Reprogramming the mind | The mental power.
Hi steemit community,
today I am going to talk about t reprogramming of the mind and some touted prescriptions for well-being, each with extravagant claims.....
requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don’t practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us, and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along "
To visit a bookstore, is to feel misgiving about universal literacy, which has produced a mass market for hundreds of profoundly sad handbooks on achieving happiness.
Each offers its own prescriptions for feeling good about oneself. Pull a few psychic levers, believe the best about yourself, assert yourself, and happiness will be yours. Study your dreams, attend a seminar, or buy some tapes, and perhaps you, too, can “wake up everyday, completely happy, eager to live.”
Is there anything to these promises of quick mental fixes? Or are they merely today’s versions of yesterday’s snake oils? Let’s consider some touted prescriptions for well-being, each with extravagant claims.
"Mind Power"
The roots of various “mind cures” run deep in the fertile soil of the nineteenth-century individualism and optimism. Using positive mental suggestions, by changing belief one could cure disease. One adopted statement of purpose that can tout your mental power is,
Ideas have occult power. To hold yourself in this attitude of mind is to set into operation subtle, silent, and irresistible forces that sooner or later will actualize in material form what is today merely an idea.
The idea that a divine dimension of humanity enables us to harness supernatural powers finds expression in today’s New Age doctrine that everyone is God, co-master of the universe, or at least a creative life force lies waiting to be trapped.
To find healing, peace, or power,
By harnessing your psychic mental powers, achieve a modest sort of omniscience (by reading others’ minds), omnipresence (through out-of-body-travel), and omnipotence (by altering the future through a convergence of mental powers).
Most faith healers would disavow the pantheistic leanings of New Age thought, yet they make a kindred claim of being a channel for divine healing powers passing through their hands into sick bodies.
Some unsubstantial claims, such as of psychic mental powers, seem as bizarre as ever, especially in view of our accumulating knowledge about our creatureliness, formed of the earth as we indeed are, with our growing awareness of the mechanics of the mind’s dependence on brain. Yet, objective life circumstances have little effect on well-being, certainly less than I would have guessed.
In the midst of economic plenty we starve spiritually. Moreover, there no longer is doubt that mind affects brain, that our appraisal of challenging situations affects our blood pressure, that chronic anger and resentment trigger the release of hormones that accelerate the buildup of deposits on the heart’s vessels, that persistent psychological stress depresses the immune system, decreasing our resistance to various diseases.
Although it's tempting to to overstate the effect, people do not cause their own cancer cells and cannot mentally will them away, there is more and more evidence that rage and other negative emotions do lash back at us, and that relaxation, meditation, and optimism boost the body’s own healing.
“Fire Walking.”
Consider, first, a hot idea: Transform your fears into faith, your concerns into confidence, by fire walking. Just holding the thought in your mind that your not going to hurt or injure your feet alters the chemistry of your body.
The physical result of this mind power: walking on red-hot coals without pain or burn. The psychological result: a newfound capacity to conquer one’s problems, fears, and limiting beliefs.
If I can do something that’s supposed to be impossible, then, I can do almost anything. This proves our mental powers are far greater than we realize, powerful enough to control our body and to create a new reality.
If just thinking of the hot coals as ’cool moss’ can enable me to conquer fire, imagine what this mind power can do to my other fears. Think of a cake baking in a 375-degree oven. Touch the aluminium cake tin and it will burn you; touch the cake, like wood, a poor heat conductor and you’ll be okay.
Ofcourse, cakes and coals do conduct some heat , so don’t stay in touch too long: With or without fire-walking training, he who hesitates is lost.
Although fire walkers’ newfound belief in their ability to command themselves to do anything rests on an illusion, it can still do some good.
”Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re your. ” ”Believe!” in your possibilities and maybe , just maybe, you will achieve them. If you believe your demoralized life has been uplifted by some psychological snake oil, well, it probably has been.
