Fly like an eagle!

Essay #4: FOCUS ON YOUR CREATIVE "MIND-BODY" STRATEGY

Essay-Set #4.1. THE "MIND-BODY" DICHOTOMY

The "mind-body" problem has been a major philosophical issue for several centuries, since Decartes. Now ordinary intelligent well-educated people can understand the biological and psychological implications of this psychosomatic factual reality. It can finally be explained after more than 300 centuries of human life on earth or approximately 30,000 to 40,000 years of known "civilized" human activities on planet Earth. Since you cannot separate your conscious and unconscious mind from your body's brain, you must learn to accept the essential existential connection between your mind and body, which will be called your "mind-body" on this website.

This essay describes the long historical debates about the conflict between science and religion concerning the alleged differences between your phenomenal "mind" and your wonderful "body." Because of the new brain science research, it is now considered certain knowledge that your mind and body must be connected in order for you to be aware of your SELF. The goal of this section of this website is to help you discover the true relationship between your mind and body.

The truth about this vital connection between your mind and body will be symbolized by the word "mind-body" on this website. Your self-awareness depends upon your healthy mind-body. The philosophical conflict of ideas that permeates our social consciousness is due to the fact that you were born into a complex culture that had specific social standards based on historical norms of behavior. Those social and religious and political conventions were a confusing mix since the scientific viewpoint was chipping away at the nonsensical metaphors that caused the cognitive dissonance, such as the alleged separation of your "mind" from your "body" for religious purposes. The purpose of keeping the idea of a non-material spiritual "soul" made it possible for religious and political officials to perpetuate a "false fact" or expectation that you could survive your death --- if you were a good person who believed in the reality of an official Christian god.

But now there is no need anymore for the "religious dualism" that has traditionally separated your mind from your body when you try to understand the great philosophical issues of life, such as the meaning of your existence. Mind-body disorders are caused by faulty thinking and incorrect ideas that do not describe the true characteristics of your SELF and the true characteristics of nature. Chronic fear, anger, negativity, and addictions can cripple your self-awareness or perceptions of your SELF and your true brainpower potential as a phenomenal person with high "self-esteem."

High self-esteem can be defined as having "good feelings" about your SELF. Even though your self-esteem is your "subjective" measure of your own self-worth, it is essential for you to keep it positive. When you perceive your self-esteem as being "high," then your positive attitude about yourself will give you the courage to learn and choose among competing alternative ethical or moral values and behaviors depending upon the consequences you anticipate.

Bluntly speaking, your self-awareness or SELF is your perception of your mind-body. As long as your brain makes your heart beat strong enough to pump about 20% of your oxygenated blood into your brain at all times, and as long as your breathing is strong enough to provide new oxygen to enrich your blood with every breath, the rest of your brain' parts can be used to educate yourself about the true history of evolutionary psychology and biology so you can control your future behavior better. When you ask "why" they are important subjects, you will be doing philosophy!
The mind-body problem has been one of the significant issues in that long history. You will now be able to separate the facts from the fallacies regarding your true human potential to understand and apply the new brain science facts of life in order to create your own destiny:

Book Source:
The Divided Mind ---
the Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders


Book Source:
The Healing Power of Neurofeedback ---
the Revolutionary "LENS" Technique for Restoring Optimal Brain Function


Book Source:
Forty Studies that Changed Psychology ---
Explorations into the History of Psychological Research


Since your self-awareness depends upon the healthy or "holistic" balanced functioning of your mind-body, there is no other options for you except learning to accomplish optimal brain functioning or abnormal behavior caused by ignorance, superstitions, prejudices, or addictive behavior. In other words, all good healthy thoughts and feelings are based on the objective language-based reality, as it is defined by scientific terms that bind us together as a relevant species. All bad thoughts and feelings are based on medical disorders inside your brain or body unless you purposefully choose to do unlawful or unethical behavior for perceived economic or psychological gain.

However, when you consciously combine the three phenomenal Self-Liberation powers of Self-Creation and Self-Esteem and Self-Actualization, which are based on the new brain science "facts of life," you will be empowered by those facts and the assumptions they are based upon to create a more realistic self-image or picture of our SELF --- if you choose to do it!

You can then experience a new awareness of infinite opportunities and possibilities. You will be freer to choose more happy satisfying experiences in your life.

To help you understand the crucial significance of knowing the new brain science facts of life well, you can drive on a real freeway without knowing anything about how the inside of the engine of your vehicle works. But you would be totally dependent on the knowledge and skill of others if something goes wrong.

