“What is it like after you die?” Increasingly, scientists are beginning to realize that an infinite number of realities may exist outside our old classical way of thinking.

The question, “What is it like after you die?” can make you wonder about taking the time to ponder such philosophical babble. You might reply, “The only way to know is when you die.” Not so. You won‘t know any more than you do now. Increasingly, scientists are beginning to realize that an infinite number of realities may exist outside our old classical way of thinking.

Our instinctual understanding of reality is the same as most other animals. This came into focus the other day as I strolled though a nearby field, stirring up butterflies and creatures of all shapes and colors. There were wildflowers that were brilliant yellow, some that were red and others that were iridescent purple. This colorful world of up-and-down was the extent of my reality. Of course, to a mouse or a dog, that world of reds, greens and blues didn‘t exist anymore than the ultraviolet and infrared world (experienced by bees and snakes) did for me. In fact, some animals, including birds, possess magnetoreceptors that allow them to perceive information on the quantum level (indeed, some have even speculated that bees perceive a 6-dimensional reality to encode location information).

But regardless of these differences, we genome-based creatures all share a common biological (spatio-temporal) information-processing ability. I‘ve previously written how reality isn‘t a hard, cold thing, but rather an active process that involves our consciousness. According to biocentrism, space and time are simply the tools our mind uses to weave information together into a coherent experience — they are the language of consciousness (in fact, in dreams your mind uses the same algorithms to create a spatio-temporal reality that is as real, 3-D and flesh-and-blood as the one you‘re experiencing now). “It will remain remarkable,” said Nobel physicist Eugene Wigner, referring to a long list of scientific experiments, “that the very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of the consciousness is an ultimate reality.”

At death there‘s a break in our linear stream of consciousness, and thus a break in the linear connection of times and places. Indeed, biocentrism suggests it‘s a manifold that leads to all physical possibilities. More and more physicists are beginning to accept the“many-worlds” interpretation of quantum physics, which states that there are an infinite number of universes. Everything that can possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death doesn‘t exist in these scenarios, since all of them exist simultaneously regardless of what happens in any of them. The “me” feeling is just energy operating in the brain. But energy never dies; it cannot be destroyed.

So what‘s it like when you die? Of course, during our lives we all grow attached to the people we know and love and can never image a time without them. I subscribe to Netflix and recently went through all nine seasons of the TV series “Smallville.” I watched two or three episodes every night, day after day, for months. I watched Clark Kent (Tom Welling) grow up and go through all the normal growing pains of adolescence, young love and family dramas. He, Martha Kent (his adoptive mother) and all the other characters became part of my life. Night after night I watched him use his emerging superpowers to fight crime as he matured, first attending high school and then college. I watched him fall in love with Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk), and then become enemies with his former friend Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum). When I finished the last disk, it was like they had all died — it was all over.

Despite my sense of loss, I reluctantly tried a few other TV series, eventually stumbling upon “Grey‘s Anatomy.” The cycle started over again with completely different people. By the time I had finished all seven seasons, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and her fellow doctors at Seattle Grace Hospital had replaced Clark Kent, et. al as the center of my world. I became completely caught up in the swirl of their personal and professional passions. In a very real sense, death is much like finishing a good TV series, whether “Grey‘s Anatomy,” “Smallville” or “Dallas,” except the multiverse has a much bigger collection of DVDs than Netflix. Just like at death, you change reference points. It‘s still you, but you experience different lives, different friends and even different worlds.

Think of a football field full of stacks of DVDs piled up to the sky. At death, you‘ll even get to watch some re-makes — perhaps in one, you‘ll get that dream wedding dress you always wanted, or a doctor cures the disease that caused your loved one to die. The story goes on even after J.R. gets shot. Our linear concept of time means nothing to nature.

Robert Lanza has over two dozen scientific books, including Biocentrism, which lays out his theory of everything. You can learn more about his work at www.robertlanza.com.

 

Our thoughts are the seeds that create our futures.

 

 

 

Our thoughts are the seeds that create our futures. What we thought yesterday, last week and last year manifested into our current moment.

 

Most people at an early age reach a stage where they accept certain realities. These realities include stuff like the layer in society where they will most probably live and die in. We also develop fixed political and religious perceptions. Only a fraction of the population will dare to attempt to venture outside these fixed mental boundaries. We are either too lazy or too afraid to look what is going on behind the walls that we are encased in. Many of us simply forgot that there is something other than what is going on inside our walls. People that dare to remind us that there might be something better outside our barriers and perceptions are often attacked or avoided. We became like a community that live, go to school, marry have children and finally die in the same town. The boundaries of our tiny town become the size of our universe.