But the remedy you’ve bought may not be in the vial, or in your unburned feet. No, the new cure is the new hope that’s in your head.
"Astrology"
One can say as much for astrology, the idea that the stars’ and planets’ alignment at the time of one’s birth foretell one’s future, providing clues for happy living.
For one thing, horoscopes seem to fit in an uncanny sort of way. People are struck time and again by how apt the day’s comment feels. ”You’re nursing a grudge against someone, you really ought to let go.”
”You worry about things more than you let on, even to your best friends.” ”Your day begins on a sluggish note. A conversation with a friend is a pick-me-up.”
Well, yes. One of my favourite demonstrations is to take a string of such generally true statements drawn from horoscope books and offer them to my friends as “personalized feedback” following a little personality test:
a). You have a need for other people to like and admire you.
b). You have a tendency to be critical to yourself.
c). You pride yourself on being an independent thinker and do not accept other opinions without satisfactory proof,
d). You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others.
e). At times you are extraverted, affable, sociable, but at times you are introverted, wary, and reserved.
f). Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.
Nearly all my friends rate such stock assessments as “good” or “excellent.” There is a sucker born every minute. Some of my friends even express amazement at the astonishing insights gleaned by my remarkeable (pseudo) test. It’s astonishing how that test pegged me.
But again, if you’re not using astrology to make series decisions, and if you’re not bamboozled into choosing a make-believ universe over the real cosmos, I suppose there can be a posiotive effect to having your newspaper columnist tell you (if you’re Sagittarius).
The sweet tooth tempts you. Begin a program of diet and exercise. Or that you should follow through on promises made to close ties (Cancer). Never mind that what is said of Sagittarius today is repeated, in different words , for Cancer tomorrow.
"Subliminal Tapes"
Mail-order catalogues, cable television ads, and prominent bookstore chains flood us with opportunities to reprogram our unconscious minds for success and happiness.
Some magazines used to carry five full-page ads for self help tapes that embedded positive messages on your mind below the level of conscious awareness.
Subliminal tapes are said to harness mysterious powers. Underneath the soothing music or ocean waves that we hear are thousands of potent messages all being absorbed by our all-powerful and obedient subconscious.
Store owners can inhibit shoplifting by burying ”I am honest” messages in their Muzak. And you and I can have our lives transformed.
The technology assumes that “science has proven that most personal limitations are the fault of “negative subconscious progrmming” and the influence it can exert over your conscious actions.”
Your unconscious mind , negatively programmed during childhood, won’t listen to your conscious wishes. But with sublimal, you now have the access code. With effortless ease, you needn’t pay attention, you ncan inject positive messages.
The end result is that a truly new you, ayou you’ll like so very much more. You’ll gain more happiness, more fulfillement, and a better life than ever before. Careful, though. Don’t inadvertently expose children to to the popular weightloss subliminals. They may become anorexic.
“Hypnosis”
The intriguing mental powers of hypnosis are the focus of vigorous debates. Imagine you are about to be hyponised. The hypnotist invites you to sit back, fix your gaze on a spot high on the wall, and relax. In a quiet, low voice the hyponist suggests,
”Your eyes are growing tired…..your eyelids are becoming heavy…..and you start to feel your bodyis beginning to feel like lead”
Many people associate hypnosis with show biz and quackery. Skeptical and believing people alike discount several popular misconceptions of supposed hypnotic powers.
They act as people believe children would act, but typically miss the mark by outperforming real children of the specified age. And when hypnotized subjects are regressed to past lives, the results are humorous.
Hypnotised people could be induced to perform an apparently dangerous act. And when interviewed a day later, they exhibit no memory of their acts and emphatically deny they would do or follow orders to commit such actions.
If told they are color-blind, hypnotized people respond to color blindness tests differently than do people with actual color-deficient vision. Told to forget having heard certain words, deeply hypnotized subjects will deny any memory of them. Their behavior tell a different story, however, for the forgotten words influence their later thoughts and perceptions.