In the same way with regard to your brain, you can be alive without knowing anything about how the inside of your amazing brain works. However, if you want to experience the wonderful feeling of self-control and the personal power of self-definition, then the new brainpower knowledge will give you the ability to solve your own personal problems and build happy relationships based on your new brainpower knowledge or mindset grounded in an attitude of mindfulness. The concept of "mindful meditation" is explained at the next link by the same author, Jon Kabat-Zinn:

Book Source:
Wherever You Go, There You Are

Book Source:
Full Catastrophe Living

The full meaning of the concept of "mindful meditation" is described in the following comments. It can help you achieve balance in your life and cope with illnesses and traumas. These facts are based on thousands of successful therapeutic interventions with patients:

    "Mindfulness meditation has to do with being in touch with life. It has to do with examining who you are, with questioning your view of the world and your place in it, and with cultivating some appreciation for the fullness of each moment you are alive. It helps you wake up from the extended sleep of automaticity (fluent performance without the conscious deployment of attention, such as sight-word recognition) and limited consciousness. It makes possible the opportunity to live your life with access to the full spectrum of your conscious and unconscious possibilities. It involves counterbalancing your cultural orientation toward controlling and subduing nature rather than honoring the fact that you are an intimate part of life.

    Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way --- on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentaly, living lives of greater satisfaction, harmony, and wisdom. It nurtures greater awareness, clarity, and acceptance of present-moment reality. It wakes you up to the fact that your life unfolds only in moments. It can get you back in touch with your own wisdom and vitality. It is a way to take charge of the direction and quality of your own life.

    When you commit yourself to paying attention in an open way, without falling prey to your own likes and dislikes, opinions, prejudices, projections, or expectations, new possibilities open up and you have a chance to free yourself from the straitjacket of unconscious habitual behavior. It is simply a practical way to be more in touch with the fullness of your being through a systematic process of self-observation, self-inquiry, and mindful action. It is a warm feeling way of being gentle, appreciative, and nurturing."

Scientifically speaking, your SELF is a rational psycho-social idea or construction of your own personal thinking and feeling since it comes from your unique anatomical and physiological bodily processes and language abilities. When you understand self-image psychology, you will know how your SELF is related to your personality that others see and know. Then you can discover what your genuine strengths and limitations are as a phenomenal human being.

4.2. CREATING YOUR SELF-LIBERATION PHILOSOPHY AND STRATEGY

When you choose to learn about --- and to live --- the Self-Liberation Philosophy and Strategy, you will be able to experience the maximum personal freedom possible for a human animal. Even saying "human animal" instead of "human being," as though the two names mean different things reveals a fictional mystical meaning that many undereducated people attribute to the word "being." This new self-awareness can be a "tipping point" in the liberation of your self-consciousness in order to appreciate the true knowledge about your SELF.

The concept of the "tipping point" is outlined at the following link:

Book Source:
The Tipping Point ---
How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference


This idea that "little things can make a big difference" can be applied to the new brain science facts and ideas as you learn how your amazing brain and body are working together to create the experience of YOU. Your goal can be to create your own "self-liberation philosophy and strategy" using the suggestions on this website as well as your own new insights into what is possible for you to accomplish in the future.

You have the power to create enriched "positive memories" about any subject or idea and you have the power to delete or deliberately forget "negative memories" about any subject or idea that is not sensible or rational in the context of the new brain science facts and ideas. The commonsense categories and ideas in the Broadband Brainpower Mindset determine the validity of the Self-Liberation Philosophy, which will emerge from your own unique self-analysis.

You can ask yourself whether or not your new independent thoughts and feelings about the meaning of your memories are compatible with your past values and assumptions when you were a dependent child, teenager, or adult with the limiting beliefs of your family, friends, school leaders, or church leaders.

Your search for a satisfying scientific understanding of how your brain works can be the most exciting thing you ever do, since it will give you true knowledge of authentic happiness and lasting satisfaction. The Six Smart Skill-Sets can provide you the reliable factual scientific ideas necessary to increase your understanding of the true nature of your SELF.

By applying the empowering principles of rational "Self-Creation," positive "Self-Esteem" and mindful "Self-Actualization," you can transform your brain's powerful thinking and feeling resources into a completely satisfying lifestyle of confident happy self-awareness.

The choice is yours and the way to self-liberation starts whenever you acknowledge the supreme significance of your new Broadband Brainpower Mindset and you master the Six Smart Skill-Sets. But being a truly liberated person can happen only when you trust the latest brain research. In fact, your choice involves your willingness to apply the new knowledge to control your conduct through rational ethical choices. Once you decide to accept what is really true, you will be able to make many practical effective plans and decisions easily.

To deal with the world outside your SELF, which is the "global consumerism culture," you must understand the four negative "limiting processes" that everybody in our global transitional cultural life is exposed to. The four negative social processes are: (1) ignorance of science, (2) superstitious ideas, (3) prejudicial attitudes, and (4) toxic chemical addictions. To overcome the negative influence of these four processes, you can apply the new scientific knowledge about how your brain works. Also you can use that new knowledge to learn leadership skills so you can change your own behavior and successfully influence others.

