Becoming Conscious: The Power of Perception
Part 1: The Menagerie
A growing number of people are trying to raise their level of consciousness for a variety of reasons and in various ways. Some continue on with whatever belief system they were indoctrinated in as children. Others look elsewhere in their search be it something that matches their beliefs and notions about things or that suits their temperament, which from their perspective, "feels right", and so on. There are many different schools of thought and belief systems one can follow. We can choose one, blend them or try to find their way outside of them. No matter how one goes about it there is only one truth and every one of us, regardless of our belief system, perceives and conceives of that truth through our own unique lens.
We can refer to this one truth as "objective reality" even though we cannot know it directly. This is because we cannot avoid the subjective nature of our existence nor discard our uniqueness. Nor is there a need to. Our challenge is not one of knowing or finding that reality, it is to align with it. When we consider our journey in this light it becomes obvious that alignment comes by, as some refer to it, being at one with ALL. A very large part of this process is dealing with false, conflicting and limiting notions, the baggage in our minds, that lead to the illusion of separateness. Hence it makes sense that if we want to become more aligned we should deal with their source, our perception.
The notion that our perception is at the heart of our challenges may seem odd until you think about it. The truth is everywhere around us, so how we see and hence think about it is based on our perception of it not on the truth itself. No matter what approach we take the poorer our perception, the greater the challenge. There is only one objective truth or reality for everyone, despite the plethora of different belief systems one can follow. However, the set of laws or rules, precepts and so on that we hold are the result of our perception of things and are unique to us. No one else can live our lives or make our choices for us nor do they give us the answers to our questions.
We all have to deal with this challenge, one I became aware of many years ago. To meet it I took an approach that I have always found beneficial. That approach is to go to the root elements and build from there. Things do not start out complex, complexity is the result of evolutionary processes. Perception seems like a complex subject until one looks "under the covers." If we identify the core aspects of perception, which is common to all of us, then we can identify the common skills that will make our perception clearer and reduce the baggage we carry.
For example, there are certain things one must know about mathematics whether the intent is to be a physicist, mathematician, carpenter, geologist, an engineer or a doctor. The basic knowledge acquired can then be applied in the appropriate manner to meet a variety of the needs. This is not dissimilar to the idea that to do basic arithmetic one doesn't memorize a bunch of sums of numbers, one learns a method that allows them to add, subtract, multiply or divide any numbers. The same thing applies to personal and spiritual growth. I can take any one of a number of paths to get from A to B, however, certainly skills are needed regardless of which route I take.
I believe that one can become more enlightenment on virtually any path be it religious, spiritual or otherwise. We can also do this without holding or following any formal or defined belief system. The issue and challenges that arise are not due to the belief system, they are due to our perception. Good perception skills are needed regardless of what path we have taken and the kind of mind we have created along the way. It is our perception that yields the thoughts we have, which in turn determines how well our personal truths align with objective truths. If my perception is clearer then so too is my mind and I will perceive of the truth more as it is rather than how I presume it to be.
Whenever we start something one of the first thing on our minds should be getting a better idea about what we are getting ourselves into. This is simply common sense. Would you dive into a lake without know what is under the surface? Of course not, yet when it comes to personal, and especially spiritual growth, people dive in without more than a very rudimentary understanding about it. They often have a limited understanding of the whole area and end up cherry picking little tidbits here and there. The result is a hodgepodge of confusing, conflicting, contradictory and incomplete notions about things. This does not help our development, it hampers it. It is like trying to discern and come to an understanding about a whole forest by examining individual leaves on a various trees within the forest.
Answers will not come of their own accord. To understand something fully you need to consider it fully and circumscribe it, that is get a feel for the entire playing field. It's not that doing it otherwise is bereft of benefits, sometimes you have to jump in and give it a go, it's just that overall it is not the best approach for there is no telling where we will end up. By this method it is unlikely I will get to where I thought I would. It is not always advantageous to try something without having some idea of how it will affect us and it could also be counter productive in that we create or add to our challenges rather than reduce them.
Another important point to note, in respect to how we go about personal or spiritual growth, is that not all beliefs systems will "fit us." While it is good to be open minded we need to be careful what we accept and believe. For one thing, there is a lot of information out there and a lot of it is misinformation. Beyond that, there are so many different belief systems it is hard to know which ones are of value or benefit to us personally. I say this not to disparage any one of them, only to suggest that they are not "one size fits all" solutions.