Say you are a person that discovered a place where people can go that would double their potential and solve many of their current and future problems. Are you obligated to attempt to convince those that are so set in their ways that there is hope and peace of mind just around the corner? You should keep in mind that those that you will attempt to tell about this place are often happy with their current circumstances, difficult as they might sometimes be.

I came to the conclusion that there is no obligation to inform anyone of anything, especially if such person is pretty happy with his current circumstances and future prospects. I am as such directing my attention and message to those that are no longer happy with their circumstances. Some of them are still living within the walls of perceptions that enveloped them since early childhood, but there is large a number that already packed their vehicle ready to leave town. Most of them have no clear idea where they want to go. All they know is that there is some kind of feeling that are calling them out of their current mental or physical vocations. I am writing this document for those that feel that there might be more to life than what they experienced to date.

There is nothing as exciting as the discovery that we consist out of two distinct elements. We are in an ongoing battle with the duality of our nature. We consist of a spiritual or higher self and a lower or ego self. I used the word battle because these two elements are up against each other until one of them gains the upper hand. Our actions, reactions and thoughts either support or oppose one of these contenders. It is easy to spot which one of these two contenders are in control. A person’s actions, reactions and choices display peace, wisdom, composure and compassion when the spiritual or higher self is in control. The opposite is however visible when the lower or ego self runs the show. You then find that a judgemental spirit, frustration, self-interest and problems are present in such person’s actions, reactions, relationships and choices. No real progress can be made until we become cognisant of this extremely important fact. We cannot wake up to our true potential until we become aware of the duality of our nature.

The key to victory over the false or ego self is only possible when we acknowledge that it gained the upper hand. You cannot change something that you are not prepared to admit. The act of acknowledgement of the ego’s control equips us with a powerful antidote. We are then able to substitute negative and destructive thoughts with compassionate productive thoughts. It is the admission or acknowledgement that helps us to pause long enough to replace the destructive thoughts with beneficial thoughts. We automatically and mechanically act and react to stimuli until the day we acknowledge the control that the ego self holds over us.

Our thoughts are the seeds that create our futures. What we thought yesterday, last week and last year manifested into our current moment. It is vital that we understand that we are creators in our own right and that we created whatever we are faced with today somewhere in our past. We used a powerful method in this creation process. We used the power of our imagination in a constructive or destructive way. What we fear or hope for becomes a reality. It is easy to check if we used this powerful instrument in a constructive or destructive manner. Look around you and you will soon discover if you are happy, relaxed and at peace with your life or sad, lonely and worried. The art of visualization release powerful energies that speed out into the universe to fulfil its mission. You are and have always been a creator in your own right. You think of something, act on it and soon see the thought materialise in the world of matter. When we visualize something, anything we boost its creative process many times. Everything that you see around you today was a thought in someone’s head first. It is thus not God punishing or blessing you when things work for or against you. It is the law of cause and effect that you are seeing in action. You cannot plant apple trees and expect a rich crop of oranges at the end of the season.

Thinking is the first phase of creation. Thoughts, negative or positive, constructive and destructive can be compared to seeds that you plant in your garden. The seeds need water before they will germinate and grow. Our emotions, good or bad start the germination process. This process will follow its natural path and finally yield the outcome that we yearned for or feared. Visualization of the desired outcome that you want to achieve speeds up the process many times. Doors in your heart and mind that you never knew of will begin to open. An energy field will awaken in you and around you that will call into life whatever you “ordered”. The pictures that you see in your mind will manifest in your life. They might sometimes take on different shapes and forms, but cannot deny your wishes. We usually love this principle because it provides us with a powerful system to expand our influence and affluence in the world of matter. You will in time discover that everything created in the world of matter is temporary. Nothing that you create in the physical world will stand the test of time. Everything will finally return to the source where they came from originally. You will later in this document see how you can use this same powerful method to create on the spiritual level. What you create on the physical level is temporary while what you create on the spiritual level will last forever.

We must take time and take a careful look in the mirror. We must analyse in a calm and reflective manner the conditions that surround us currently. You must be bold enough to ask yourself a few serious questions. You need to for example question your motives and intentions that you currently display in all areas of your life. You must ascertain if they are selfish or unselfish, honest or dishonest or compassionate or inconsiderate. You might find that you have a mixture of constructive and destructive habits. Nothing can change or improve until we admit to or take ownership of things we do or fail to do that is expected of a person that wants to live a more spiritual life. The ego or false self hates to admit mistakes or to acknowledge failures or shortcomings. It is our confessions to the higher self or spiritual self within that starts the healing process.