4.3. YOUR CREATIVE SELF-ANALYSIS EXERCISE
The goal is to share a rational ethical humanistic way of doing self-analysis as you begin to achieve "self-control" on your journey of self-liberation and discovery. You can use the condensed insights contained in the keyword Broadband Brainpower Mindset of categories of facts and ideas as a framework for evaluating all your future thinking. In addition, the special form in the Self-Analysis Exercise at the following link can help you evaluate yourself in the perspective of the new brain science facts and ideas:

Website Source:
Self-Analysis Exercise

You can realize the power of your amazing brain's ability to imagine the many options in your future by printing the unique creative mind-body self-study form. The ideas can facilitate your successful achievement of authentic happiness and lasting satisfaction when you think about your goals and plans for the future.

Now you will be able to learn new subjects or skills more quickly due to the powerful impact of deliberately applying total "sensory immersion" method of learning new factual ideas about any subject because of the natural adaptivity of your creative brain due to its "neuroplasticity."

Also you have the ability to consciously unite the "left" and "right" sides of your brain's conscious awareness into a powerful enlightened "Brainpower Mindset" of reliable knowledge. In addition, you can choose the words or language you feel most comfortable with when you define your authentic SELF within the context of the latest brain science facts of life as outlined on this website.

Then you will be able to re-attribute new feelings and meanings or to the words you choose to use when you create new positive expectations based on your own powerful imagination undiluted by negative cultural influences. Now you can organize the twelve categories in the keyword Brainpower Mindset matrix of ideas into a logical pattern that makes the most sense to you.

The improvements that you would like to make in your life can motivate you to spend more time and energy concentrating on your most important goals. By using empirical facts to describe the true value and significance of your SELF, instead of historic unscientific metaphors, such as the old biblical parables that include shepherds and sheep instead of jets and computers to describe the complex and sometimes confusing values of the global consumerism culture, you can begin to perceive reality through the prism of rational humanistic ethical values.

The only solution to this serious human predicament is for you to satisfy your natural cognitive and emotional needs by perceiving what is genuinely true or real. Modern science, especially the new "positive psychology," uses the word "flow" to describe your supreme experience of achieving enlightenment or mindfullness or the blissful aspect of authentic happiness and lasting satisfaction.

In spite of the constant threats to our American understanding of freedom based on the Bill of Rights and United States Constitution by strange foreign values, such as militant Islamic fundamentalism, you must and can be courageous by asking yourself pertinent challenging questions about your own integrity and potential, such as the following:
    [1] How will you re-invent your SELF so you will be able to achieve authentic happiness for the rest of your lifetime?

    [2] What do you need to know about being "change-ready" in order to enjoy your phenomenal brainpower and memory of your SELF?

    [3] What can you learn about the new brain facts and self-leadership ideas so you can become a victor over ignorance, prejudice and superstitious thinking instead of becoming a victim of blind obedience to manipulative authority and mindless violence. It is particularly essential to recognize the powerful self-destructive psycho-social cultural influences in the mass media that can shape your choices every moment of every day?

    [4] How can you confront your Automatic Negative Thoughts, which will be referred to as "ANTs" in the essay sections of this website?
You can conquer your ”ANTs” by banishing them from your consciousness through specific choices and decisions that you make. If you remove or liquidate them from your self-awareness, then you are sane and in control of your SELF and your perceptions of the world and the global economic culture you live in.

4.4. YOUR SELF-TALK CAN INCREASE YOUR SELF-ESTEEM AND ELIMINATE CONFLICTS

Another essential assumption is that the true value of your life in the future will depend on the your positive "self-talk." Your goal is to learn the skills of "self-talk" in order to distinguish useless conflicts from essential conflicts that will help you face risk and grow in courage.

The thoughts that you use to define and defend your own personal values and assumptions can be objectively identified and used to extinguish your Automatic Negative Thoughts or "ANTs." The "ANTs" are negative or untrue ideas that are trapped in your past memories including the strong feelings you had when you experienced your "ANTs" the first time. Your old memories and feelings can DISTORT your new experiences of reality and thus your new vision of what the future could be for you.

The essential new factual idea that you need to remember now is that your "ANTs" is that they can be corrected by the “spaced repetition” method of learning new things. You need to learn something positive to replace your old negative thoughts and feelings related to a specific concept with something positive.

When you consciously deliberately remove the clutter of negative attitudes that are stored in your own memory by correcting your past opinions or conclusions about significant issues or problems in your life, then you can experience a genuine profound awareness of your own greatness and the preciousness of human life itself and your role in creating this outcome. Your duty to your SELF is to preserve this new undistorted perception of your brainpower in a new positive context.