Navigated among the various belief systems is also problematic because they often have conflicting notions about the nature of things. We can get past these issues if we we strive to understand each system in more detail. Another aspect of this is in relation to the thought forms we build early in our lives. If we have a strong predisposition to a certain ideas or ways of "being and doing" and a belief system we are considering is based on a different schema then we have a challenge to deal with. There is also the issue of terminology, which we will touch on in this series. Different belief systems may use the same words, but define them differently, which leads to conflicting notions. Terms may also be defined vaguely making understanding of them virtually impossible.
Regardless of these challenges people will carry on. In part we do this because we all yearn for something. It could be a calling or longing we cannot really see, hear or name but feel nonetheless or a sense of absence of some kind and so on. We may just get an inner knowing that what we are doing is line with or satisfying it to some degree or it is not. While some are very aware of what their inner yearnings yearn gets lost in the doings of mind and near vanish from in the glare of life's hustle and bustle.
I need to clarify yearnings somewhat. I am not referring to the wants and desires we have created in our minds. I am speaking of something that comes from within. As mentioned, we typically we are not aware of what we yearn for save in a vague way. It can appear like something we see out of the corner of our eye but can never quite focus our attention on it. What we tend to do is seek more happiness, whatever our definition of that may be, or balance, to be better able to deal the issues and challenges that arise or to develop our awareness and so on. Finding and living it is a challenge made easier when our mind is clearer and more transparent to the vagaries of living. All of the pursuits I mention are aided when we work on our minds in one manner or another. The reason for this is quite simple - no matter where we go ... there we are.
Every step we take, corner we turn and twist and turn of life leads back to us. The ever present and unavoidable reality is that there is no escaping ourselves. Whatever we are going to do along the way is up to us and only us. The answers to wherever we seek to get or do are not out there somewhere, though we certainly carry on as if they are. When we are looking without, observing and interacting, what we perceive and how we react to it comes from within us somewhere. Even our circumstances are not accidents, every choice we make takes us to them. What all of these things have in common is they reflect who and what we are for, as they say, "All roads lead to Rome." In our case, except perhaps for the most enlightened, Rome is our own mind.
Even though all roads lead us back to ourselves this does not mean we are alone, completely isolated from the world and what happens around us, in fact the opposite is true though we typically do not see it. This is part of the reason that we collectively form a sort of menagerie, a collection of captive animals. The interesting thing is that the bars and walls of the cages that separate us from each other and even ourselves are not physical, they are the creations of our minds. It is one menagerie within another. We are locked away behind walls created by our minds and their perceptions. These perceptions are often dominated by non-conscious aspects of mind and the baggage within it. For all intensive purposes those seeking growth, especially spiritual, the goal has always been to change this.
We can get focused on all kinds of different things as we work on ourselves, but we cannot avoid the reality that our minds, the "I" we see ourselves as, is what holds us captive. It holds our memories, our thoughts about everything. It is our personal fact keeper, even if those facts are false. It has it's own logic rules even if those rules are not actually logical. It has an evaluation process it created and follows and will continue to do so even if the process is flawed. It also contains our own personal justice system that passes judgments on our actions and those of others. Within it's walls we are the judge, jury lawyers and the lawyers and we are also the warden, guards, prisoners and the victim.
This constructed "I", this massive collection of thoughts, is what holds us firmly because we are too busy playing its games to see beyond them. No matter what path we take we must all work on taking more conscious control of the behemoth we have created. The benefit of any belief system and effectiveness of any technique we use depends on on how it matches up with the way our minds are built and function. This is why it is beneficial to understand the mind and how's and why's of it's doings. This is what we will examine in this series.
Regardless of the method we employ or the path we take, the idea is to reduce the controlling influence of our minds. To do this we have wrestle control from the autopilot, our non-conscious mind, which in turn means we have to go at those things that enable the illusion created by our non-conscious mind. The prime culprits are our subjectivity, not being observant and the use of poor or incomplete reasoning. The other part of the equation is to be as conscious in the moment as we can muster. Our minds should not be "loosely run ships" where thoughts are going all over the place, each with a form of life and purpose of their own. By doing these things we reduce the influence of our non-conscious or subconscious mind by adding less baggage to it. By doing this we will also be clearing up some of the rubble we have accumulated along the way.
