Delusions of Freedom

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Paul admin

Here is the etiology of delusions of freedom. We are born safe and snug in a very simplified world of very gradually revealed mysteries. At first, none of the data shared with us seem to conflict, and all is well. We imitate sounds we hear as infants, verbalize all wants as kids, whisper to ourselves as teens, repeat the sound of our parents voices (in our heads) as young adults, and eventually all the voices, wisdom, idioms, and “rules” of truth from the books, people, and knowledge we acquire converge into one single inward consciousness, completely segregated from the external world. But during this psychological development from embryonic clones to individualistic birth, we begin to encounter paradoxes which may present strong truths that threaten previously incorporated (but weaker) arguments or fairy tales that helped us sleep soundly. A few of the more fundamental assumptions may even be mere convenient lies that lubricate social integration and socioeconomic equilibrium.

If you are fortunate and resolve these crises without exaggerated deconstruction (backing up to point zero), or support network trauma, your inner world becomes far more universal and real than the external material world, though it remains subject to empirical validations in some respects. And even though your inner world has no parts that transcend or do not otherwise derive from physical reality, it nevertheless has fewer self-contradictions and hypocrisies, if you are more committed to honest methods of finding truth and admitting errors, than to saving face and blindly defending a position. Although you cautiously avoid exaggerated claims of certainty, you are not too cowardly to admit your own potential for bias and mistakes. A healthy and active imagination excitedly probes many possible theories and while sadly it may sadly admit those things less probable it never stops dreaming for what is still possible. But not everyone is so fortunate to bravely exist in a world so uncertain. For some of us, we are still tightly clinging to the supportive web of self-identification with the external. Rather than honor our heritage from a respectful distance, we find that we have no distinct sense of self beyond it.

For these unfortunate souls the magic of Peter Pan is very different indeed from the supernatural power of the hallowed spiritual realm. Reverence for tradition demands that questions be silenced whenever the sacred stories are told. And all that we are is still but a mere series of group affiliations, peer reference group associations, and temporal conflations of situational coincidences. It’s poor form to stand beyond the first two mundane deviations and certainly poor sportsmanship to break protocol with ones ancestral customs. But what if those customs no longer serve the “public good” so well, such as when the public is no longer as homogenized and uni-vocal. And what if literacy enables more individually tailored practices which suite personal preferences for understanding and even self-expression? What you more often then encounter are intellectual grave-sites where battles fizzle fast between officially sanctioned public values and victimless behavioral practices. May the strongest emotion win, and reason be silent.

Thus compunctions to defend our inner world (the self) may at times be a result of internalizing principles that conflict one with another. But that is not freedom. That is self-enslavement and that is why the delusion of freedom is a delusion instead of an emergent property resulting from a strong sense of one’s own internal moral and rational compass. It’s a fear of failure in the face of certainty when answering questions that demand answers but have no more universal applicability than that we all eventually ask them. The delusion of freedom is a tragic paradox for usually those most likely to claim science less useful in service to one’s acquisition of knowledge (relative to supernatural sources), are also those most likely to have surrendered their ability to reason about freedom itself by virtue of blindly accepting explanations based on magic.

Emotional and Cognitive Genetic Influence

Posted on January 11, 2010 by Paul admin

I’m certainly no expert on population genetics, but some things just seem logical to me, yet are apparently completely lost on others. It’s when something so obvious, is so easily overlooked that I’m tempted to imagine that perhaps human Ostriches marry positions, and abandon honesty inquiry.

For instance, the word “Species” is a human invention, made up to explain phenotypic and reproductive functional differences created by GENES. Within or between species genetic differences have the same general properties of INFLUENCE over phenotype as they do over function (correct me on this point, if I’m wrong). IF (big if) that is true, then it’s perfectly logical to also assume that if specimen A and specimen B have large differences in phenotype, but share the same (or very similar) experiences, environment, and nutrition, it makes no difference whether they are the same species or not, in causally attributing those differences to genetics, rather than to some Ostrich philosophy of being “born equal”.

