Since you cannot separate your "conscious mind" from your "body's brain," you must learn to accept the essential connection between your mind and body. The "mind-body" problem has been a major philosophical issue for several centuries. Now intelligent people can understand the biological and psychological implications of this psychosomatic reality, which are explained finally after 30 centuries of human-like life on planet Earth by the new brain science facts and ideas by evolutionary biology and psychology.
Book Source:
The Divided Mind ---
the Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders
As long as some of your unconscious brainpower is used to make sure that your heart beat is strong enough to pump fresh blood to your brain, and your breathing is strong enough to provide new oxygen to enrich your blood supply every moment, your "mind-and-body" together benefits greatly. From now on this website the truth of the vital connection between your "mind" and "body" will be symbolized by the word "mindbody."
When you consciously combine the three phenomenal Self-Liberation powers of Self-Creation, Self-Esteem, and Self-Actualization, which are based on the new brain science facts of life, your newly empowered SELF will experience a new awareness of infinite opportunities and possibilities. You will be freer to choose more happy satisfying experiences in your life.
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. Your self-image of your SELF is you with the opportunity to grow from the inside out from your body to society to discover what your genuine strengths and limits are as a phenomenal human being!
3.1. SELF-CONTROL IS YOUR GOAL
FOR HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS
You will be able to experience a new kind of freedom of choice that will enable you to achieve your goals according to a predictable schedule of enjoyable events in your life. The importance of freedom is especially relevant to the personal creativity of Smart Goal-Setting as described by James Manktelow of Mind Tools at the following link:
Internet Source:
Smart Goal-Setting
If you begin to take full responsibility for your goals and plans, without the need to defer to some greater power, you will be giving yourself legitimate pride in your natural bodily resources, which have evolved to near perfection during the past few hundred thousand years of biological evolution.
The new neuronal connections created in your brain when you think about how your brain creates your ideas about your SELF can alter your previous memories concerning your brain and other people and the major events in your past experience. By carefully thinking about your behavior and remembering specific factual scientific ideas in logical categories or selected contexts with the assistance of this website, you can experience new perceptions of yourself and your relationships.
This essay describes the long historical debates about the conflict between science and religion concerning the definition of your phenomenal "mind-and-body." This philosophical conflict of ideas permeates your consciousness since you were born into a culture with specific standards or norms of behavior and the possibility of diversity of opinion about major social issues.
You can be happier and more satisfied with your phenomenal SELF and your potential of being able to experience a creative lifestyle, if you train yourself to have more positive expectations about yourself no matter how many stressful pressures you are experiencing or have experienced in the past. You can use the proven method of creating "positive affirmations," which truly describe the reality of viewing yourself as a positive rational person with the ability to use humanistic ethical values to relate to others.
In addition, you can benefit from having accurate knowledge about the powerful negative cultural forces, especially the self-defeating addictions your fragile brain is vulnerable to, especially considering the powerful predatory advertisements that have influenced your past and that continue to influence you now. Nevertheless, you can empower and enrich yourself now to the point of being able to experience the complete reality of Self-Liberation.
Once you have created your own Self-Liberation Philosophy based on rational humanistic ethical core values, you can trust it to transform any normal habitual negative depressing thoughts and feelings that you were stuck with from childhood into more positive and pleasurable moments during adulthood.
[However, if you have the symptoms of clinical depression, you may need a team of experts or trusted friends to help you overcome the pain and suffering stuck in your memory of past events and your negative evaluations of those events as will be explained in detail later in this essay.]
In this context of cultural values, you can learn to use your brain in order to understand how your mind and body must work together to create the kind of future that you would love to live in. Once you gain self-control by actively developing the vision of self-liberation as your moral standard for creating authentic happiness and lasting satisfaction in your life, you will be able to accomplish your goals and do everything better. You will be able to create your goals and achieve your plans better as you overcome any depression-induced lethargy or learned helplessness.
3.1.1. 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 most 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 mystical meaning attributed to the word "being." This new awareness can be a "Tipping Point" in the liberation of your self-consciousness to appreciate a truer Self-Awareness of your potential for experiencing more freedom and happiness based upon scientific factual ideas about how your amazing brain and body are working together to create the experience of YOU.