Make no mistake, the influence of the non-conscious mind can be enormous. It not only affects every choice we make (1), it is the source of our subjectivity, the reason we are not observant and so on as mentioned. Therefore it is obviously beneficial if we can reduce it's influence so that we are more conscious mentally. It is not something that will likely happen by chance, we have to do this ourselves. It is an act of will. Learning to be conscious mentally also happens to be one of the biggest stages of our current phase of evolution (we will touch on this in due course) and the one most of humankind is working on. The million dollar question is how do we become more conscious mentally?
Let us start to answer this question by considering the occlusions of mind and how they occur. By occlusions I am referring to thoughts that are negative or lower order, erroneous, contradictory or are otherwise misaligned. We all have many such thoughts, most of which arise from what you could call systemic problems. Our minds arise out of what we perceive and our reactions it. We call this an experience and so the core or basic process of our minds is the perception process. As a result the best way to deal with the mind is to work on this aspect of it. There is no doubt our mind can be a wonderful tool if it is properly trained and in our control rather than the other way around. What keeps us from getting there is our ignorance.
There is no one to blame for our ignorance, blame is useless anyways. Blame (2), like guilt, can appear to be a useful tool to push ourselves to "do better", but it only adds to our baggage and keep us a captive of our past. We need to recognize, acknowledge and accept our ignorance as a part of life. When we do this we can start to work on alleviating it, something we do by reducing the influence our non-conscious mind exerts over us. It is it that manifests the guilt and blame, our anger, our frustration, our fears, wants and desires among other things. We could work on these things individually but this method is neither efficient nor effective. It boils down to this - the first goal is to deal with how our non-conscious mind got control in the first place and not the symptoms of its control.
Our non-conscious mind got its control via the perception process. We know we are operating at the non-conscious level mentally when we state things such as "that's the way I am" or "that's not something I can change", cannot seem to help how we react to our experiences and so on. When we are still in this stage we are captive victims of our mental baggage and remain stuck in our personal menagerie. It is important to note that while I seem refer to our conscious and non-conscious minds as separate "things" they are not. We only have one mind. Out of the entire set of thoughts within our minds our non-conscious mind is simply those elements of the set that we are not conscious of at a particular moment in time. It is the far larger set as we are only ever conscious of less than a fraction of a fraction a percent of all the thoughts we have in our minds (for more on this refer to Our Mental House Part 4: What We Are Conscious Of (3)).
Do note that while everyone has thoughts that will never surface to the conscious level it is not because they cannot. Nor will we ever be completely free of non-conscious mental processes, there is simply too much going on to be able to, nor do we need to pay direct attention to everything. Hence the goal is to have good perception processes so that what goes on in our non-conscious mind is directed by our conscious thoughts. This way it serves rather than enslaves us.
The baggage in our non-conscious mind has a significant influence over us, including what we are conscious of. The non-conscious mind gains it's influence gradually as we hand it over in bits and pieces, a process that starts the moment we are born. This is a topic I have covered, most notably in the Our Mental House series (4). Part of this process includes the development and strengthening of our subjectivity, something that cannot be avoided completely, as previously mentioned. I cannot see things as another does, only as I do. And how I see things and react to them is based on my reactions to what I have experienced in the past.
It is very challenging to avoid allowing our minds to become increasingly subjective. How subjective we become depends on many factors including the degree of influence exerted by our non-conscious mind. This influence increases relative to the amount of baggage we carry (5) and our tendency is to take on more than we let go of. This in turn tends to render us more subjective and dependent on our non-conscious mind. The issue is not how active our non-conscious minds are, it is how well ordered and balanced it is and how much baggage we carry. The amount of baggage we take on decreases when we improve our reasoning skills, become less subjective and more observant and reduce the contradictions, mistaken notions and attachments we allow for they are the bars of our cage.
Our mind is an enormous "thing" that grows with every experience we have. Even though it is incredibly complex it is, in it's base processes, relatively simply. It doesn't have thousands of processes, it has very few. This is akin to chemical processes. There are only a few process (based on the laws that govern matter) that establish how all atoms or chemicals react, but there are millions of combinations you can create out of them. With the mind the core process is that of perceiving something, reacting to it and the integration of the reaction. Virtually all the thoughts we have are created and modified during the perception process . The perception process starts when we perceive something and ends when we have integrated our reactions to what we perceived. Though it is worth noting that our minds are continually integrating experiences, mostly behind the scenes at the non-conscious level.