Reproductive versus Emotional Success

Posted on May 8, 2009 by Paul admin

Evolutionarily (reproductive survival) you’d expect females (min 9 mo investment per child) to be worried about partners ‘falling in love’ with others – because of a great investment and committment per child. Male romantic (but not necessarily sexual) cheating potentially diverts resources to other women’s kids. Males on the other hand, would be expected to try to avoid unknowingly supporting offspring of other men. If a female mate loves others without consummation it’s less evil than sexual cheating from a male perspective, if dictated by evolution. The male advantage reproductively is smaller startup capital per child (as little as 1 minute) to get DNA carried forward. Spiritually though, it’s STUPID to self-injure by repeated emotional/psychological coupling, followed by immediate amputation (flings). Stabilized monogamy facilitates maturity/growth because less attention/time is devoted to establishment of bonds, breaking off bonds, and recoverying from amputation. Mind-body feedback in the endocrine system (and soul) causes INVOLUNTARY emotional response to physical coupling through the reward circuitry. Unlike cultural/cognitive programming (probably in the frontal lobes), the power of physical reward/reinforcement is in the impact to emotional & reward brain regions (closer to involuntary/primordial medula). No lovers heart is too cold to FEEL attached to an object causing repeated reward.

The Winner Is? (Heroin vs. Rage)

Posted on April 24, 2009 by Paul admin

The brain during orgasm looks like its on heroin; “95 percent is the same” http://tr.im/jC4I Race-based rejections insult & violence (by a few remaining Neanderthals) profoundly shape us. Which will win long-term? Heroin or Rage? Children are malleable as water before a freeze, but narrow depending on environment. We (all living things) are brothers, our identity is with the world around us (vice a small subset). Ever had a grudge, but once let go, felt happier, more free? Open your heart, avoid Neanderthals, rise above them. Morality isn’t genetic, there’s no evil gene. Neither is culture a genetic prison – you still can be whatever whoever you want regardless of family. Being proud of who YOU are can equal self-esteem (diverse self-chosen values/cultural practices), or it can mean mere solidarity in a group. More meaningful fulfilled lives result from self-directed living, rather than slavish conformity or what others think. Being a “sell-out” IS CONFORMITY.

Positive Affirmations

Posted on February 26, 2009 by Paul admin

CAVEATS: Personally, I try to maintain as high a degree of honesty as my social stupidity will allow without completely humiliating myself or otherwise self-destructing completely (intentionally, that is). So I avoid plagarism. That said, I hope I don’t ruffle anyone’s feathers by replicating the contents of the below three articles from other websites. I have included the link, author, publication date, and date I retreived this information (usually also archived by the “Wayback Machine“). My main reasoning in copying the information to my own blog here, is that I want to have it for my own quick and easy reference because I think it’s really worth reading and applying to my own life, worth preserving as it is (since you know how fast and frequent content changes, moves, or sometimes just dissappears altogether from the web).

If you find this information useful, I would suggest you may wish to visit the original website, and support those who have created these materials.

The Power of Affirmations

By Remez Sasson

Article #1 (Below) retrieved Wednesday, November 19, 2008 6:21 PM

from: http://www.successconsciousness.com/index_00000a.htm

Affirmations are positive statements that describe a desired situation, and which are repeated many times, in order to impress the subconscious mind and trigger it into positive action. In order to ensure the effectiveness of the affirmations, they have to be repeated with attention, conviction, interest and desire.

Imagine that you are swimming with your friends in a swimming pool. They swim fifteen rounds, something you have never done before, and desiring to win the respect of your friends, you want to show them that you can make it too. You start swimming, and at the same time keep repeating in your mind, “I can do it, I can do it…”. You keep thinking and believing that you are going to complete the fifteen rounds. What are you actually doing? You are repeating positive affirmations.

More than often, people repeat in their minds negative words and statements concerning the situations and events in their lives, and consequently bring upon themselves undesirable situations. Words and statements work both ways, to build or destroy. It is the way we use them that determines whether they are going to bring good or harmful results.

