What Could You Dot If You Changed Your Mind?
In 1939, a 25-year-old math student named George Dantzig was studying at the University of California.
One morning, he arrived 20 minutes late to his statistics class. Quietly slipping into his seat, he noticed two problems written on the board. Thinking they were the homework assignment, he copied them down and started listening to the lecture.
Later at home, he regretted being late. The problems were incredibly difficult. He assumed he had missed an important explanation. But there was no turning back, so he spent days wrestling with the math. Finally, after intense effort, he solved them. Proudly, he handed in his work to his professor, Jerzy Neyman.
The professor absentmindedly accepted the notebook, not recalling that he hadn’t actually assigned those problems.
When he finally looked at the solutions, his jaw dropped. He realized that George had just solved two famous unsolvable problems — challenges that had stumped not only him, but also the greatest mathematicians of that era.
Dantzig had done the impossible… simply because he didn’t know it was impossible.
Sometimes the only thing standing between you and the impossible is the belief that it can’t be done.
The Mystery of Qi: A Verifiable Life Force or a Pseudoscience?
Before we discuss the theory, let’s do a practical exercise.
Close your eyes and get a picture of a cat.
Now, change the colour of the cat. If it was black, make it white. If it was white, make it black.
Now make it ginger.
Now make it grey.
How far out from your nose is the picture?
OK, Send it out to three meters.
Now make it three meters tall.
Now turn it purple.
Now give it green polka dots.
Now shrink it down to the size of a pin head and throw it over your left shoulder.
Now open your eyes.
There are three parts of man. Your body, including your brain, which is merely a mechanical switchboard and does not do any thinking.
Your mind, which is not an object but a function. It is the mechanism that produced the first cat you saw, probably a picture of an actual can you had seen at some point in the past. And that which you used to get the other coloured cats.
So, now the $64,000 question? Who was looking at the picture of the cat? (Answer that before you read on.)
If you said, “I was!” you are correct. You are not your body. You are not your mind. You are an immortal, indestructible spiritual being who uses the mind to run the body.
You can use the mind to call up pictures of the past, like the black or white cat. Or to create pictures from your imagination. Pictures like a three meter tall purple cat with green polka dots.
As a matter of fact, all you do, all you create, all you have, you first imagine, you create in your mind before bringing it into being in the physical universe.
Those pictures you create in your mind require a special form of energy to do so. The being that is you is not energy but an energy production unit.
This truth is not long hidden from view. For many thousands of year, until 1879, Western culture widely acknowledged the truth that you are not a meat body but a spiritual being. In that year the German Professor Wundt, under the influence of the militaristic Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, loudly proclaimed that man was an animal, not a spiritual being. He thus altered and perverted the name and the course of psychology. After all, ‘pysch’ comes from the Greek meaning ‘soul’, and ‘ology’ means ‘study of’. So psychology originally meant ‘the study of the soul’.
Now it appears to have little truck with that. More like studying rats and figuring out how to manipulate people.
Understanding this you have some idea of one reason why and where modern Western medicine has gone off the rails. After all, they full recognise the influence and power of the mind to alter experimental trials. That’s why they have what they call ‘double-blind clinical trials’, where neither the person taking the placebo or trial substance, nor the one administering it, have any idea who is getting the placebo or who is getting the substance being trialed. Yet they have not investigated and identified the source of this influence.
It took an atomic physicist who traveled amongst the wise men of Asia so had an extremely rare grounding in Western practicality and Eastern philosophy to thoroughly research the subject. What’s more, unlike many others who have tried to learn more about the spirit/mind/body combination, he was diligent in documenting his research.
One of his discoveries that fueled his purpose was when he totally disproved the idea that memories are stored in the physical brain. A commonly held belief early last century.
Memories are actually stored by the being in the mind which is a function separate from the physical brain and body.
He identified that a being stores everything that ever happens to him, while he is conscious, in a function he called the standard memory banks of the mind, bit like a computer hard drive, that is fully accessible to the analytical mind that you use to think with.
He identified that as you go through life you take 32 impressions per second of your environment. These are not just visual images. They also contain the commonly recognised other four senses, touch, smell and sound. The air temperature and moisture level, the feel of your clothes on your skin, the taste of food and drink, the sound of the bird ‘s wings as it flies close to you, the smell of the freshly cut grass, as well as things not recognised as senses but are nevertheless perceived. Things like how hungry you are, how full your bladder and bowels, the salinity level of your body, your perception of which compass direction you are facing.
