Scientific Living » Experiments

Remember Death

Scientific Living — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:39:14 +0000

People who are actively seeking to develop their personality, to broaden themselves all around, to be happy, and to be successful in life, should always remember death. If a person always remembers the inevitability of death, then that person will be sure to guide their lives in a proper direction.

Everyone who seriously wants to be successful thinks a great deal about the direction their life is taking, and what it will bring in their future. We invest money in various things. We look for new financial opportunities. We prepare ourselves for hard times. We try to become more efficient in living our day to day lives. We think about how we will be able to buy a home. We think about insuring all our belongings. We think about maintaining our health.

These are all great. These will all lead to growth and personal development. When we think constantly about where we are now, and where we want to be, we effectively steer our lives in the right direction, and we achieve our goals. That’s all fine and dandy if all you want is a little personal growth. If all you are looking for is a little money, and just a little fragile happiness, then there is no need to read on. However, if you want more than just a little financial security or a little happiness, then something more is needed.

Many people work hard. They go to college. They work diligently through a long career. They are constantly anxious to pay off their bills or their debts. They worry about their children or their marriage. They struggle to overcome all their problems. And they eventually do succeed.

But there’s a catch.

Once these people finish working through problems ABC, they are presented with a new set of worries, XYZ. In this way, they spend their entire lives full of anxiety. The unfortunate part is that most of these anxieties are self-imposed.

An Experiment

Here’s an experiment. Ask a bunch of young people these questions:

1. What are your biggest worries?
2. Have your parents also faced these worries? And have they conquered them?
3. Are your parents happy?

Young people are often worried about what they will do after school finishes, and how they will get financial security in life. A large number of these people will also say that their parents are no longer worried about financial security. Then, almost no one will say that their parents are happy.

Hopefully this should tease your brain. Seriously though, if your survey results also look like mine, then doesn’t that say we have a systematic flaw in the way we are living? Shouldn’t there be opportunity for everyone who diligently directs their lives to gain happiness? There is such an opportunity. And we can achieve that happiness, if we keep perspective.

Security in Life

In one word, “security” is what we are seeking in life. We want to be free of all worries, and thereby feel secure. But life will never ever be free of worries. We think after we do this thing or that thing, that we will feel secure. It hardly ever happens. And if it does, it is only for a short while.

All Worries and Anxieties Are Fear of Death in Disguise

Say for example a person is worried about becoming broke. Such thoughts arise as:

“What will happen to me?”
“What will become of me?”
“How will I live?”

The common thread here is me, me, me! When we value ourselves based on something like our finances, our sense of identity (i.e. our sense of “I”) gets tangled up with the problem at hand. If I am rich, then suddenly I become poor, then my sense of identity has changed. In other words, to a certain degree, I have died.

What is death? It is exactly defined as the destruction of our sense of identity.

What we really are, for the time being, most of us are not aware. All we have is a sense or a belief of what we are. We identify with situations and circumstances of life. We say this person is tall, short, fat, slim, rich, poor, black, white, nice, mean, etc. These are NOT what a person actually is. These are only attributes that we use to describe. When these attributes change, we fool ourselves into thinking that we ourselves have actually changed (i.e. died).

In this way, all our anxieties are around changing the attributes that make up our apparent sense of identity. We want to control these attributes, because we are afraid of our sense of identity changing. In short, we are afraid of death.

A Person’s Life is a Preparation for Death

If we worry when it comes to things like losing money, or losing a relationship, then how much more will we worry when it comes time to die!

On the other hand, if we first worry a certain amount when it comes to becoming old and dying, then the mental strength and faith that we slowly gain in ourselves and in our potential will make other challenges far less significant to us.

This is why the greatest challenge in personality development is to achieve the goal of fearlessness. If we can do that, everything else is automatically achieved.

We will have clarity of thought to make better decisions in life, when we are sobered by the remembrance of death. We will stop creating new worries when we know various attributes are not what we really are. We will have more focus. We will see everyone more kindly and compassionately when we realize that we are all subject to the same fate of dying. We will be humbled also.

Lastly, if we can be perfectly successful in conquering the fear of death, we will achieve not just partial, but complete sense of security in life. When we know, through and through, that only various attributes leave us at death, how could anything worry us?

Don’t you think?

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How to Tell Your Own Future

Scientific Living — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:28:01 +0000

You don’t need to be psychic to tell your own future. It’s actually pretty easy. Here is how:

Lock yourself in your room and spend 30 minutes taking slow and deep breaths

Get a piece of paper.

Write down whatever thoughts enter your mind for 15 minutes.

Read it back to yourself.

Guess what. Whatever you read- THAT will be your future!

This is BS- right?

