posted June 14, 2009 10:42 AM         

(This is not strictly a spiritual topic, but I post it here because I think it will be useful to many Knowflakes)

Human mind can absorb ideas in two different ways: direct construction and prototyping. Direct construction is what occurs when the book is of your field of interest. You can read the book effortlessly mainly because your inner fire is in tune with the ideas in the book. You have interest.

This is not the case when you are trying to develop a new interest. You may want to start reading detective stories or people like me may want to start reading poetry. We usually keep postponing because we basically don't have this fire to read it.

In that case, you are simply using the wrong approach to read that different book. Your mind cannot absorb the book because you are trying to use direct construction. Instead you must use prototyping.

Prototyping is defined as below: Associate the idea you read with something you can easily relate to. If you associate the ideas you read to something you already know or something you already have interest then you will find that you can actually read through the book without postponing. Because your mind cannot direct construct an idea it has no current interest, it must resort to prototyping.

Associating with something you already know is the principle. Here are some techniques:

1. Compare the content with something you already know.
2. Ask yourself: When was the first time in my life I read a concept like this? Usually this triggers clear memories.
3. See whether you can find a metaphor to the new concept you are reading. If you are reading a detective story and you are not a fan of detective stories and you are a deeply spiritual person, see how the soul is actually in detective work towards Truth.
4. If you are reading about famous people, try to remember times in your life when someone has actually talked to you about these people or similar people. Compare the information with what you are reading.
5. If you are reading about breakthroughs, try to remember what similar breakthroughs have you learnt already. How does this one differ? Or how is it similar?

There is no limit to the number of techniques you can develop. The principle is the same. If you grasp the principle you can develop your own personalised techniques that you can teach others (and post here as well). You can develop any number of techniques. There is no limit.

posted June 14, 2009 10:59 AM         

Now let me come to something really spiritual. Why can't you meditate, whenever you want to? Because there are certain negative energies that prevent you from meditating from going deep within. As a result, you are unable to enjoy the meditation. You are unable to direct construct.

When you resort to prototyping you can do something very similar to meditation. It is known as Image Streaming. First relax your body, calm your mind and whenever an image comes to your mind start describing it. This will make the image clearer and bring more images to your mind. Continue describing the images, you can meditate in this way also. Try it and see, it is as beneficial and vivid as normal meditation. I have tried it and it works well.