You can develop an objective approach to decision-making regarding the big life-sustaining issues that your ultimate personal success and continuing survival and self-empowerment depend upon. This essential personal mission is a profound search to integrate the different aspects of your life in search of a wholesome truthfulness. It is a way of resolving dichotomies (the "either-or" language structure) caused by the grammatical constructions of the English language itself.

You can transform the artificial cultural "semantic dichotomies," which are social constructions to describe reality, into "continuum scales", which can measure your results similar to a temperature scale rather than a semantic dichotomy that expresses extreme opposites like an "on-or-off" switch.

It is your complete responsibility to systematically think through your values and search for wisdom in a more comfortable context so your planning process itself can be satisfying and make you happier as you think about your new goals.

Everyone has some thoughts and emotions associated with unresolved fear and anger locked into their memories as they grow up from infancy to maturity. These negative attitudes are stored in your "emotional bank account" of memories from past painful experiences. The Automatic Negative Thoughts or "ANTs" can be replaced or displaced with new rational accurate positive thoughts after you learn to trust the new "brain science facts" of life and achieve Self-Control.

4.5. UNLOCKING YOUR BRAIN FROM IGNORANCE,
SUPERSTITIONS, AND CHEMICAL ADDICTIONS


By making conscious choices to improve your life with your powerful imagination and memory skills, you can transform past negative memories, which are not appropriate anymore. into real accomplishments as you learn to trust your new Brainpower Knowledge and distrust the old dysfunctional negative memories locked in your long-term memory resources. Your goal can be to eliminate the bad ideas from your brain's memory processes.

Many millions of your electro-chemical neuron signals will stick together in your brain's amazing long-term memory resources and become part of your brain tissue if you make correct choices to have the billions of neurons and millions of neuron networks trigger hormonal reactions in your pineal gland which is protected deep within your pituitary gland. You can choose to release your "happy hormones," consisting of endorphins, adrenaline, and dopamine, and balance your "stress hormones," consisting of the chemicals cortisol and epinephrin.

The main method for accomplishing self-education is to focus on and achieve authentic self-liberation. The best way to achieve the happiness that is associated with the liberation of your SELF is called "sensory immersion." This way of facilitating life-long learning involves the willingness to concentrate on the specific scientific ideas relating to the Broadband Brainpower Mindset and its implications.

This way of thinking has created our fantastic technological system and the politics that are driving our consumer-oriented culture. The scientific ideas and arguments are the reliable theories and factual ideas, which make up the "Laws of Science." These scientific laws and rational "proofs" are essential to understand. They are worth thinking about since they have created the dominant pattern of rationality that influences all of our lives in so many ways now. Examples are the science and the technologies related to global consumerism, including airplanes and trucks, factories, televisions, computers, and cell phones.

The paradigm shift from the historic ancient "shame-based" religion dominated values to modern "reason-based" science dominated values has resulted in the marvelous inventions and discoveries that were made during the past 500 years, and especially during the last 100 years:

Book Source:
Inventions that Changed the World

The last 100 years of science and technology have included the mass production of automobiles, telephones, airplanes, television sets, and computers. These and thousands of other labor saving appliances have made possible the emerging global economy as well as the exploitation of our planet's natural resources.

Now international trade ties all countries together for commercial purposes. This new "global economy" is shattering old religious and ethnic values and producing millions of desperate displaced people. It is manipulating masses of people to feel emotionally disconnected from their old ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

You need to unclutter your amazing brain's storage place of old childhood memories of "language-based" and culturally imposed metaphorical sins that may be keeping you a virtual victim of social and psychological circumstances that are beyond your control by religious and political leaders:

You can use the following simple mental exercise to illustrate the different functions of both of your two brain hemispheres. Your "LEFT BRAIN" or left side is the LOGICAL part. Your "RIGHT BRAIN" or right side is the FEELING part. You can become consciously aware of this fact and explore how they communicate with each other as you make choices based upon your evaluation or calculation (thoughts) of something and notice what feelings (emotions) arise toward that thing, if any.

Furthermore, you can use "dichotomies" to carefully create more powerful language thought shapers. Dichotomies are grammatical phrases that make comparisons of opposite concepts such as yes or no or light and dark or open and shut or day and night. or come and go. For most routine communication activities dealing with facts, you can make quick decisions based on dichotomies since they save time. Those instant perceptions of routine reality can help you accomplish important goals quickly.

However, if you use dichotomies to think about more complex issues regarding your core values and assumptions, they can lead you to make bad choices and wrong decisions and big mistakes that can result in a massive waste of brainpower including the pointless loss of time and energy. This neutral and harmless decision-making exercise is a powerful way to ”breakthrough” the grammatical structures that can distort reality, such as semantic dichotomies.

