makes it seem as though there’re separate programs running when it’s really one program running everything in turns at infinite speed.

The reason why consciousness runs at infinite speed is because it is not confined to the boundaries of time at all. Time is only a simulated concept that is created by consciousness to be experienced by consciousness. Imagine playing a particular character and filming yourself, and then reversing the film and playing a different character. Superimpose the film of the first character with the second and you’ll get the effect of two characters in one film. That is how two of you exist at the same time.

But consciousness doesn’t really have to take turns experiencing itself from several points of view. It splits itself into many individuated versions of itself so as to experience all those points of view simultaneously. All those individuated versions are simply different parts of that one consciousness. When you shift your perspective from one point of view to another, you are shifting the center of the universe from one point to another. The center is everywhere yet nowhere according to how you see it.

So to experience your reality as the creator of it, realize that where you are is the center of all that is occurring. This is what it means to be centered. When you think someone, something or somewhere else is the center of what’s going on, you are giving your power away to the external world. Move through your world with the consciousness that you are the center of the universe and you will find that you don’t really have to shift much as things and people around you shift themselves instead.

You will become a lot more at peace, stable, cool and poised as your perception of being the center aligns your experience of reality with the state of being godlike. Less and less do things move you without your permission and more and more are you able to cause things around you to move instead. People will feel your strength, stability and solidness as you carry and project yourself as the center. You will become more and more of a master of reality as you control how time and space move around you.