It is important to see the physical world for what it is. The physical world of matter is an illusion. It is a dimension where we come to learn and to grow. It is not a place where we come to prove our ability to create affluence. There is nothing wrong with the creation of what we need while we are visiting the physical plane. The creation process takes time. We cannot spend most of the time of our mission on the creation of the physical. We came to this plane to learn and to grow spiritually. We should spend the bulk of our time working on the development of our spiritual garden. The crops on the physical plane are temporary while the yields on the spiritual plane will sustain us even after we discarded the temporary physical body that we loaned from nature. The false or ego based self can only create on the physical plane.

The identification of your own flaws and mistakes boosts your courage and provide you with joy. Your admission of mistakes and your effort to overcome your false or ego self blasts you into a brand new dimension. You are on this plane to overcome your false self. You are not on this plane for any other reason. The setup on this plane provides your false self with a very wide range of tools. These tools come in handy when used to divert your attention away from your perfect self. You must see yourself as a person that is busy with a construction task. Every time your ego or false self successfully divert your attention and energy it succeed in delaying the completion of your construction task. Visualize and mentally see how your construction sight is deserted while you gallivant around earth plane to build stuff with a very limited lifespan.

We must not allow fear and the illusion based concepts of sin to stifle our attempts to purify the false or ego based self. A far healthier way to cope with mistakes, failures, so-called sins and setbacks is to view such lapses as lessons. We said earlier that the false or ego self have at its disposal a wide range of tools on the physical plane. There are an endless range of situations that we are confronted with daily that provides the false self with opportunities to retain its hold on our minds. We have been conditioned to experience guilt and shame when we fail to meet the ego based expected standards. Guilt and fear is a very destructive system that serves no real beneficial purpose. Our objective is to purify the false ego based self. We are inundated with opportunities daily to act and react in a detached spiritual manner. We grow and learn when we overcome our desire to do the first thing that comes to mind. We reduce the influence of the false self every time we act and react in an appropriate spiritual manner in the face of adversity and provocation. It is what we do or fail to do that cause the most damage. Pause for a moment before you act or react. Ask yourself if the action that you are on the verge of taking is the same that sages like Buddha or Jesus would have taken if they were faced with a similar set of circumstances.

The ego base false self creates the impression that our ability to generate affluence or accumulate possessions indicates our viability. No spiritual progress will take place while we fail to grasp that brotherly love and toleration holds the key to our mastery of the false self’s perception. It is only when we understand the duality of the world that we grasp how our weaknesses strengthen what we are attempting to overcome. We must not attempt to withstand the negative and destructive. All we need to do is decide not to empower what we fear. Nothing is good or evil until we create a perception about it in our thoughts. We create what we fear when we focus on the things that we are trying to avoid. Do not focus on poverty if you want affluence. Do not focus on retribution if you want to experience love. You draw what you think into your life experience. Your intentions become the power source of the thoughts you think. Your perfect self intend positive and productive outcomes while your false ego based self in turn twist and turn things so he will gain the advantage.

We create the pattern of our day the moment we open our eyes in the morning. Our first thoughts should be how we can make the coming day beneficial for others and ourselves. We discussed the amazing power of our imagination earlier in this document. What we mentally see on the screen of our minds when we rise in the morning will lay the foundation for the rest of the day. When we see joy in our imagination we gravitate towards people and events that will provide us with joy and satisfaction. When we experience frustration and anger when we begin our days we soon find a person or situation that will feed our anger. The perfect self will be our companion for the rest of our day when we get up with pure thoughts of love and good intentions. The false self will lead us into countless complications and problems when we start our day with judgemental and fear filled thoughts. You can sabotage the quality of your day long before you step out of bed in the morning. Take five minutes before you jump out of bed in the morning and create a pleasant and productive day that will draw into your life the things , people and circumstances that you desire.

It is helpful to do some stock taking before you finally drift into the world of sleep. Mentally see if you can spot the opportunities you had to learn lessons during that day. See the situations you found yourself in or the people that you interacted with. Make a mental note of the things your learned, especially where you can improve when you are confronted with similar situations. Do this in a constructive manner. This is not a period where you feel guilty because you fell short of your objectives. This is a brief period where you pat yourself on the back for tasks well done. This is also a period where you validate the things that turned out different than expected. You must remain a spectator while you do this short summary of your day. Drift off to sleep with positive thoughts of love, understanding and compassion in your heart and mind. This day and all that happened to you is minutes away from final completion. The only way you can resurrect anything that happened to you on any given day is to replay it in your imagination.

