Concentration

Your mind works with Couplings between Mental Photos. A Mental Photo is all the impressions from your senses at one given moment. What you see, hear, feel, taste and smell. But only the parts of a Photo that are coupled to from other Photos stay with you for a longer time. Most Photos fade away entirely. Sometimes just some parts of the whole Photo is left, you might be able to recall smell but nothing more from that memory.

Your Flow of Thought runs randomly along the Couplings between these Photos. If you suddenly come to think about something and ask yourself: "Why on earth did I come to think about this". Then you often can follow the Flow of Though backwards and end up on something you saw, heard, felt, tasted, smelled or Actively Thought about just recently. Active Thinking is the opposite of the random Flow of Thought. It is something that you think about intentionally and is totally controlled by you.

So when you are learning concentration it is important that your random Flow of Thought is halted. It should be held up at a certain point. It might be something visual (like focusing on a candle flame) or a feeling (like the feeling of being Awake) or something else. As long as it is just one and the same Mental Photo. And as soon as you realize that your Flow of Thought has drifted away to another Photo you bring it back to the one Photo you were trying to focus on.

This way you create more couplings to that Photo and it will be easier to stay focused for a longer time. This is just the basic process of learning. You repeat something until you remember it. Until that particular Photo (or series of Photos that are strongly connected, like a movement pattern) has been coupled to enough time to create a strong memory.

The last thing I want to state in this Post is that the way to stop the Flow of Thought is in itself a Mental Photo. So by focusing on a candle flame you will not just learn to couple back to that visual impression, you will at the same time create stronger couplings to the decrease in Flow of Thought itself! In this way, any effort to focus on just one Mental Picture, whatever it may be, will improve your ability of staying Awake.

Consciousness

There are 4 stages of Consciousness:

1. Sleep
2. Relative Consciousness
3. Consciousness
4. Objective Consciousness

Normally we only live in the first two stages. What is interesting is that the difference between stage 2 and stage 3 is as at least great as the difference between stage 1 and stage 2.

The 3rd stage might come by itself for short periods. Especially if you are in a situation you have never been before. Then you might be thinking "it is so strange than I am right here in this situation now". This kind of thinking can be associated with a feeling of being present. A strong realization of that you are right here right now. A focus on yourself, and the situation, at the same time.

The 3rd stage is sometimes referred to as being Awake, or just being Conscious because it really describes the feeling very well. You feel almost like the rest of you life is like in a coma. In general people think they are Conscious, but they are not. When you are awake for a longer time than just the random moments described above you will automatically experience the following things:

• your body becomes relaxed
• movements feel more natural
• your breathing is slower and deeper
• being conscious stops thought
• you understand people better
• you make the right choices
• you never take things personally
• you feel a huge boost of self esteem
• + a bunch of other secondary effects...

But staying Awake, staying Conscious, for more than just a minute requires a lot of concentration and a lot of Work. Work on that which disturbs your concentration. But that is not why more people are sleeping, first of all you need to realize and acknowledge to yourself that you are not conscious. Because no one are capable of learning something they think they already know, and no one are willing to work for something they think they already have.

The Sports Car Analogy

Why do not we all, eventually, develop into the best possible human being in the environment we are living in? Why do not we all, naturally, learn to control our angers and fears, and why do not we all have, in our genes, a stronger desire to help everyone around us if the are in need of help. This would on a local scale stop you from arguing with your neighbor, and on the global scale it would prevent wars.

Think about designing a Sports Car. You have already made it as effective as you can. Engine, brakes, wheels... everything is as good as you possibly can get it. The limit is reached because everything is getting too complex for you to design. Everything from the material in the tires to the computerized injection system in the engine. But there is one way of making the Sports Car even better: to let it develop itself after it has been produced.

The huge downside of this is that, in most cases, it will develop into something worse. Or it might develop to become very unbalanced. The Sports Car might for example develop a super strong engine at the same time as the brakes get worse, or the tires! (Just because it wants to.) But in the rare cases where the development is nicely balanced you will get a Sports Car to win every race with.

In nature you can see different types of animals with different degrees of freedom in terms of development after birth. It is difficult to change anything in an Ants behavior. A Dog can learn a lot, and Humans even more. The more freedom you give the Sports Car to develop itself after it has left the factory the greater it can be. But the chances are smaller that it ever will be nearly as great as it can become. It might just as well end up worse than the original. And then the risk of car accidents become much higher.

Buildings Highways in your Brain

Your brain have the wonderful property of being able to adapt, to create new couplings. This is the way we learn new things. We can practice them and make them permanent by repetition. Movements, languages and all other types on knowledge can be made permanent in such a way that you do not even have to think to perform the task associated with the knowledge; to speak the language or perform an acrobatic maneuver. In certain cases it is even necessary for the task to be fully automatic for it to be at all successful.

This can be visualized as a road in your brain. Creating it usually takes a lot of practice and a lot of repetitions. And even when the road is build it has a lot of built-in crossroads. These are places where your thoughts can drift away from the destination they were intended to go. If you, for example, try to perform a difficult movement and come to think about something else in the middle of the execution you do not succeed very well in completing it. This is equally true for all knowledge, not just movements. Studies of any kind are another excellent example.

You need to be focused to stay on the road you intend to follow. Most people fail to understand the importance of developing your ability to stay on the road. They keep buildings new roads, learning more and more things. But the can never be really effective because they keep drifting away in different directions and have to get back on track again. An average person can keep his/her focus for about 10 seconds. When the focus is lost it has to be regained. This happens very fast but it dramatically reduces the average speed toward the destination you are heading for.

A good way of training your focus is to try to think about one thing only, do it for at least 10 minutes and repeat that exercise. You can for example focus on a candle flame for 10 minutes every day. As any learning process it takes time to recouple/uncouple your nerve cells. But if you train you will become better in staying on track, keeping your focus for prolonged times. In time the roads in your brain will become like fast flowing Highways that takes you where you want, without any detours on the way.

Coming back... to a Challenge

I came back to where I grew up, just for the summer. In terms of Self Development there was a positive and a negative side of coming back here.

When you come back to a familiar environment after being away for a longer time you more easily notice the changes in yourself. Much like you more easily notice changes in other people if you do not meet them regularly. And the changes becomes very clear if you have not seen a person for, let us say 2-3 years. I experienced something like that when I came back to my old neighborhood. I noticed that I now saw things in a more healthy and objective way.

The negative side was that I found it harder to act accordingly here. I saw myself acting like the old me, but it was very hard to do something about it. Too much memories from places and persons. And because everyone around me viewed me as I were one year ago, it was very hard to act different from what they expected.

I think it will be a very good exercise for me to try to brake away from the social prejudices the people have about me. Prejudices created by myself during my time here. I want to show people around me that I have changed, for the better. And in a place like this, where everyone think they know everyone, it will be a tough challenge indeed.

Start-up

I have just started this blog. I have always though that I never would create a blog. But it might be useful for me to spread my thoughts around somewhere. Just like spreading my things around is the first step in cleaning my room.

Right now I am just working with the design and layout. I have to say that I am pretty satisfied with the outcome so far. I hope you like it as well. And if all this blog gives is a second of joy for your visual cortex it is already better than nothing!

Back to work now...