Vegan Friend

 Up next for our unnamed hero in The Celestine Prophecy, he needs to prepare himself for the hazardous endeavor of finding the Ninths Insight. The Eighth Insight is key to this, but so are the others. They are progressive, meaning that one concept builds on others, but you also must continue going back to them. For example, the Seventh Insight centers on sharing energy with others, but to achieve this it is helpful to understand the Third Insight, which tells us that everything is energy, and the Fourth Insight, which is all about power (energy) struggles among humans. Others can steal our energy by trying to control us or they can give us power by giving us attention, validation, and control. The Fifth Insight is also helpful, where you learn to reeive energy not from other people, but from the world around you.  Yesterday I was shopping at Barnes & Nobel, and I found myself in the solf-improvement section. There were several books with varying approaches to meditation, a...

 The Celestine Prophecy is the story of the pursuit in Peru for a manuscript broken into eight insights, except that there is  theorized to be a ninth one as well. The narrator, who is interestingly never named, is internalizing the first eight insights at this point, and struggling with the eights one. Many of the insights are about energy, which is all around is, and which we can consume, as explained in several of the earlier prophecies. But the seventh is more about relationships and about sharing your energy. And then the eighth insight deals with becoming a whole person, which can require putting off relationships until you do so. Otherwise you can become addicted to a person which will block you from ever realizing your own potential.  And with that word salad, it's clear that I have not consumed all eight insights. I think there's value in a lot of what the author puts forward, and I continue to become more convinced that this book is not intended as just a story ...

 According to the Prophecy, and specifically the 6th Insight, we must come to terms with our conflict with our parents. We have a conflict with each parent individually, plus the combination of their approaches to controlling us. I've already mentioned that I take issue with this, but the author brought me back around because it's also our ability, per Prophecy, to come to terms with these controlling factors, recognize how they manifest in ourselves, and use them to strengthen our ability to strive for our own purpose.  The reason this resonates for me is because I have, in the past, worked to use both of my parents' approaches. My mother is simple - she's passive aggressive and aloof. My father was aggressively critical growing up, but also encouraging. I have an innate passive aggressive in me that I try to rise above, and teaching martial arts has helped a lot with that. Getting a student to recognize where they need to improve is so much more effective than just te...

It's a great song by Mobe, We Are All Made of Stars. It's also a theme of the Celestine Prophecy. It's not stated directly, but reference is made to the evolution from the first confabulation of hydrogen atoms to the first stars and galaxies, and the formation of earth all the way up to the evolution of man. It's the concept that there'san invisible energy all around us and that we can harness it. Although individuals can harness the power, the potential won't be truly realized until we as a species evolve, and the collective of humanity becomes able to observe, collect, and share the universal energy. It's like qi, or God, taken to another level. In the story there are governments and religions and people who are working to suppress the manuscript that describes all this. There have been eight insights discovered, but some believe that a ninth insight exists and they are searching for it. I'm trying to decide if those wanting to suppress the manuscript ...

 The premise of the Celestine Prophecy is that around 600 BC a scroll was written that said in a few thousand years people would become increasingly restless, which would come to a hilt in the 1990s, and that once enough people became restless answers would reveal themselves.  Are we, as a species, becoming more itchy and ready for the next thing? I think that's something I experience a lot. Whatever I do, I always feel like there's more to do. Is that nature, or just my nature? I suspect that most members of the Vegan Superhero Academy possess the restless gene.   So then the question is what to do about it. I for one don't want to sit around until enough people get the sense to be curious about what else is waiting to be explored. The next thing for me was drinking and smoking when I was in my 20s, then running in my 30s, karate and Brazilian jujitsu in my 40s, and in my 50s so far it's strength and performance and becoming a vegan superhero. But after all that, I...

I hate it when my Libby book gets returned the day before I am going to finish it. To by honest, I had lost interest in Incognito, anyway. On to the next book. My next book to read is actually a fictional work, but one rooted in spiritual discovery. The Celestine Prophecy was written in 1993, and it enjoyed a stay on the NYT bestseller list. It's been on my list as well, possibly since around1993, but I've never gotten around to reading it, partly because I was worried that it would be hokie.  I'm not looking for any sort of spiritual awakening per se, but if it comes, then great. I do like the format of teaching through storytelling. My favorite business book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, is a very powerful example. 

 The book Incognito has been mostly about how the brain works, but in this chapter the author revealed himself as an advocate for criminal sentencing reform. The arguments made about the various quirks of the brain were not to reveal some secret brain hacks.  Disobeying, but a well made argument. 

The part of our brain that allows us to make decisions, it turns out, is the same part in charge of emotions. We can reason things out analytically, but we would be hamstrung from turning that analysis into a choice without our emotional brain. The id and the ego and the super ego aren't, it turns out, three separate parts, but all part of the same whole. But even there, it's not that simple. Our brains have two separate hemispheres, joined by a thin membrane. Most people know that generally each half operates specific functions, and that physically, each half controls the opposite half of the body. Here's where it gets wild. People with severe epilipsy sometimes undergo a surgery to sever the connecting membrane. They function fine, mostly, and better in some ways. After the procedure, patients are often able to draw different shapes with opposite hands at the same time. Strange, right? People with really severe epilipsy can have a hemispherectomy, where half the brain is ...

 Today's lesson from the book Incognito was on attraction. In an earlier chapter, we learn that men are more attracted to women with large pupils, but do not realize that is the reason. Several studies bore this out. This section goes deeper into attraction, and asks questions like Why aren't we attracted to frogs? Meaning, what causes us to be attracted to those we are attracted to. A lot of it is subonscious. For example, when we catch just a fleeting glimpse of someone, we often find them instantly attractive, and research shows that that first glance is the most attractive someone will ever seem to us. Sort of an instinctual form of FOMO.   But it's more than that. pheremones play a part. One example provided is babies, offered a choice of several blankets, will choose the one that had been pressed against their mother's breast. Another more interesting example, to me, is that we are attracted to smells different from our own, which prevents us from finding our sibl...

Incognito's author would go so far as to say that consciousness is useless, but then qualifies that statement. What's certain is that the unconscious mind does far more than most of us are consciousof. A group of people unable to retain short term memory were in a study in which they were taught to play tetris. The following day, they had no recollection of this, but their ability to play the game was on the same level as right after they were taught. Some had reported seeing colored shapes falling from the sky in their dreams. There's more. Plenty more examples of where the unconscious mind controls our actions and decisions against our wills. People end up in relationships with someone with the same first letter in their name more frequently than randomness would allow. You're more likely to believe something that's familiar. A group was presented sentences that contained a false fact, and then a week later were asked to rate the veracity of a series of statements...