Nevertheless, a positive alternative way of thinking about your core values and assumptions is to think in terms of a "continuum" instead of a dichotomy. You can develop a true wholeness or "holistic integration" of your thoughts and feelings by painstakingly re-attributing correct perceptions based on continuums as measures of your judgements in place of the simplistic metaphorical distortions of dichotomies to explain complex factual ideas related to your philosophy of life.

However, metaphorical distortions can be deadly if they interfere with normal healthy personal growth patterns and political decisions concerning environmental issues of survival in an expanding global urban civilization.

The positive arguments about the scientific reality of the new brain science facts are based upon the scientific method. They represent the same objective reality for all people living on planet Earth no matter what languages they think with. This is true even though the vast majority of the more than six billion people on earth today do not know what the "scientific method" is and how professional work in "science" is done. Therefore, they do not have the good fortune of living at the measurably higher standard of living of most North Americans and Europeans. Our standard of living is high precisely because we have evolved psychologically and socially:

Book Source:
The Triumph of Evolution

Book Source:
Life in Darwin's Universe --- Evolution and the Cosmos

Basically, the scientific arguments represent answers to how and why your brain, heart, lungs and stomach function as they do so you can survive and thrive. They describe a secular "mind-and-body" as the ultimate reality on planet Earth. In this regard, the powerful hold that habits and obsessive-compulsive disorders or OCD has on individuals, whether rich or poor financially speaking, can be understood by reading Brain Lock, the book by the UCLA researcher and educator, Jeffrey M. Schwartz, which is outlined at the following link:

Book Source:
Brain Lock

Also, Dr. Schwartz explains OCD symptoms on The Aviator DVD, which contains interviews with both Schwarz and Di Caprio, who learned how to portray OCD behavior for his role. Also, other individuals who have experienced the painful symptoms of OCD behavior and have recovered with the help of professional counseling are interviewed on the DVD. The therapeutic ideas that help thousands of people change their lives every day can also help you. Summaries of the factual ideas from published books and journals are contained in the advice on this website.

4.6. THE HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

You exist in a world full of genuine freedom of action without the need for religious delusions from history that were created by pre-literate people and based on pre-scientific myths, stone-age cultural ideas, delusional superstitions, and inappropriate literary metaphors. In addition to the bad influences of traditional historical non-scientific institutional memories are still being taught to children in schools and churches all around the world as well as to naive adults (meaning "stupid," "ignorant" or "unknowing"). Your goal can be to learn the history of the conflict between scientific and religious values.

The history of social revolutions is almost entirely connected with the submission of masses of people of all cultures to various political and religious rules and regulations that were designed to keep dictatorial leaders in control of the masses for eternity. A good example is the new personalized perspective on world history reported in the series of five books called "The Hinges of History" by Thomas Cahill. The books retell the story of the Western world through little-known stories of individuals who had pivotal impacts on history and contributed immensely to Western culture and the evolution of Western sensibility.

The books reveal how we have become the people we are and why we think and feel the way we do today. The books take a broad scope of complex history and distill it into a remarkably accessible, illuminating and entertaining narrative. Cahill's lively, engaging writing animates cultures that existed up to five thousand years ago, revealing the lives of his principal characters with refreshing insight and joy. He writes history, not in its usual terms of war and atrocity, but by inviting readers into an ancient world to communicate with some of the most influential people who ever lived.

For an introduction to this new perspective, Cahill's fifth book in the projected seven book series is about The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe:

Book Source:
Mysteries of the Middle Ages

The five books in the series include:

    [1] How the Irish Saved Civilization --- The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, 1995:

      This first book in the series tells the story — scarcely known outside of Ireland — of fifth-century Irish monks who copied and thereby preserved the great heritage of Western civilization. Almost all of what has survived of Western classical poetry, history, oratory, philosophy and commentary was saved. Its sales are increasing annually as it is being adopted into Western civilization college courses throughout the USA and is being published in many global markets.

    [2] The Gifts of the Jews --- How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, 1998:

      The book illuminates how Jews essentially invented Western civilization and shaped Western consciousness today, as they were the first in human history to claim individual freedom, and to presume that they could make the future better than the past. The book explores how Israelites gave the world a sense of history and destiny, concepts of individuality and justice, and the idea of monotheism. It is being adopted as a required text in Western civilization collegiate courses in the USA and is being published in many global markets.

    [3] Desire of the Everlasting Hills --- The World Before and After Jesus, 1999:

      This book has a fresh and engrossing look at the impact of Jesus and early Christianity on the shaping of Western civilization. It vividly brings to life the historical character of Jesus and the people who wrote about him, and offers a stunningly original interpretation of the New Testament.