The general definition of perception is, in my opinion, too broad and vague to be of much use when trying to understand it's role in creating and modifying our minds. It includes the initial awareness of a stimulus itself (the experience), the process of our becoming aware of it and how we regard, understand or interpret it. I separate perceiving something (it could be an object, action or a thought and so on) from perception. For instance we perceive something first, then we react to and finally integrate our thoughts about it. When we perceive say an person, what we actually perceive and our perception of them are not the same because perception includes our thoughts about what we perceive. Further, while any number of people can perceive the same object their perception of the objects will not be the same. It is my reacting to what I experience that leads to my personal perception of it.
My perception is based on how my mind processes my reactions and the thoughts I have already accumulated. This applies whether I am conscious of these goings on or not (and usually we are not). From this you can see that, for example, if I have poor reasoning skills, am highly subjective and superficial in my observations then not only is my perception of the experience skewed, I am also likely adding to my minds collection of contradictory thoughts and mistaken notions. If I want to escape this trap I need to deal with how I react to things, which means working on how my mind processes what I perceive with my various senses. You may think there is no way to do this but this is not the case. How the mind integrates experiences is not hardwired or predetermined. It is based on thoughts we have and how we have directed our minds to process what we perceive. We must remember that while our minds are able to think logically they do not come wired that way. Our minds have to be trained to think logically and the same applies to both how objective and observant we are.
Perception is the core mental process and is of critical importance. It is one that I have always found very interesting as well. This is why I have spent a great deal of time researching, contemplating and meditating on. It's importance is why I have referred to it frequently in my writings and covered at length in the essay "I See You ... Or Do I?" (6) among others. In that essay I broke down conscious perception into four stages, as mentioned above, most of which are at the non-conscious level (in this case step 4 does not happen). I have found it a useful model because it captures the process in a few short and simple to remember stages, and they are:
- Raw Perception of a Stimulus/Experience
- Initial Reaction of the Mind to the Stimulus/Experience
- Processing of the Reaction by the Mind
- Conscious Awareness of the Stimulus/Experience
Our minds are created by countless reactions to everything it is able to perceive. This includes what we can perceive physical, emotionally and mentally (such as our own feelings and thoughts, our senses and other bodily sensations) as it can only aware of and react to matter at it's sub-plane and any sub-planes comprised of denser matter. I will not reiterate what I covered in the essay these steps came from, suffice it to say that the critical part of the process is the third one during which we are processing of our reaction to what we perceived. You may be inclined to think that our initial reaction is the most critical, however, it is the integration process that is the most significant. This is because most of our thoughts about our experiences happen when we integrate our reaction, which is our mind reacting to our reactions. In addition, our initial reaction is to what we perceive is also based on how we integrated previous experiences in the past because our thoughts are products of the past. We will come back to this point.
Of course what we can perceive is not limited to our physical, emotional and mental vehicles for we are aware on many levels simultaneously. Our minds can only perceive matter of the mental plane and those sub-plane more dense, as previously mentioned. Hence our mind is not directly aware of the what we can perceive on the planes subtler than the mental plane. The number of levels we can be conscious of in a given lifetime depends on our level of development. At this point in time most are not consciously aware of what we perceive on the subtler sub-planes. This occurs when we gain greater conscious awareness on more levels.
At this time the majority of us are not nearly as consciously aware as we would like to think. We have very little access to our higher levels of awareness and at the emotional and even more so the mental levels react and act far more non-consciously than we would like to believe. We primarily function through our emotional and mental bodies whether consciously or not. We also tend to see our technological advancements as the primary indicator of our growth and development, when this is not really the case. All this shows is that we have become more proficient at using one aspect of our mental body or vehicle. While this is all well and good our evolution has nothing whatsoever to do with how smart or technologically advanced we are. In fact, if we are trying to become more enlightened our "mental smarts" can actually hold us back due to the tendency to focus nearly all our attention into just this aspect of our mental vehicle or mind while essentially paying little if any attention to much else save our emotions. Further, most people are not able to articulate how they feel unless the emotions are strong. It takes lifetimes to start to become more consciously aware on the various levels. Fortunately this is something we can work on, but before getting to this I will touch on our evolution at a very high level.
One way of looking at our evolution or development is in term of stages. They have been labelled many ways. One that I find both detailed enough to have substance and high level enough to make it easy to grasp lists the stages as primitive, civilized, developed, humanistic, enlightened and fifth kingdom (discarnate or free of the cycle of incarnation as we know it). What delimits the stages is the degree of conscious awareness on the physical, emotional, mental and causal planes.
