On this 40th anniversary of the assasination of Bobby Kennedy, the eldest son and I were listening to some snippets of speeches given by Bobby all those decades ago...

On the heels of Kennedy sharing why he was opposed to draft deferment for college students, speaking his truth and calling people
out on their hypocrasy, my son looked at me and said, "I'm so
disappointed I missed that era when people running for office
said something real...  and were willing to piss off people. At least
then you'd know what you were voting for"

We both agreed that 'politically correct' was idiotic and
hopefully couldn't last much longer. So it was extremely
satisfying to find this piece by Larry Beinhart dropped into
my email box half an hour later.... ahhhh... a refreshing bit of
TELL IT LIKE IT IS!

The Great Republican Disaster, from Reagan to Bush the Lesser, has been the Time of the Unreal. (Yes, people possessed by the unreal are very much like the undead. They're mindless, lethal, they infect others, they're very hard to stop, and their existence is a complete surprise to people who live in the real world.)Those forces of darkness derive their power from their Great Myths.

No matter how powerful a myth is, if it is essentially false, reality has certain methods fighting back. It uses Failure, If failure fails, it moves on, through Fiasco, to Disaster.

Recently there have been signs of hope.

Yes. Hope means Obama. He speaks of reality, whether it's about race or a gas tax holiday.

Lo and behold, people actually have heard, listened, and agreed.

Let us seize the time and create New Truths, based on Reality, to replace the Old Myths based on Bullshit.

Old Myth: 9/11 was an Act of War.
New Truth: 9/11 was a Criminal Act.

Osama bin Laden was not a head of state or an agent of a state. He was a religion crazed gangster with a relatively small gang. His acts were crimes.

To elevate them to acts of war was to elevate him.

Worse, it created the wrong response. So wrong that he's still out there. Proof that you can commit a mass murder against the United States and get away with it.

Only when we redefine it, will we be able to figure out a sane response to replace the current insanity.

Old Myth: The War On Terror
New Truth: The War on Terror is Bogus

There is no War on Terror. It was a PR ploy to invade a country that annoyed George Bush and Dick Cheney, to transfer mad amounts of money to the military-industrial complex, to win elections, and to allow George to play dress up.

Old Myth: The War in Iraq was Not a War of Choice.
New Truth: The War in Iraq was a War of Choice.

Even if someone actually believed that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous man with weapons of mass destruction, the problem was solved the moment that the weapons inspectors got full access to all sites in Iraq.

At that point, going to war was like the police going into a man's house to look for guns, then shooting him while he is sitting on the couch, because they couldn't find them and were tired of looking.

Old Myth: The War in Iraq Can be Won.
New Truth: The War in Iraq Was Lost Years Ago.

It was lost through belief in stupid mythologies and the failure to heed reality. It was lost through poor planning and worse execution.

The administration does not have a plan, the means, or the will to win in Iraq. Their only plan, their only goal, is to pass the problem on, so they can blame the next president for their failure.

Old Myth: If We Leave Iraq, Chaos Will Ensue.
New Truth: Iraq is Now in Chaos.

George Bush, and his gang, created the chaos. They applied everything they believed in — force as foreign policy, that the whole world wants to be like us, free marketeering, no government, crony appointments — to Iraq. It demonstrates the bankruptcy of their entire theology.

Old Myth: Free Markets are the Best Solution to Everything.
New Truth: Markets are Good for Cheap Consumer Goods, but Bad for Health.

They're bad for individual health, for health care systems, for the health of our work force, for the health of the environment. Unchecked and unbalanced, they're bad for the health of our economy.

Old Myth: All Regulation is Bad. Remove Regulation and the Free Markets Will Make Everything Better.
New Truth: An Economy Without Regulations is like a Baseball Game Without Umpires.

The cheaters take over and chaos ensues.

Old Myth: Tax Cuts Stimulate the Economy.
New Truth: The Wrong Tax Cuts Can Ruin the Economy.

The truth is that the American economy has often thrived with high tax rates. Since WWII, it has never done as badly as it has under Bush, with the most cuts and lowest rates.

Old Myth: Reagan won the Cold War.
New Truth: The hippies won the Cold War.

Reagan told Gorbachev, "Tear down that wall." But Gorbachev didn't. Reagan built up the military, but that didn't change anything. The people who tore down the Berlin Wall did so because they wanted to wear jeans and listen to rock 'n' roll and say rude things about their government. Like the hippies.

Old Myth: The Media Lost the War in Vietnam
New Truth: (A restatement of an Old Truth). The War in Vietnam was a Stupid, Useless Mistake.

Bad politics, bad military strategy, and bad tactics made it worse. America's leaders and America's generals lost the war in Vietnam.