    [4] Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea --- Why the Greeks Matter, 2003:

      The book describes a captivating tour of ancient Greek achievement, which encompasses dozens of facets, ranging from statecraft, philosophy, and architecture to militarism and science. This book bridges the gaps in the history in the previous three books of the series. The Greek civilization witnessed the merging of Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions and the birth of a new cultural outlook that permeates the West to this day. It brings to life the dazzling array of mythological characters and historical figures who comprise the way of life of the ancient Greeks, including a new look at Agamemnon and Aeschylus, Sophocles and Sappho. The pantheon of Greek gods and leaders whose importance is still evident in the Western culture is explored along with aspects that relate directly to our language and laws and even fundamental sensibilities that defined the spirit of ancient Greece.

    [5] Mysteries of the Middle Ages --- The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe, 2006:

      This book is about the dawn of the modern Western world — the High Middle Ages. After the long period of cultural decline known as the Dark Ages, Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today. By placing the image of the Virgin Mary at the center of their churches and their lives, medieval people exalted womanhood to a level unknown in any previous society. For the first time, men began to treat women with dignity and women took up professions that had always been closed to them. The communion bread, believed to be the body of Jesus, encouraged the formulation of new questions in philosophy: Could reality be so fluid that one substance could be transformed into another? Could ordinary bread become a holy reality? Could mud or other metals become gold, as the alchemists believed?

      These new questions pushed the minds of medieval thinkers toward what would become modern science. Artists began to ask themselves similar questions. How can we depict human anatomy so that it looks real to the viewer? How can we depict motion in a composition that never moves? How can two dimensions appear to be three? Medieval artists and writers invented the Western Tradition of realism.

      On visits to the great cities of Europe — monumental Rome, the intellectually explosive Paris France of Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas, the hotbed of scientific study that was Oxford in England, and the incomparable Florence Italy of Dante and Giotto — the spirit of experimentation, the colorful pageantry, and the passionate pursuit of knowledge that built the foundations for the modern Western world are brilliantly depicted.

    These first five cogent books in "The Hinges of History" series are beginning to have a positive impact around the world, especially in university curriculums and the open minds of inquiring adult readers. These books and other rational scholarly books can have a far greater impact in the world today and in the future because of the mass communication possibilities of the Internet. Today there is an opportunity for the liberation of millions and even billions of individuals from the "mindsets" of traditional unscientific religious beliefs and inefficient dehumanizing bureaucratic political institutions as humanistic "science-based" education replaces the dogmatic compulsive thinking habits of clergy, politicians, corporations, and even scientists.

    4.7. HUMAN HISTORY SINCE CIVILIZATION STARTED 30,000 YEARS AGO:
    When you learn that all the great ideas we cherish have been evolving for the past 15,000 years of progress since humans showed signs of burying their dead with care, and since the past 5,000 years of accelerated changes in human cultural development (especially changes in human language systems essential for thought). During the last 5,000 years, since people organized their first cities and applied scientific and engineering principles to erect monuments for worshiping the sun and other stars and the visible planets of our solar system and our precious moon, which keeps us in an orderly orbit around our sun instead of tumbling in space, and keeps seasons regular because of the stability of spin caused by our moon and the tilt of our planet in relation to its orbit around our sun. Because of these natural forces, freedom of thought and action have evolved in the human species!

    In this same exciting spirit of change and adventure, you can learn that YOU have the ability to learn new skill-sets to develop your personal brainpower. Your goal can be to understand the evolving human brainpower by using the Broadband Brainpower Mindset of science-based facts and ideas about your amazing brain and our expanding knowledge of the solar system and universe.

    When religious ideas are allowed to melt into social rules of conduct or civil rights rules, there is no constitutional Bill of Rights to protect individuals from the demoralizing and befuddling forces of religious nonsense and political-economic victimization done by corporate and institutional entities to individual citizens.
    The significant aspects of the supernatural ideas related to "divine revelation" or "revealed religion" have been documented by archeologists and historians hundreds of times during the 3,000 years of the great Egyptian Dynasties of ancient history and the other ancient societies, long before the time of Jesus and all the other symbolic religious reformers of the "Axial Age."

    Zahi Hawass, the world-renowned archaeologist and the official guardian of the timeless treasures in Egypt, is working with the National Geographic organization to write new books about Ancient Egypt in compelling English translations that describe the changing conditions during the 3,000 years of continuous Egyptian dynasties:

    Book Source:
    Mountains of the Pharaohs

    One of the best documented historic examples of a false religious assumption is contained in the long history of the way Egyptian Pharaohs and their priests sought to survive the death of their bodies. They had hoped to unite with their sun god, Aton, when they and their social elite died or at least get help from their numerous other male and female gods (representing Isis) when they entered the dangerous "underworld" on their way to an afterlife of eternity in the stars.

