Unless you learn reasoning, and thinking with your reasoning mind, you are locked into the reactive mind to make decisions for you.
But real accomplishments, being a leader, and inventing something cannot be done with the reactive mind… while real big things cannot be done with the plodding, reasoning mind either.
The job of individual growth is to make the thinking instinctual, that it flows out of you like water.
In the seventh year of my career as an architect and structural designer, I had enough practice and thinking and calculations under my belt that I could “guess” the dimensions of most weight bearing elements of a building, accurately.
I did no calculations in my head… I just knew.
This is much like marshal arts: you know without consciously knowing how, what to do, how to respond.
If I am not mistaken, this is the next level of “thinking”… thinking without thinking. 1
When I am on a webinar, I answer questions the answers I don’t know… but I hear myself speak. When I muscletest, the answer was correct.
I didn’t think it out. It feels like channeling… you open a faucet and the knowledge comes out.
But it was preceded by 30 plus years of rigorous thinking… which, for me, is hard work.
But none of that is possible with enough practice… it’s easier to see in marshal arts, because it’s physical. But the same is true in any kind of activity that requires you to develop a feeling based pathway, a different kind of thinking… NOT brain thinking… body thinking.
When you start working on developing self-control, so you can have what you want, and choose between activities accordingly, you have to do the plodding, step by step thinking or rewards and punishments, the consequences of your actions.
Eventually the elements of this thinking move into the body/emotions area, and you instinctively choose the actions that bring about the values you have chosen to honor.
But it takes years of practice, faithful, uninterrupted practice.
Most people never practice anything faithfully, uninterrupted, and with all their selves.
And most people never choose values to honor…
But I thought you should know that the world and the possibilities don’t end with learning reasoning, and thinking with the conscious mind… Ultimately the world and possibilities start after that learning and practice.
One of the places I can see the lack of practice, the lack of mastery is connecting to Source. 2
You cannot connect to Source if you are trying to connect to Source. If you are following a process. If it is too important to you. If you have any emotion about it.
All those will block you from connecting.
Can I teach this to you? I can’t… This is specialty knowledge, and I use it but don’t teach it… I don’t know how.
I got to the place where I can think without thinking and try without trying… after about 40 years of rigorous training… and it was never my intention… I just got there, because that is the next step.
The space and experience of thinking without thinking, trying without trying, seeing without looking, finding without searching… is similar to being in the zone.
You can’t get to it without doing the work over and over and over.
The system, teaching online, is not suitable for this kind of training: because ultimately you are on your own. To the degree that you have self-control, to the degree that you want to become masterful, to the degree that you can re-arrange your life to give this enough energy and attention…
I have read about 200 testimonials to a book called E-squared.
The book has nine exercises that people can get into the zone of thinking without thinking, trying without trying…
Out of the 200 people, I did not find one single person who
- did all the exercises
- did any of the exercises more than once.
For that I surmise that the culture, the mindset of this crowd is:
- knowledge should enter your head in an instant, and
- hoping. It feels better than being sure that it doesn’t, won’t work for you.
I am thinking that marshal arts is an excellent training ground both for self-control, and getting to thinking without thinking, trying without trying.
PS: Chess masters are another discipline where thinking without thinking is what makes one a winner at that game.
- In the next article I’ll show what happens on the molecular level that makes this possible: a bunch of neurons team up and form a “chunk”… an island, a whole continent, to do the thinking automatically for you.
- To a lesser degree, but getting your brain into Theta mode, and staying there to be able to learn, is a big challenge. The mind wants to pull you out… and it succeeds. Theta brain mode is a lot like what meditation teachers want you to enter, unsuccessfully. On half percent of all meditators ever learn to enter and stay in Theta brain mode… and that even includes the meditation teachers and the gurus. And that while their eyes are closed. While they are sitting cross legged… with nothing else to do.
I teach or try to teach you to be in Theta mode for hours at a time, while you are reading, while you are listening to me, while you are watching videos… so you can learn, deeply and fast.
Ok thank you
Hi Sophie, are the exercises in the E squared book useful if practiced over time?
No, they aren’t. The truth value of the book is 3%. If I remember accurately, one of the nine exercises was only a valid exercise, maybe the first? the rest is b.s.