No, it’s not BS. It’s reasonable. Think about it. After you take the time to let yourself become calm and relaxed, by breathing, or by spending time in nature, or whatever else, you go and write on a piece of paper. The kind of thoughts that crop up in your mind at that time are going to be the most predominant and forceful thoughts that you have been thinking in your life. These are the thoughts that are ever ready to come back to the surface of your mind, even though you just spent some time making it calm. These are the thoughts that have dug deeper grooves in your brain, through habit, that make it easy to go back to them, again and again.

That doesn’t mean those thoughts will be my future though, does it?

Not necessarily. But if everything in your life stays the way it is now, then those thoughts will be a very strong indication of your future.

“Your thoughts are the architects of your destiny.”

It should be clear that thoughts have a tremendous effect on our future. Say for example you think that you would like to eat food today. Chances are that you are going to find a way to eat food today! No one can deny that thought controls our future. To say if does not is pure fatalism.

Of course, thought does not exclusively determine our future. Our will power can be likened to a leashed animal, tied to a pole. Using its will power, the animal can walk around. However, it can only go so far as the leash allows. The will is not entirely free.

But I always hear it called “free will”?

Not quite.

What if I don’t like the future I have just read to myself?

Change it. You can, if you want. Most people don’t try very hard. Say for example, your thoughts from this exercise express lots of worry about the future. Or they express lots of regret about the past. Or they are full of negative self talk. They say that you lack confidence, or they say that the obstacles between you and what you want to achieve are too big. If you have these kinds of thoughts, your future looks pretty unpleasant. But you have to realize that these thoughts didn’t dig grooves into your brain all by themselves. You helped them! You made them, and you can unmake them.

So thoughts are the result of habit?

That’s correct. By thinking the same thing over and over, you have convinced yourself that these thoughts are true. In the same way that we make bad mental habits, we can undo them, by instead channeling our energy towards making good mental habits.

Are you saying that I can alter my future?

Yes. By being extremely positive, by making healthy choices, by careful consideration, by fostering self confidence, by cheerfulness, and by continuous effort, you can control your future.

But you said that our willpower is limited, like an animal tied to a leash?

Yes, that is true. The leash may be very short now. That is only because we have allowed our power of will to atrophy, by disuse. When your willpower goes unused, the leash gets shorter. When the leash gets shorter, the power to struggle against negative thought declines. When that power declines, these negative thoughts will find it easier to dig footholds in mind. It is a vicious cycle.

So if I can prevent the leash from getting shorter, can I also help make the leash longer?

Exactly. Through protracted effort, the will becomes strong. Our ability to fight through obstacles increases. Our leash becomes lengthened. Furthermore, our efforts make us more resourceful human beings. We gain more skills and knowledge. We understand the workings of the world better. We make powerful friends. These are all tools that serve to give us additional power to alter out future. Our efforts bear exponential return. The stronger the will, the easier it is to change habits. The faster we overcome habits, the easier it is to strengthen the will. It is a helpful cycle.

Seriously, can I really control my future?

Yes. Externally you may not get exactly what you want, but internally you can gain almost complete control over what goes on. Struggle hard for seven years and see if your mind and your life have not changed to your great advantage. Anyone who really wants to can do it. Most people, however, do not want that. It’s easier to run in the same mental ruts over and over again. It’s easier to follow the path of least resistance. Very few have the needed zeal to overturn the backward workings of the mind. If in seven years, you regret the results of your efforts, I’ll let you clean out my bank account.

In one word, what should I do to have a desirable future?

“Cauterize the cants.”

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Fearlessness

Scientific Living — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 01:48:56 +0000

I dare you to do this experiment:

Write down on a piece of paper your ten biggest fears (i.e. losing my job, not being able to do something fun that I was planning, etc, etc)

Hide that paper in a place you will remember

Mark a date on your calendar. Use Google Calendar for example, and have it send you a reminder. This date should be far enough away, that all the events your list of fears pertains to should be resolved by then. Or if you want to get quicker insight, you can set several dates along the way.

After that date comes, get your list out, and count how many of your fears came true

Typical Results

Typical results are as follows:

7 out of 10 items never come true, or are taken care of in a way that is easier than feared
2 out of 10 items do go as bad as feared, but do not at all cause any problems, because interest in the outcome of those items has pretty much disappeared in the mean time
1 out of 10 items really is actually as feared, and poses a challenge

Let me know how your results look like. Let’s say that about 1 out of 10 of your fears actually come true. I think this is a very reasonable result that people will get. Shouldn’t that say something? To me it says that most of our fear-based suffering is completely unnecessary.

Intellectually, you may agree. Most fears tend to simply be wrong perceptions. They just don’t happen. This being the case, they serve no rational purpose. And since humans are rational beings, why not simply do away with these irrational and unhelpful fears?