    For more than 3,000 years, the Egyptian political and religious leaders experimented with ways of preparing their mummified remains in order to survive death and have a meaningful afterlife. After more than one million Egyptian bodies were ceremoniously filled with chemical salts and wrapped in cloth, the process of mummification was stopped abruptly, after Islamic political rulers captured the Egyptian territory in the seventh century A.D.

    However, all during the mummification years, no one knew how important human brains were, so the official high priests and their teams cut and drained the brains of the deceased elite with sharp hooks through their noses during the elaborate 70 day drying and wrapping ceremony that was designed to prepare their bodies for eternal life. The Egyptian priests let the brain tissue and fluids leave the bodies because they did not understand the true function of human brains, which of course is to provide human consciousness.

    Unfortunately, they did not know any good reasons why they should try to preserve the brain tissue. But they did know that if they left the brain tissue and fluids remain in the skulls of the deceased people very long after death, they would mildew and smell terrible and might perpetuate dangerous bacteria during the mummification process. So during the 70 days after death, the heads and chests of rich people were stuffed with salts and their entire bodies were dried, and penises made erect, before being packed into coffins and stored inside monumental sarcophaguses and buried in graves or pyramids, depending on how much wealth the deceased persons had accumulated during their earthly existence.

    The ancient Egyptians thought their hearts and lungs were the essential bodily organs that made it possible for their "embodied-spirits" to survive after they died on earth and went through the purification process of the mummification ceremony. If they could afford it, they got the full preservation treatment, which actually did not preserve their human consciousness or essence. If they could not afford it, their bodies quickly turned into dust in the extremely hot desert environment.

    Now, with the use of Magnetic Resonance Image brain scanning machines, we modern science-oriented human beings know how essential human brains are, with their three major parts, cerebrum, cerebellum, and brain stem, and their three pounds of weight, to our ability to actually be alive and to feel alive. The following link to the book Ancient Egypt outlines the spectacular history of the Ancient Egyptians:

    Book Source:
    Ancient Egyptians --- People of the Ancient World

    Book Source:
    Ancient Egypt

    Book Source:
    Ancient Egypt --- the Kingdom of the Pharaohs

    Book Source:
    Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt ---
    From Early Dynastic Times to the Death of Cleopatra


    Book Source:
    The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen

    A good example of a major religious mistake of the ancient past is the religious belief in the need for a special Messiah to rescue Jews and Christians from the oblivion of their death. Since the Middle Kingdom pharaonic rule of the Ancient Egyptians, which was about 1,500 BCE ("Before the Common Era" or "Before the Christian Era"), others around the Mediterranean Sea believed and fervently hoped that their "souls" would unite with a supreme "God" in a place called "Heaven" after they died. This idea has never been proven by any verifiable scientific evidence during the long evolutionary ascent of human civilization during the past 30,000-40,000 years of uniquely "human" activities on planet Earth as confirmed by recent archeological and paleological and anthropological research.

    That is why there is a big difference between "science-based" factual ideas and "faith-based" religious or spiritual ideas, especially during the past 2,500 years, when the Golden Rule was formulated by the leaders of each of the six great religious traditions from around the world. Different doctrines and rituals were developed in the six geographically separated places where the major religious traditions developed.

    This period of history is now being called the "Axial Age" because it amounted to a major "tipping point" in ancient history. Biblical scholars and historians, such as Karen Armstrong, the former Catholic nun who practiced the religious rituals in a convent for seven years before becoming a British professor and prolific writer:

      "As soon as they became recognizably "human" men and women, in their attempt to understand their own presence on planet Earth and the mysteries within and around them, began to worship gods.

    The first book explores the ways that the "idea" and "experience" of the concept of "God" evolved among the monotheists, which include Jews, Christians and Muslims and her other books on the history of religion reveal turning points in the history of religions:


    Book Source:
    A History of God ---
    The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam


    Book Source:
    The Great Transformation

    Book Source:
    Buddha

    The logic of "self-control" in the Self-Liberation Philosophy assumes that the "freedom of choice" you are seeking is freedom from the four big negative situations most people must deal with during their lifetimes, namely,

      (1) Ignorance of science;

      (2) Cultural and ethnic prejudices;

      (3) Superstitious ideas; and

      (4) Chemical addictions.

    These four situations are usually associated with excessive fear and anger and usually lead to unhappiness and failure. The bad news is that these kinds of "self-destructive" activities or limitations can decrease "self-esteem" by depressing your good feelings about yourself to the point that you might not be able to correct your bad thinking and feeling habits without intervention.

    If your limitations are associated with chemical addictions or deep-seated religious convictions, you may need some kind of professional intervention to help you understood and correct your limitations through appropriate cognitive therapy combined with brain scans and a lifelong learning approach to self-education.