Often, people repeat negative statements in their minds, without even being aware of what they are doing. Do you keep thinking and telling yourself that you cannot do something, that you are too lazy, lack inner strength or that you are going to fail? Your subconscious mind accepts as true what you keep saying, and eventually attracts corresponding events and situations into your life, irrespective whether they are good or bad for you, so why not choose only positive statements?

Affirmations program the mind in the same way commands and scripts program a computer. They work in the same manner as creative visualization. The repeated words help you focus your mind on your aim, and automatically build corresponding mental images in the conscious mind, which affect the subconscious mind. The conscious mind, the mind you think with, starts this process, and then the subconscious mind takes charge. By using this process consciously and intently, you can affect your subconscious mind and thereby transform your habits, behavior, mental attitude and reactions, and even reshape your external life.

Sometimes results appear quickly, but often more time is required. Depending on your goal, sometimes you might attain immediate results, and sometimes it might take days, weeks, months or more. Getting results depends on several factors, such as the time, focus, faith and feelings you invest in repeating your affirmations, on the strength of your desire, and on how big or small is your goal.

It is important to understand that repeating positive affirmations for a few minutes, and then thinking negatively the rest of the day, neutralizes the effects of the positive words. You have to refuse thinking negative thoughts, if you wish to attain positive results.

How to Repeat Affirmations

It is advisable to repeat affirmations that are not too long, as they are easier to remember. Repeat them anytime your mind is not engaged in something in particular, such as while traveling in a bus or a train, waiting in line, walking etc, but do not affirm while driving or crossing a street. You may also repeat them in special sessions of 5-10 minutes each, several times a day.

Relax any physical, emotional or mental tension while affirming. The stronger the concentration, the more faith you have in what you are doing, the more feelings you put into the act, the stronger and faster will be the results.

Choose only positive words, describing what you really want. If you desire to lose weight, do not tell yourself “I am not fat” or “I am losing weight.” These are negative statements, bringing into the mind mental images of what you do not want. Say instead, “I am getting slim” or “I have reached my right weight”. Such words evoke positive images in the mind.

Always affirm in the present tense, not the future tense. Saying, “I will be rich”, means that you intend to be rich one day, in the indefinite future, but not now. It is more effective to say, and also feel, “I am rich now”, and the subconscious mind will work overtime to make this happen now, in the present.

The power of affirmations can help you to transform your life. By stating what you want to be true in your life, you mentally and emotionally see and feel it as true, irrespective of your current circumstances, and thereby attract it into your life.

Are Your Negative Thoughts Sabotaging You? 5 Tips to Turn it All Around

Author: G Symond

Published: 12th December 2006

Article #2 (Below) retrievedWednesday, November 19, 2008 6:21 PM from: http://www.vitalaffirmations.com/articles/negative-thoughts-sabotage.htm

Are you fed up with how things keep turning out in your life? Have you ever thought that you might be sabotaging your own efforts to make things better? Here are 5 turn-around tips to help make positive life changes.

Scientific and medical research has demonstrated repeatedly that a positive mental outlook is key to successful outcomes. The trouble is we all tend to think negatively; in-fact we are practically hard wired to explore the downside of things as a natural protective measure.

It is easy for this natural instinct to become overpowering and it is important to maintain a healthy positive outlook to counter-balance it. Otherwise, fear and anxiety can start to escalate and have a disproportionate influence on our emotions and may cause the subconscious to sabotage any attempts you make to move forward with your life. People who experience this often describe themselves as feeling ‘stuck’.

Here are five techniques to help squash that negative thinking and nourish positive thoughts and self-image.

Become More Self-Aware – Try to be actively aware of what you are thinking, saying and doing. Challenge underlying beliefs and attitudes if you find that you are not being positive or self-nurturing. Maintaining self-awareness can be quite hard to do initially, but the more you practice it, the easier and more effective it becomes.

Turn it Around – If you find yourself being negative, check yourself. Replace the thought, words or deed with something positive. Find the positive in everything you can. You will notice a difference. Your new positive outlook will generate positive reactions from those around you.