He identified 57 different perceptics in all. You are aware of a lot more going on than they told you about in kindergarten!
You have enough cells in the brain to store only three months worth of these memories at 32 pictures per second. And last time I checked, most people can recollect a bit further back than three months ago.
You may have read stories of kids remembering exact names and events from previous lives. This is how those memories are stored by the being in the standard memory banks of the mind – completely independent of the genetic line and physical body.
It’s a fascinating subject, one I have spent a little spare time studying, OK, a lot, over the last 46 years.
If you’d like to know more, message me and I will point you to some reading materials.
Quote of the Day
“The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.” Lao Tzu – Philosopher (604 – 531 BC)
A Kilo Of Iron… …Or A Week Of Your Time
Dr Christiane On The News
Dr Christiane On The News
Change Your Operating Basis
by Julie Fratantoni, PhD who writes on Substack:
Next time you’re waiting in line: do nothing.
Just stand there.
In between meetings: don’t check your phone.
Sit in silence.
Let people think you’re a complete weirdo.
These small margins are important opportunities for your brain to rest, recharge, and consolidate information.
We’ve lost the ability to be bored, and with it, the space your brain needs to stay healthy.
I’m a cognitive neuroscientist and I write about small shifts like this that can make a huge difference for your cognitive health and longevity.
Quote of the Day
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” Marcus Aurelius – Roman Emperor (121 -180 AD)
She’ll Be Right Mate
(It is more likely to be right if you plan for contingencies!)
(For my overseas readers:
The phrase “She’ll be right” meaning ‘don’t worry over it’, is widely used and understood in Australia and New Zealand, reflecting the laid-back and optimistic attitude often associated with their cultures.)
I was talking to my daughter on our Father’s Day outing and we had a conversation about promoting her husband’s business, Elscomm. They do computer support for small to medium sized businesses.
We were talking about getting more customers and we discussed direct sales and promoting through other people’s clients, like accountants. She spoke of offering a free service to attract the interest of prospective clients.
I suggested offering a security audit to discover any vulnerabilities to ransomware since it is a growing and expensive problem for even smaller businesses.
She surprised the heck out of me by saying they had already extensively surveyed that and it was a topic of almost total non-interest to business owners and managers.
She figured it was because people were so focused on running their business, so totally immersed in the production area they spent too little time managing their business. I think some people refer to it as the difference between working ON your business rather than working IN it.
I was thinking about it later and it occurred to me that it is probably symptomatic of a fairly common Australian attitude of, “She’ll be right mate.” said with an ever so slight pause after ‘right’ and before ‘mate’. Not enough of a pause to warrant a comma but not grammatically perfect without one.
This is an Australian/New Zealand expression commonly given by one bloke to another to encourage or support him when he is facing a challenging or difficult situation.
A shorter form of the encouragement similarly expressed elsewhere in the world as, “It’ll be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it’s not the end.” (Aussies and Kiwis have a habit of shortening things.)
It is also used to encourage someone contemplating an act larrikinism or bravado. Sometimes heard in video compilations of blokes doing stupid things, just prior to something breaking or failing. I was reminded of that this week when I saw a meme that said, ‘When someone says, “She’ll be right mate.” It won’t be!’
Not the same as but in a similar vein to one bloke saying something can’t be done and his mate responding with, “Hold my beer!” as he accepts the statement as a challenge.
Like any characteristic, the laid back attitude of ‘she’ll be right’ can be over applied. With disastrous consequences. Merely hoping that things will turn out all right in the end without giving any thought to planning or preparation is a sure way to put yourself in what should have been an avoidable situation if circumstances deteriorate below what is normal or expected.
In fact I once came across a great concept that an emergency only becomes an emergency when it is not predicted and planned for. So spending a little planning time contemplating what could possible go wrong and working out what would keep the fat out of the fire in those situations is potentially a very good use of your time.
“What if interest rates go through the roof? How would I pay my mortgage?”
“What if rents went sky high such that I could not afford to live where I am?
“What if I lost my job. How would I earn a quid?”
In fact, I often use the “What if?” question with myself to query or challenge myself or the story being promoted in the media. As in,
“What if nearly everything we heard on the TV was merely propaganda in support of an agenda?”
“What if they leave out the bits that do not fit their agenda?”
“What if standard medical advice has nothing to do with helping the patient attain optimal health and everything to do with conforming what the higher ups have decided is best for their sponsors?”
And the more I read independent reports of various scenarios in the world that conflict dramatically with those in the main stream media, the more I am of the mind that these are some of the more important questions we should be teaching our kids to ask.