    In addition, Sam Harris is urging people to replace their dangerous self-destructive religious "faith-based" fantasies with "science-based" facts about what is genuinely real in human life and nature:

    Book Source:
    The God Delusion

    Book Source:
    God is Not Great --- How Religion Poisons Everything

    Book Source:
    Letter to a Christian Nation

    Book Source:
    End of Faith

    Internet Source --- Boston Globe:
    Do We Really Need Bad Reasons to be Good?

    New York Times Letters to Editor Source:
    Secular Response to the Truce Article on Criticizing Religions

    Los Angeles Times Letters to Editor Source:
    Ten Myths --- and Ten Truths --- About Atheism

    Internet Source --- the Edge:
    What are you optimistic about?

    Internet Source --- On Faith in Washington Post/Newsweek:
    God's Enemies are More Honest than his Friends

    Internet Source --- On Faith in Washington Post/Newsweek:
    Consciousness without Faith

    The biography of evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, who wrote the above book, The God Delusion, listed above, illustrates the major influence of scientific thinking on our contemporary modern world:

    Book Source:
    Richard Dawkins ---
    How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think


    This book describes the way you can change how you think about protecting yourself and surviving and thriving in our complex symbol-oriented global culture. The negative global economic tensions are primarily caused by the global business values of cutthroat competition that puts social pressures on third world Arab countries whose governments are Islamic feudal states. The political leaders who use totalitarian religious dogmas to influence their young Arab men to become suicidal martyrs for their terrorist activities, cause the killing of hundreds of thousands of people including innocent women and children.

    In spite of the fact that many of our own political leaders are neglecting the genuine social and psychological issues that cause the warfare, there is much that individuals can do to "open minds" and expand access to civil rights and economic opportunities, which depend on the "Rule of Law". There is a great need for a movement of millions of "Self-Liberated" individuals to work together to end the confusion involved in international politics and the weakening of our precious U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

    4.8. LANGUAGE AND YOUR PERCEPTION OF ABSTRACT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS

    By fully knowing that you have control over your own brainpower and your brain’s ability to control your feelings, you can "feel" continuous satisfaction and authentic happiness during the rest of your life, if you understand how your brain really works. You can be both satisfied and happy all the time depending upon how you define those experiences, no matter what your unique cultural background (commercial or religious) and hereditary challenges (DNA) you have experienced in the past.

    This assumption helps explain how your use of the Broadband Brainpower Mindset Categories can provide a transforming transitional new perception or mental orientation of true reality. The goal can be to explore how your knowledge of history and the language that conveys that history has influenced your thoughts and feelings up to now, and how you can change your perceptions of history by changing your language that hold your feelings and thoughts in your memory. This kind of enlightened perception can be enough to justify your excitement with being alive instead of being stuck in sad mourning feelings due to your loss of your old dysfunctional ideas about history and your ignorance of your SELF. It's better to be happy than depressed. Better to go from sad to glad!

    For example, your decision about the religious dichotomy may be easier when you transcend the dichotomy structure of thinking by thinking in terms of continuum scales using degrees instead of absolute differences to distinguish what is "true or false" and "good or bad" and "sacred" or "secular" and "objective or subjective," for example. Thousands of thinkers for the past few centuries have been analyzing and explaining these kinds of "linguistic traps" that can separate people based upon their assumptions of "faith-based" or "reason-based" philosophies of life.

    When the vast historical chronology of human achievement is analyzed in more detail later on this website, you will be able to see the dramatic vital connections among all your factual ideas within the up-to-date modern scientific context of the "Brainpower Mindset," or some other unique format that you can contrive yourself to explain the traditional mysteries of life. Hopefully, you will be able to overcome your fear of change and courageously pursue your personal quest for Self-Liberation in a fun-filled context of rational humanistic mindfullness --- without the need for irrational and even absurd "leaps of faith."

    Whether you understand your new Brainpower Mindset as being in a "sacred" or a "secular" moral context will depend upon how well you understand the scientific insights about both your personal and social life experiences. Conversely, how ignorant you are about the discoveries and inventions of modern science and technology during the past few hundred years may determine the length of your life and its quality. If you have self-destructive attitudes, you may be tragically shortening your life through your ignorance and stupidity.

    However, if you apply reason and scientific knowledge to your attempt to motivate yourself and to create the kind of self-confidence that is essential in order for you to accomplish your major goal of self-control in order to be happily satisfied with the results of your other goals. You can learn to understand how your amazing brain makes it possible for you to appreciate your new self-awareness in the context of the Buddhist ideal of "mindfullness."

    The ultimate factual idea or conclusion you need to develop is that you are a wonderful living breathing human being with a perpetually pumping heart and a fully functioning brain. You don't need to overcome any alleged "original sin" or be "saved" by any superpower god or Goddess for your weaknesses or limitations, since what you need is to educate yourself and nurture your basic human survival needs, which include the needs to love and to be loved!




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