Rejoice in the Good Things – Do not focus on what you do not have, focus instead on the wonderful things you have around you right now. By focussing on the good things, you will benefit from a key universal truth, “What you focus on grows.” Try this each evening before going to bed: write out 5 good things about yourself or about what happened that day. It does not have to be big… maybe it was the kindness of someone making you a cup of coffee or maybe the fact that you are a talented musician… it can be anything.

Take Some Time – Take a little time out each week, 30 minutes will do. Put up the “DO NOT DISTURB” sign and just spend that time thinking about your week, about your feelings and reactions. Use this time to get back in touch with your inner-self. Knowing what you really want is one of the most important steps to achieving it. Using this time well will help sort out your feelings, desires and priorities.

Use Positive Affirmations – Choose an issue that is a priority for you and use positive affirmations to help keep you positive and on track.

If you use these techniques consistently for 30 days, you will experience profound positive changes. Anyone will benefit from these techniques. So why wait? Go for it!

Positive Affirmations

(No Author Listed)

Article #3 (Below) retreived Wednesday, November 19, 2008 6:21 PM from: http://www.vitalaffirmations.com/affirmations.htm

Positive Affirmations work. This page explains how and why positive affirmations can be used to manifest your needs and bring positive and permanent change to your life. You will also learn how to Create and supercharge your own affirmations.

What are Affirmations?

Every thought you think every word you say is an affirmation All of our self-talk or inner dialogue is a stream of affirmations. We are continually affirming subconsciously with our words and thoughts and this flow of affirmations is creating our life experience in every moment. Our beliefs are just learned thought patterns that we have developed since childhood, many of these work well for us, but others may now be working against us, they are dysfunctional and may be sabotaging us from achieving what we believe we want. Every affirmation we think or say is a reflection of our inner truth or beliefs. It is important to realize that many of these “inner truths” may not actually be true for us now or may be based on invalid or inappropriate impressions we constructed as children, which if examined as an adult can be exposed as inappropriate.

Our subconscious uses the behaviour patterns we have learned to automatically respond and react to many everyday events in our life. This is essential to our survival, we need to be able to respond quickly to events around us which would be impossible if we had to re-examine every aspect of things every time something simple happens. Our learned responses and thought patterns enable us to automatically respond to circumstances quickly and easily. Problems arise however, if at an early stage some of the foundation beliefs on which many of the others are built were formed from a skewed perspective, maybe the strategy was appropriate for a perceived difficult circumstance, however often such beliefs are totally inappropriate for succeeding in the real world as adults.

You can use “Positive Affirmations“, which are usually short positive statements targeted at a specific subconscious set of beliefs, to challenge and undermine negative beliefs and to replace them with positive self-nurturing beliefs. It is a kind of “brainwashing” only you get to choose which negative beliefs to wash away. The way these statements are constructed is extremely important. Later I will show you how to construct you own affirmations. It is important to remember of course that everything we say and think is a positive affirmation, using positive affirmation statements forces us to keep focussed on our inner goals and reminds us to think consciously about our words and thoughts and to modify them to reflect our positive affirmation.

Do affirmations work

YES! Affirmations really work. You will be hard pushed to find any self help program anywhere that does not include affirmations, even the ones that appear to pooh-pooh affirmations include them under some slightly different guise. And the reason for this is, they work. The more determined you are to make your changes, the more you are prepared to accept change and let go of the past, the better they will work for you.

Why affirmations work

By choosing to think and say positive affirmations as true, the subconscious is forced into one of two reactions – avoidance or reappraisal. The bigger the issue the bigger the gap between the positive affirmation and the perceived inner truth and the more likely that one is going to experience resistance. This is where the subconscious finds it easier to stay with its perceived inner truth and avoid the challenge using any means at its disposal to avoid examining the issue. You will recognise this reaction by a strong negative feeling inside as you state the positive affirmations. Equally if your experience a sense of joy and well being, your mind is instinctively responding to something it believes to be true. When you get this emotion, you know your affirmations are working!