At this point in time the bulk of humanity resides somewhere between the middle of the civilized stage to the lower part of the humanistic one. For those in this stage their mental processes are either non-conscious or dreamlike and so not under their conscious control. This is born out in the world around us. Wars, racism, sexism, bigotry, anger and hatred, jealousy, malice and so on are still very common. We continue to show all too little regard for our environment, still have billions of people living in poverty for whom everyday life is a constant struggle and virtually all of our attention is focused on our personal well being. Having said that we are starting to move into the humanistic stage. As this shift continues we will see less of such things and more compassion and caring for one another; however, we will not get there until we start to "get over ourselves."
I mentioned that we have many levels on which we can be aware. The levels or planes we exist on, the vehicles we have during an incarnation, have different names depending on which belief system one follows. Those who have studied theosophy (not theology) might know then as, from the densest to the more subtle, the physical, etheric, emotional, mental, causal, unity, spiritual, divine and monadic. Someone versed in the Qabalah might refer to them by the name of the sephirot (7) associated with them and a Buddhist may be aware of the terms sthula, kamas, madas, buddhi, atma, anupadaka and adi. The labels used by various groups do not necessarily match up one-to-one, but there are strong correlations between them. The important take away from this is that we have several distinct vehicles even though they are connected to and affect each other in various ways. Our growth through the stages I mentioned previously happens as we shift from being mostly unconscious to conscious on these various levels.
Virtually all of us are consciously aware at the physical level. The few that are still in the primitive stage have some conscious awareness of their emotional state, though it is more in a dreamlike manner, and are unconscious on all the higher levels. We shift to the civilized and then developed states when we develop sufficient conscious awareness at the emotional level though at these stages we only have dreamlike awareness on the mental level and remain unconscious above that. At the humanistic stage we become conscious mentally while remaining dreamlike at the causal plane. It is only when we become enlightened that we are conscious at the causal level and as a result have continuity of consciousness from life to life.
The shift from developed to humanistic is a shift to being conscious on the mental plane from the dreamlike stage. It starts to occur the more we think about what they think about and why, the more mindful we are and the more we want and begin to feel the connection between us and everything else. When this happens there is a shift away from the primarily concern being for "me" to one that considers and includes "us." This is what is going on with those who are seeking to develop themselves spiritually or who desire more enlightenment. The challenge is how does one go about doing this, that is how to become more consciously aware at the mental level?
Developing ourselves at the mental level can be a struggle as one deals with their life and also what they see in the world at large. This is obvious, if one cares to notice, in how they think about others and react to what they see as the ugliness in the world. Those that are making the shift start to notice and react more calmly and with greater understanding and compassion to the the hatred, racism and violence they experience in their daily lives, read about in the news or watch on television. It begins to take hold more fully once we also begin to understand the source of what we think and feel within and see without. By working on these kinds of things we are elevating ourselves out of ignorance. Once we begin to do this in earnest we start letting go of judgments and assigning notions of wrongness and rightness to things (8).
At this point in time the majority of us are still ruled by our non-conscious mind. You could call this the dominance of mind over consciousness (9). Hence, for example, we cling to notions such as others do knowingly "bad things" as if their volition is always a conscious choice and we only consider helping others under certain circumstances. During all of the first three stages we are not in charge of our thoughts, they are in charge of us. What we like, want, care about, desire and even how we react to our experiences comes out of our programmed minds, most of which operates at the non-conscious level. We tend to go with our programming rather than question and challenge it. Yes, we are capable of doing otherwise; however, we rarely do. We are too insular and too captivated by the "I" that keeps us looking without and not within where our answers lie.
I realize that it appears everyone makes choices consciously and certainly we all like to think we are in charge, but this is an illusion. Those of us in the primitive and civilized as well as the most of the developed stage are still locked into the illusion of mind. We live our lives and carry on governed by our ego. We only make the shift from the developed to the humanistic stage when we take more conscious control over the activities of our minds. For most of us this is the task at hand even though some might find it hard to see how this one "task" could be of singular importance. I say this because it affects every aspect of our lives from our physical, emotional and mental aspects to our artistic and creative abilities, intuition, empathy, telepathy and our awareness of energies of the subtler planes. It is the lens or vessel through which our true self shines and it is the one that can and does block it.