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
You can create enriched "positive memories" about any subject or idea and delete or deliberately forget "negative memories" about any subject or idea that is not sensible with respect to the new "brain science facts." The factual categories and ideas in the Brainpower Mindset determine the validity of the Self-Liberation Philosophy that emerges from your 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 Brainpower Mindset and you master the Six Smart Skill-Sets. Being truly liberated 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.
3.1.2. YOUR CREATIVE SELF-ANALYSIS EXERCISE
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 Brainpower Mindset of categories of ideas as a framework for evaluating all of your future thoughts and feelings. In addition, the special creative Self-Analysis Exercise form at the following link can help you evaluate your 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-and-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 the "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.
3.2. HOW CREATIVE 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." 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 or metaphors to describe reality, into "continuum scales", which can measure your results similar to a temperature scale rather than an on-or-off semantic dichotomy that operates like an electrical toggle 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 and ideas to achieve Self-Control.
3.2.1. UNLOCKING YOUR BRAIN FROM IGNORANCE
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
3.2.2. 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, cultural ideas, delusional superstitions, and inappropriate 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 naive adults (meaning stupid, ignorant or unknowing). 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.
MIDDLE AGES AND LANGUAGE
As important as the existence of our marvelous English language is for doing critical thinking, it is equally important to understand the serious conflicts between scientific and religious ideas throughout Europe and the American continents after the European Middle Ages due to the invention of the printing press with its moveable type. The Gutenberg Press quickly reproduced translations of the Christian Holy Bible and other books in the beginning of the European Renaissance. That increased communication among cities and countries helped speed up change and create a common culture of ideas that led to the European Reformation and the emerging of modern science out of the extensive experimentation with alchemy, which is generally referred to as The Enlightenment in Great Britain and Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries and later in America, especially during the 18th century.
The next two links emphasize the revolutionary changes made in Great Britain and Europe during the Reformation and Enlightenment:
Book Source:
The Reformation --- a History
Book Source:
The Creation of the Modern World ---
The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment.
3.3. PLANET EARTH IN THE 21ST CENTURY
In this same spirit of recognizing that big changes can happen in a relatively short period of time to improve life on our planet Earth, it is hoped that this website will dramatize the enormous power for good that can be unleashed when you recognize the good results you will be able to accomplish by working with others to improve social and technical conditions in the world. This new possibility to open the minds of vast numbers of people with the Internet offers an unprecedented opportunity to improve the conditions for sustainable peaceful living and loving on our wonderful Planet Earth in a relatively short period of time during the 21st Century.
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 erratically in space, freedom of thought and action has evolved.
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.
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 past 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, 2006
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 moderns 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 Egypt
Book Source:
Ancient Egypt --- the Kingdom of the Pharaohs
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, others around the Mediterranian 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 years of uniquely "human" activities on planet Earth as confirmed by recent archeological 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. She has written several books about 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 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. Sam Harris is urging people to replace their dangerous self-destructive religious fantasies with "science-based" true assumptions 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 with Faith
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 military dictatorships. The substantial death and destruction caused by the Iraqi war is itself caused by outdated religious ideas and practices. The extremist political leaders who use totalitarian religious dogmas to influence their young Arab men to become suicidal martyrs for their twisted religious values, cause the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people including families with 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 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.
3.4. LANGUAGE AND YOUR PERCEPTION OF RATIONAL REALITY
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 Keyword Brainpower Mindset Categories can provide a transforming re-orientation of your perception of reality. This kind of enlightened perception can be enough to justify your excitement with being alive instead of being depressed!
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 be loved!
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 may need to understand and use the Native-American idea of "radical Hope" in a time of great technological and cultural changes, similar to what the Great Crow Chief, Plenty Coups, enunciated more than one hundred years ago:
Book Source:
Radical Hope
Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation
You can use this simple practical 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. They can communicate with each other when you make choices based upon your evaluation (calculation) of something and your feelings (emotions) toward that thing.
You can use "dichotomies" to carefully create more powerful language thought shapers. Dichotomies are gramatical 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 gramatical 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. They 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.
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