There are recordings of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger privately admitting that the Vietnam War could not be won. Then deciding not to end it, to keep it going, so Nixon could win re-election.

This is important because after Bush leaves office someone else will have to get us out of Iraq. The myth makers will rush in to say that Bush policies could have won and his successor lost the war.

Old Myth: George Bush is the Problem.
New Truth: The entire Republican Agenda Has Been Revealed as Bankrupt.

George Bush acted out an agenda. It was enthusiastically backed by a Republican congress. And acquiesced to by Democrats like Hillary Clinton, who were terrified by the Republican's Big Bad Myths.

Old Myth: Religious Faith is a Good Way to Judge a Leader.
New Truth: The Way People Deal With Reality Is the Way to Judge a Leader.

The spectacle of our candidates groveling on TV over how religious they are is appalling.

"If there is one thing for which we stand in this country, it is for complete religious freedom, and it is an emphatic negation of this right to cross-examine a man on his religion before being willing to support him for office."
– Theodore Roosevelt (Republican)

Old Myth: Being Intelligent is Elitist. And That's Bad.
New Truth: Lord, oh Lord, We're Tired of Stupid Leaders Who Can't Do Anything Right.

Larry Beinhart is the author of Wag the Dog, The Librarian, and Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin. All available at nationbooks.org. His new novel, Salvation Boulevard, will be published in September, 2008, by Nation Books.

mmmmm

The MindField
 

The "Zero Point Field," is a subatomic field of unimaginably large quantum energy in so-called empty space. The Field connects everything in the universe to everything else, like some vast invisible web. The solid stable stuff we call matter is an illusion and is simply subatomic particles constantly moving and being gripped on by the background sea of energy, the Field. Everything in our world boils down to a collection of electric charges interacting with the Zero Point Field. It's a bit like the Force in Star Wars.

The Field: The Quest For The Secret Force Of The Universe

Lynne McTaggart

 

_____________________________

 

Admittedly, I'm having some self-indulgent fun with the title of this report and that bit above from The Field. As I began writing about the mind, the first thought I had was this subject is truly a minefield. Everywhere I stepped there was conflict, complexity, confusion and chaos. Tough going when you're seeking clarity and awareness.

Comedian George Carlin, taking off on the tagline from the United Negro College Fund's famous advertising campaign of 1972, quipped, "The mind is a terrible thing..." and although we all know the human mind is an absolutely awesome, literally brilliant masterpiece of creation, attempting to understand and explain the mind with the mind can be difficult.

"The Inner Game®" of anything is the one played in your mind...." So, a pretty obvious, even mandatory place to begin our explorations and learning about BeliefBusters would be answering the question, "What is the mind?"

Well, I don't really know what the mind is. And I trust you will find this fact as fascinating as I do: Neither does anyone else...

Over my years as a writer and editor I have developed an inquisitive and fun habit I call "dicting around." It's the term I came up with to describe beginning my writing process by going to the dictionary to find the "common and accepted" definition(s) of the key words I'm writing about. And that's what I've done with mind.

A search for "mind" on-line at the free encyclopedia Wikipedia opens a page that begins by stating:

Mind refers to the collective aspects of intellect and consciousness, which are manifest in some combination of thought, perception, emotion, will and imagination.

And the search for "clarity" continues with:

There are many theories of what the mind is and how it works, dating back to Plato, Aristotle and other Ancient Greek philosophers. Pre-scientific theories, which were rooted in theology, concentrated on the relationship between the mind and the soul, the supposed supernatural or divine essence of the human person. Modern theories, based on a scientific understanding of the brain, see the mind as a phenomenon of psychology, and the term is often used more or less synonymously with consciousness.

And... the best goes on, the beat goes on

Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain

La de da de de, la de da de da.

Here's more...

The question of which human attributes make up the mind is also much debated. Some argue that only the "higher" intellectual functions constitute mind: particularly reason and memory. In this view the emotions—love, hate, fear, joy—are more "primitive" or subjective in nature and should be seen as different in nature or origin to the mind. Others argue that the rational and the emotional sides of the human person cannot be separated, that they are of the same nature and origin, and that they should all be considered as part of the individual mind.

The Skeptics Dictionary (SkepDic.com) from Robert Todd Carroll adds this to the muddy morass:

The mind is thought to be the seat of perception, self-consciousness, thinking, believing, remembering, hoping, desiring, willing, judging, analyzing, evaluating, reasoning, etc.

Dualists consider the mind to be an immaterial substance, capable of existence as a conscious, perceiving entity independent of any physical body... Dualism is popular with those who believe in life after death... This belief in the mind as a substance, which exists independently of the brain, however implausible, seems to be required for most religious doctrines, as well as for many New Age notions and therapies...

