Mandrak said:
Laura said:
Meditation is also useful. Doing things that you know are necessary, but are outside your comfort zone also signal to the machine that the master is now running the show.
For those who want to train control of the mind through concentration and meditation, the command to the body to be completely calm (without movement, even the smallest ones), besides breathing, enhances the effect of exercise but also discomfort.
The main result that one should aim for is beneficial changes in the brain architecture such as increase of frontal cortex grey matter. One example was given that was rather powerful: a young fellow who was having a lot of problems with various dissociations. He was sent to a sort of biofeedback thing that lasted about a year or so. The initial training was using a computer while he had electrodes attached to his head that measured various brain currents. If the frontal cortex went quiet, that meant that ATTENTION and CONCENTRATION was slipping. So, when that happened, the video game he was playing would fall apart, more or less, stop working. Only when his attention and concentration was ON and focused would the thing work. So, since he wanted to achieve the rewards of the game, he had to keep his focus. Doing this over and over and over and over - several times a week for months - actually grew more grey matter!!! And the benefits of that additional grey matter were all over the place: more self control, more alertness to his environment, more awareness, better grades, and so on and so forth. It literally transformed him.
Meditation does something other than the above described brain training, though it, too, is important and helpful. All depends on the individual. Those who dissociate a lot and have no self control need that frontal cortex increase. In fact, you might say that dissociation is the enemy in pretty much all respects. Those who dissociate into games that do NOT require real concentration are doing damage to themselves. Those who dissociate into porn or fantasies are also damaging themselves.
SeekinTruth said:
Last few months, I've been grieving my mother's death and it's been very intense. When my dad passed in 2011, it was much more intermittent (the overwhelming grief) whereas with my mom's passing, it's been much more concentrated. With my dad, it lasted a couple of years of still having the process complete. I'm wondering how long grieving for my mom will last.
Active grieving can last a year or longer. But truth is, you never entirely stop grieving, you just get used to the new world without your loved one physically present in it; a new history finally forms.
Felipe4 said:
I have a theory of my own that the personality is the interface between the mind and the body, the software, and the result of the conglomeration of systems.. I had to leave a post on draft because this idea may be incomplete...
The personality is partly the interface between the mind and body and the interface point is largely the brain which is why it is so important to understand the brain and its operations as deeply as possible. Much of the personality is programmed reactions and very often, these can be changed. See Dabrowski on that.
hlat said:
While proofreading this post, my bathroom sink literally just broke. My spouse accidentally knocked the soap dispenser into the sink, and it broke a large hole right through the sink. I can stick my fist through the hole in the sink (new meaning to sink hole).
Sounds like some part of you is trying to send another part of you a distinct message!!! He who digs a pit for others can fall into it himself!!! You were pretty busy digging a pit!!!
Hindsight Man said:
For those who want brain training,I would recommend a book called The Manual : a guide to the ultimate study method.That book covers pretty much everything,starting with concentration exercises (meditation) and goes on to memory training then speed reading and then ties them up in the USM (ultimate study method).Each chapter is packed with data and provides a timetable and hints for practice.Just the concentration chapter alone covers something like 9 different meditation methods,all of which are employed at specific intervals to train not only your ability to concentrate on visuals,but also smells and sounds.
If you follow the guidelines of the book you can acquire near photographic memory,memory palace,900 word per minute reading speed with 100% reading comprehension and more.But you gotta practice daily.
Another good book is The Monographs by Ben Cardall. You can look him up on youtube,he's a mentalist and has mastered the Holmsian method of observation.In the Monographs he lays out step by step how to observe people based on their walk,their clothes,what their manner of speech may say and the like.If you ever wanted to observe things like Sherlock Holmes,this is the book for you. Just to give you an idea of what he's accomplished by continuous practice - he can split his attention to observe two things simultaneously and he can tell what you're writing on paper just by listening (the method for this is described in the book).
These sound like possibly interesting books but I think that what we are looking for is more in line with what Collingwood and Engberg-Pedersen describe as is being laid out in the recommended books and threads. As the Cs have said:
Life is religion. Life experiences reflect how one interacts with God. Those who are asleep are those of little faith in terms of their interaction with the creation. Some people think that the world exists for them to overcome or ignore or shut out. For those individuals, the worlds will cease. They will become exactly what they give to life. They will become merely a dream in the "past". People who pay strict attention to objective reality right and left, become the reality of the "Future".
It would probably do everyone some good to reflect deeply on every phrase of this quote especially the last sentence. Reading it in the context of Collingwood's "historical man" carries an all-new deeper and wider meaning! Probably time spent on studying history and current events in equal proportions would serve the individual much better. This is even more true if the person has some sort of aversion to reading non-fiction or regularly engages in dissociation of some sort. When you get the urge to watch porn, why not read Tacitus instead? Even if you have to read a sentence or paragraph five times to get it, it's an effort, or as G would term it, a struggle between yes and no.
Again and again I see how working on sott has revealed itself as possibly one of the greatest tools of disciplining and training the mind and thus increasing brain matter than anything else we have encountered. Of course, living in community is a big thing too because one has to be constantly aware exactly as the Cs have said above.
Of course, being able to read fast with comprehension can facilitate all else so finding a feedback training method to do that isn't a bad idea.
If you find that you need to "rest the brain" from concentrating, go to meditation or relax with some kind of puzzle or what we consider to be beneficial dissociation: morally improving or instructive films or literature. Again, watching films that you wouldn't ordinarily watch because they aren't "exciting enough" and actually require some concentration is a struggle between yes and no and builds brain matter.
Considering the role of the frontal cortex as you will learn about in the "Anatomy of Violence" book, I even wonder if that isn't one of the major benefits of The Work, and possibly the main "receiver" and/or "transmitter" that all of us need to develop in order to "surf the wave" instead of going under. With that possibility in mind, perhaps we should do all we can in this direction?