Continually repeating affirmations with conviction and passion will chip away at even the strongest resistance. However there are a number of additional techniques you can use that will super-charge your affirmations and magnify their effectiveness many fold. I will outline these techniques for you later. Once the resistance is broken, your subconscious is able to re-examine the core belief and patterns you have been working on. The effect can be startling and things can change very quickly as the dysfunctional beliefs get identified and replaced by your own new inner truth. Depending on how deep into your consciousness these beliefs lay, every other learned pattern and belief that relied on the original belief as a premise, becomes unfounded. The subconscious has to re-examine them all, this can lead to a period of introspection. If you find yourself experiencing serious resistance or have identified an area of trauma in your life, I strongly urge you to seek professional support, the journey you are embarking on will release you from the past but having proper support around you as you go through the process will make it so much easier.

Because affirmations actually reprogram your thought patterns, they change the way you think and feel about things, and because you have replaced dysfunctional beliefs with your own new positive beliefs, positive change comes easily and naturally. This will start to reflect in your external life, you will start to experience seismic changes for the better in many aspects of your life.

How quickly do affirmations work

From day one, there will be affirmations you love and enjoy saying, these affirmations are likely to be very effective for you and you are likely to start experience changes almost immediately. Others will feel very negative, almost like a big lie, this indicates resistance and these areas may take longer to impact. How quickly you can resolve an issue like this is like asking how long is a piece of string. It depends on the issue, how deeply the belief is held and how determined you are to bring about change in that area of your life, the latter being perhaps the most important of all. If you are truly ready and want to make changes, the quicker those changes will come for you. People have made cognitive changes in their beliefs almost instantaneously, once you are prepared to embrace and accept a change and you believe it to be right for you from your very heart, then that change will happen. So it is not really a question of time, more a question of how accepting of change you can be.

However, you should be under no illusion that by embarking on this process you are starting a journey for your lifetime. As you see and experience the techniques working for yourself will be driven to explore your inner-self further and other techniques. As you make your changes in one aspect of your life, other issues will pop up that you may want to deal with. The joy is, you would now have the knowledge and skill to deal with these issues effectively.

Will Affirmations help me?

Yes. No matter what aspect of life you’re dealing with or who you are, affirmations will not only make you feel better about yourself and your life. But if used correctly, they can manifest real change in your life. Changing the way you think, reprogramming your mind and removing the old negative beliefs that have been sabotaging you again and again throughout your life. They can enable you to achieve the life you’ve always wanted for yourself!

If you have a specific issue you wish to explore with affirmations, I have listed some example affirmations for some common issues here.

Affirmations for Health

Affirmations for Abundance

Affirmations for Love

Affirmations for Romance

Affirmations for Weight Loss

Affirmations for Self Esteem

Affirmations for Peace and Harmony

Affirmations for Joy and Happiness

Why doesn’t everyone use Affirmations?

They do! It has been demonstrated that nearly 90% of our thoughts are negative, no wonder we find ourselves struggling. Each negative thought or word is a negative affirmation and these nasty little beasts can be even more powerful than positive affirmations because we often find them easier to accept. It is these negative thoughts that feed and validate our negative internal beliefs. Under this kind of negative bombardment most people simply do not have the strength to break free of their negative thoughts and become hopelessly locked into their own (usually false) negative beliefs.

Positive affirmations are designed to challenge those negative beliefs and start to stem the flow of negative thoughts and words that seek to validate them. Affirmations are more than just repeating words. It is a whole process of becoming aware of your thoughts and words in everyday life, choosing to think and project happy positive thoughts. The more you can consciously inject the spirit of you affirmations into your daily thoughts and words, the quicker they will work for you.

How to create your own affirmations

Start by taking some time to think about areas in your life you would like to improve and how you might want your life to be. It is worth taking some time over this process. Write the most important ones down in a list.

Now look at each item on the list and write out a few positive statements for each. They must be positive and in the present tense, focus on what you do want, not on what you don’t want.