One point worth noting is that the idea that our "consciousness" resides in or is a product of our mind is a misconception. This is how, in part, we end up thinking we are our minds or ego. We are no more our mind than we are the clothing we wear. It only appears that way because virtually all of our attention is centered through our mind, hence our reliance on it. Awakening on the mental level is key to getting past this. It is a slow process as going from the lowest stage to the highest one takes many lifetimes as there is much to learn. However, we should not be concerned with what level we are at or think we should be at. It has no relevance for all we can work on is what our lives present to us. We can still make significant advancement in even one lifetime, it just takes a concerted effort. We will continue to learn in either case, only the rate will vary.
I do not say this so you will put undue pressure on yourselves. We certainly should not be beating up on ourselves just because we feel we should be able to do more. This is more often than not counter productive. What we want to do instead is start to define a goal(s)and consciously work to narrow our focus onto it (10). Limitation is the secret key to power in that to concentrate our power we limit our attention by rejecting the irrelevant. In addition, when we do not limit our attention we are disperse or essentially wasting our power. This makes finding the power to change harder but also understandable. When we do not have conscious awareness on the mental level we are ruled by our past. The reason we struggle to limit what our minds are paying attention is because we are not aware of what our non-conscious mind is doing nor are we directing it's activities.
Meditation is one way of learning to focus our attention as are practices such as yoga and even the martial arts. One of the things we can learn from our attempts to meditate is what we are doing with our power. Some who try to meditate do not focus their attention enough and end up falling asleep. There is no power without attention. Others find their minds racing and bouncing from thought to thought as our non-conscious mind churns away. It is concerned about many things even if we are not conscious of it or why. This is an example of how not directing our attention disperses our power. Assuming we can access some measure of focus the question is where to direct it.
Naturally where we focus our attention depends on the person and what they know and need to learn. There is no way to address this by some form of prescription, but this is not insurmountable. What we can do is start to work with our perception processes. This process led to the baggage that keeps us from being mentally conscious. Within that baggage are all the conflicts and misconceptions and so on that hold us back. There is no one to blame for this, not even ourselves. What we are is responsible for it and we will deal with it when we are ready, willing and able to do so, no sooner.
In terms of the perception process, when we examine it we see that what we perceive, certainly at the physical level, is beyond our control. We really cannot control how the rods and cones in our eyes react to photons of light, how our ears perceive vibrations, or how this information gets sent to the brain and so on. This does not change even when we expand our capabilities to perceive things through technology. Setting aside for the moment the energies we perceive, albeit most are unaware of them, what is within our control is how and why we react to what we perceive the way we do. However, those of us not yet at the humanistic stage are not able to do this consciously. For those of us still in the lower stages gaining more conscious control is the evolutionary path that leads to a clearer mind, better alignment and higher awareness. There is a benefit for those who are already conscious at the mental level as well.
In order to gain or expand conscious control over our minds, there are a number of things we need to learn or refine. This is the only way to gain freedom from our personal menagerie. Our perceptions have created it When we look at the perception process it is fairly clear what we are actually working on. However, before we get into what some of them are there is a key point to remember. It is one I have touched on already, namely that our non-conscious mind does takes it's directions from our conscious mind. If we do not consciously choose to make something important then our non-conscious mind will not do it for us. Further, we cannot overcome years of letting our non-conscious mind go it's own way unless we are forceful and put our will behind our conscious thoughts. The combined energy of all our existing non-conscious thoughts give them a great deal of momentum all of which must be overcome if we are to change the "how's and why's" of what our minds do. If we focus on the symptoms rather than their source we will be forever putting out fires and stuck with the mental and emotional baggage we collect. Now that we understand what one of core challenge is we will turn our attention to what we can do about it.
...End of Part 1
Next Part: Part 2.1: Alcatraz
© 2015 Allan Beveridge
Last edited October 14, 2016
References- Click on the title to access the essay (*- denotes essays only available to site members)
- *Guilt and Blame
- All Sales are Final: The Anatomy of Choice
- Our Mental House Part 4: What We Are Conscious Of
- Our Mental House Series (link is to Part 1- The Dynamics of Thought)
- Time To Weigh Anchor
- I See You ... Or Do I?
- Sephirot (def'n): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephirot
- Is That Right?
- The Dominance of Mind
- *Knowing Yourself
- Under the Covers
- Learning to Focus