The Mind is Not Rational

Intellectually, we say “Don’t be afraid.” And our mind immediately revolts and says “Be afraid!” The mind is a sense organ. Just like our eyes and our ears, the mind gathers perceptions about the world. Many of these perceptions are ones of fear. It is not really a question about the mind being rational or irrational. It simply is what it is. The mind is an instrument that is constantly presenting us with perceptions about the world. And these perceptions are often wrong.

The Snake and the Rope

There is a very old example illustrating this point. Say it is dark outside. As you are walking along, you see the outline of what appears to be a snake. The mind shouts “It’s a snake!” As a result, you experience fear. You go home, light a lamp, and bring the lamp back to the area. Then you find that the snake was nothing but a piece of rope.

In countless ways the mind constantly gives us wrong information.

We Suffer Needlessly

We suffer a great deal because we willingly believe the information the mind gives us. If we train ourselves to not immediately react to various thoughts in the mind, then we could avoid needless fear and anxiety.

F.E.A.R. Stands For False Evidence Appearing Real

You may have heard of this acronym before. It is an interesting tool that people can remember when they are struggling to not accept false information from the mind. People can see that they are afraid of something. Then they can accept the fact that they are experiencing fear. Then they can say to themselves. “This particular fear makes no sense, and does not serve to help me. It is false evidence.”

Fear and Relationships

Fear is what causes all problems in human interactions. Say you are married and your spouse does something that makes you angry. Behind that anger is actually fear. Think about it. Say you had some expectation of your spouse, and he or she did not live up to it. As a result, say you get angry. That anger is because of a failed expectation that you created. And the reason you created that expectation is because you had an aversion (i.e. you had a fear) to not creating that expectation. In this way, creating desires implies fear.

Fear and Expectation

How can you be sure that you are on a track that will enable you to really love other people? The answer is to not create unnecessary expectations of other people. If you are constantly expecting things, then you will naturally tend to favor people who meet your expectations, and disfavor people who do not. If you don’t expect things of others, then you can love them equally. Then there is no fear surrounding whether or not they will satisfy your expectations.

Gratitude In Place of Expectation

But if I don’t expect anything from anyone, doesn’t that make me like a zombie? The solution to this question is far from having a hollow head. Instead of expectation, why not try gratitude? Let everything you receive from someone be a bonus. Expect nothing, and be free. Then watch as good things effortlessly come to you.

Fear and Real Love

Here is the real test. In real love there is no painful reaction. If there is pain, then that love is mixed up with attachments, fears, and expectations or desires. The more we grow in real love, the less we react.

The Mind Must Be Refined

Am I to regard my mind as something I should constantly distrust? If it is constantly giving me wrong information, what is the point of having it? We have a mind so that we can refine it, and then use it for its highest purpose. This purpose is to see things as they really are, and not with distorted perceptions. That is a wonderful task in life. The mind is an instrument. And just like any instrument, it can be refined, and made more reliable. When the lens of a microscope is dirty, you clean it. Then it gives the user much more accurate information. In the same way, the mind can be refined. Some practical ways have been given in this article. These include the listing exercise at the start, the F.E.A.R exercise, and also the suggestion of gratitude. There are hundreds of ways to refine the mind. The most well known way is meditation.

The State of Perfection

If you can be literally 100% free of fear, right at this exact moment, isn’t that the same thing as perfection? We seek for things in an effort to become free of lack. But the moment we stop fearing is the moment we stop desiring or expecting. This is the same moment we stop needing. In other words, we have no more lack. And if we have no lack in our being, then that is said to be the state of perfection.

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Why Diet Matters (Iron Filings Found in Cereal)

Scientific Living — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:17:51 +0000

What really goes into your cereal to “enrich” it with iron? Watch this video and see what happens:

A bag of cereal is pureed
A magnet is shaken up with the puree
Iron filings stick to the magnet

This is not the kind of “iron” you want to be eating to get your nutrition. The amount of filings that appear on the magnet is no insignificant amount either. It is like going to a metal shop and licking a table top that has iron filings on it, then swallowing. Do you really want that stuff getting stuck in your intestines? Our American diet has become extremely toxic, and it is no wonder that so many chronic diseases appear among us. The USA actually has the most illness of all developed countries! Eating intentionally contaminated cereal for example, is one way you can help yourself suffer from heavy metal toxicity!

We are so incredibly bombarded with processed foods, preservatives, additives, and pesticides that we consider it normal to eat that way! Well, the truth is that all these changes are very recent events in human history. We have certainly deviated a long way from what humans have evolved to ideally eat.

Disclaimer: This article is not medical advice. This is opinion and is for informational purposes only. If seeking medical advice, consult a licensed physician.

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