For example if my list of things that were important to me included…

“A fulfilling job”

My affirmation might look like this

“I have a wonderful job that fulfils me on many levels”

Creating your own affirmations is the perfect way to get the right affirmations for you. If have included a few further samples below, as well as links to some affirmation lists (above). These should give you a good idea on how they should look and feel. If you sign up to the AffirmIt! program you will receive very specialised affirmations that are designed to tackle specific issues as you commence and progress through the process. For example, in the early stages, some of the affirmations you will receive will be “releasing” in nature, these are designed to assist you in overcoming any initial resistance to the process. Here is an example of a very simple releasing affirmation.

“I am ready and willing to release the past, now”

If you would like to see a few affirmation examples and have a bit of fun try out our “affirmation cards“, you select your own affirmation from an online pack of affirmation cards!

Supercharging Affirmations

As I have said earlier, there are other techniques you can use that can super-charge the effectiveness of your affirmations. I will outline a few here briefly, if you are interested in really making your affirmations work and want even more details, this area is extensively covered in the the Basic Affirmation eGuide which you can download for free.

Affirmation Mirror work

Perhaps the most powerful way of using affirmations is to state them whilst looking in the mirror. Some of the most important messages you have received have been from people looking you straight in the eye. By looking yourself in the eye as you state your affirmation you magnify the importance of the message to yourself.

Written Affirmations

A great way of keeping your affirmation at the forefront of your mind is to write them down, leave notes or cards around so that you notice them throughout the day. The AffirmIt! program uses mobile technology to text powerful messages to you with the goal of keeping your mind focussed on your intention. Another idea is to write your affirmation down many times (10-20), this helps imprint it on your mind.

Say Affirmations with Passion

Say your affirmations with passion, the higher your emotional state as you say them, the more effective they are.

Sing or Chant Affirmations

One of the most effective ways to use affirmations is to sing them! The mind is much more accepting of affirmation messages when they are sung. If you have ever attended a Louise Hay “Heal your life Workshop”, this technique is used extensively. Personally, I love them! If you want to listen to one click here.

Subliminal Affirmations

There are a number of techniques that attempt to by-pass the conscious mind and its resistance by transmitting the affirmations to you subliminally. There are a number of CD’s available that include subliminal affirmations, the trouble with this technology is that it often comes unsupported and people expect it to simply work without doing anything for themselves. There is however a very powerful technique known as an “affirmation bath”. This is often used in workshops because it requires several people sitting around a person making positive statements about them. An Affirmation bath is a truly amazing experience, the multiple voices, coming from multiple directions, often simultaneously simply overwhelm the minds ability to resist what is being said and the positive affirmations slip straight through to the subconscious. It is normally impossible to experience this unless you can get a group of like minded people together or you attend a workshop. To enable you to experience this technique, we have included an “affirmation bath” on our affirmation CD, “Heartfelt – Affirmations to Release the Past“.

Example Affirmations

Affirmations for Health

Every Cell in my body vibrates with energy and health
Loving myself heals my life. I nourish my mind, body and soul
My body heals quickly and easily

Affirmations for Abundance

I prosper wherever I turn and I know that I deserve prosperity of all kinds
The more grateful I am, the more reasons I find to be grateful
I pay my bills with love as I know abundance flows freely through me.

Affirmations for Love

I know that I deserve Love and accept it now
I give out Love and it is returned to me multiplied
I rejoice in the Love I encounter everyday

Affirmations for Romance

I have a wonderful partner and we are both happy and at peace
I release any desperation and allow love to find me
I attract only healthy relationships

Affirmations for Weight Loss

I am the perfect weight for me
I choose to make positive healthy choices for myself
I choose to exercise regularly

Affirmations for Self Esteem

When I believe in myself, so do others
I express my needs and feelings
I am my own unique self – special, creative and wonderful

Affirmations for Peace and Harmony

All my relationships are loving and harmonious
I am at peace
I trust in the process of life

Affirmations for Joy and Happiness

Life is a joy filled with delightful surprises
My life is a joy filled with love, fun and friendship all I need do is stop all criticism, forgive, relax and be open.
I choose love, joy and freedom, open my heart and allow wonderful things to flow into my life.