Metaphysical materialists, on the other hand, consider the mind to be either the brain itself or an emergent reality, i.e., an entity separate from, but brought into being by the workings of the brain...

Behaviorists consider "mind" to be a catchall term for a set of behaviors...

There is probably no more fascinating topic in philosophy or neurology than mind or consciousness.

Yet, despite the fact that the human mind has made it possible to gain all the understanding of the world and ourselves, which we now possess, it has done precious little to help us understand the mind itself.
 

Indeed.

Remarkable, isn't it? And those are just two perspectives from a Google search for a definition of the word "mind" out of about 50,100,000 results.

I can't help but add this bit from Wikipedia:

In popular usage mind is frequently synonymous with thought: It is that private conversation with ourselves that we carry on "inside our heads" during every waking moment of our lives. Thus we "make up our minds," "change our minds" or are "of two minds" about something...

We'll come back to the subject of thought again (and again and again...) and that's enough "clarity" for now.

Even though we cannot have much in the way of absolute knowing about what "mind" means, we can appreciate and take advantage of the liberty this lack of definition gives us to explore the subject of BeliefBusters on our own, unlimited, terms.

BeliefBusters is not about religion, although religious people and groups have used many of the principles and practices for ages.

Until I rebelled at age 15, I grew up in a single-parent family where my mother was a practicing Christian Scientist, a teaching regarding the efficacy of spiritual healing according to the interpretation of the Bible by Mary Baker Eddy, as explained in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (first published in 1875). I've always been fascinated and stimulated by the implications of what Mrs. Eddy wrote and titled "The Scientific Statement of Being."

"There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor-substance in matter. All is Infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore, man is not material; he is spiritual."

For the sake of our work together with BeliefBusters, I'll go with the bit about "All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation..." and that you and I are indeed "spiritual." That point of view, which interestingly Quantum physics is currently exploring (ala The Field), allows us to creatively work and play with the mind on purpose and by design.

Here are some ideas about mind we'll be using in BeliefBusters. 

First—and once again—none of this has anything to do with being right or wrong. It's not the truth or the way things are or should be.

I recommend you use the principles and practicals we explore in BeliefBusters as "working assumptions," simply, ideas you are willing and able to experiment with and see where it goes.

Try them on. Keep what fits and serves your process of discovery and change for more and better and discard the rest.

So, for our purposes here let's make use of the following ideas (and there will indeed be much more to come about each one).

We all are of two minds

The mind is a two-sided thing:

On the left hand is the rational/analytical or what's called the conscious part of the mind.
 

On the right; the imaginative/intuitive or what's called the unconsciousness.

I'll refer to the two "sides" of the mind as

the head and the heart.

Now, this business of conscious and unconscious... Although its commonly used terminology, it's confusing and to me and I believe inherently contradictory, but... I haven't yet found a truly clear way to express these two different parts of the mind either.

The problem is the unconscious isn't unconscious at all. Alert and awake (even when we're asleep), on active duty 24/7, this part of our mind is not the least lacking awareness nor sensory perception and is wide open to conscious direction. So... Live with it? Please do. I can... for now. Back to business.

One of the goals of our work in BeliefBusters is the marriage of your head and heart.

• The rational/analytical mind—the head, cannot tell the difference between right and wrong. Judgment and discernment of what is good or bad is an ability of the imaginative/intuitive mind—the heart.

• The mind does not distinguish between what is a "real" event and an imaginary experience. (In fact, as you will discover, what we call "real" is always our own individual interpretation... something we quite literally "make up.")

Given that... we are powerfully free to use our imagination to reinvent past memories and to create desired future outcomes.

• What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve—good or bad, wanted or unwanted, and it has been doing so unerringly and constantly throughout our entire lives.

• Thoughts do indeed become the things of our reality. The internal creates the external.

Everything was first an idea in mind.

• The thoughts we focus on most consistently (practice) become the circumstances, events, people and things we attract and manifest in our daily lives.

• We program our minds with our predominant thoughts.

• Thoughts practiced over again and again become habits, which become beliefs, and...

We do—and do not—have, do and be only what we believe is the way it is.

As said, there is and will be more. This is a start.

And again, please... NOT the TRUTH. Just some ideas to play with, to try out and on like an experiment. The goal is to learn what works and doesn't and what's a fit for you and your process of living and working in 3D—as you Desire, Dream and Deserve.

***************

This is a small piece from John Milton Fogg as part of the BELIEF BUSTERS course... a truly mind... and life altering course! I highly recommend you go sign up. ;-)

Eewwwww... I'm bringing my OWN lemons from home!

Another Great Question...