Rene

 

 

How to Recalibrate Your Reality – Recalibrating your world can help you solve problems, win arguments, and even be happier.

 

 

Wish you were better/smarter/stronger/faster? Sure, hard work helps, but the truth is, your self perception may be getting in the way.

 

We all form our own realities, and those realities aren’t perfect. Your self perception can be very limiting, and shaking up your notion of the world can do wonders for your productivity, creativity, and happiness. Here’s how to recalibrate your reality.

Remember the last time you lost confidence after your boss was disappointed in your work – or maybe you were stood up by a friend? You second-guessed yourself after that, and ultimately your work or personal life suffered.

 

The idea behind recalibrating your reality is pretty simple. When you get locked into a view of the world you get stuck in routines and you lose sight of different viewpoints. Recalibrating that view can help you solve problems, win arguments, and even be happier.

 

But how do we actually do it? We’ll take a look at a few of the different methods you can use to recalibrate your perception of the world and yourself, but first, we have to understand how we perceive the world to begin with.

 

The Basics of How We Perceive the World

 

To get a grasp on how we perceive the world, I talked with David Eagleman, neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine and author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain and Timothy Wilson, psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Chance.

 

In a literal sense, you can’t perceive much more of the world than you already do. You only perceive what you really need in order to survive. David Eagleman explains:

 

We open our eyes and we think we’re seeing the whole world out there. But what has become clear—and really just in the last few centuries—is that when you look at the electro-magnetic spectrum we are seeing less than 1/10 Billionth of the information that’s riding on there. So we call that visible light. But everything else passing through our bodies is completely invisible to us.

Even though we accept the reality that’s presented to us, we’re really only seeing a little window of what’s happening. There’s so many examples of this, but one that’s interesting to third-graders, but also neuroscience is optical illusions. [Illusions demonstrate] that these really simple things that you think are going on in front of you are not actually representing physical reality but instead your brain is constructing something.

 

Our construction of reality shapes and alters our view of the physical world. It also limits our cognitive ability because we weigh our views more importantly than others. Mr. Wilson explains:

 

A lot of this happens unconsciously. We don’t know how much we’re interpreting. The world presents itself like it’s reality and we don’t know how much we’ve already filtered that. There’s a psychologist name Lee Brosan who calls this naive realism. We perceive the world as real, but we’re doing a lot of spinning as the information comes in. He talks about it as a real impediment when we’re in an argument because each person sees the world as real and thinks the other must be crazy or deliberately trying to destroy things when in fact they’re just trying to bring their own expectations and facts to the table.

 

Recognizing this limited view is the first step. David Eagleman describes this as the umwelt: the assumption that our reality is the only reality out there. He suggests the first thing we have to do is recognize our umwelt.

 

The key is when you appreciate the umwelt it gives you intellectual humility. You realize that even though you assume this is reality, there is so much you’re not seeing and so much that’s a part of other people’s reality. The usefulness is recognizing this humility when making a hypothesis.

 

Recognizing our own umwelt can help us recalibrate our version of reality and start looking at the world in a new and different way. Most of us can’t do this by flipping a switch and require some exercises to get our brains into the habit of looking through other perspectives before making choices. Let’s look at some of the ways you can utilize and act on this idea.

 

How to Alter Your Larger Outlook

 

One of the biggest reasons to recalibrate your reality is to attempt to expand your world outlook outside of yourself to help you become a better communicator and expand your problem solving ability. This is easier said than done. Let’s look at ways you can actually implement it in your day.

 

Wait Five Minutes Before You Respond

 

One regret most of us have is our stupid responses during debates or heated arguments. To help cure that and give yourself time to think, 37signals author Jason Fried suggests a simple approach: give it five minutes. He describes a situation where he was arguing with a speaker at a conference who eventually offered him this advice:

 

He said “Man, give it five minutes.” I asked him what he meant by that? He said, it’s fine to disagree, it’s fine to push back, it’s great to have strong opinions and beliefs, but give my ideas some time to set in before you’re sure you want to argue against them. “Five minutes” represented “think”, not react. He was totally right. I came into the discussion looking to prove something, not learn something.

 

Many arguments don’t offer the luxury of a five minute response, but others, like email, social networks, or even conferences, give you plenty of time to formulate your response and recalibrate your reality before you say something stupid. Simply letting ideas settle in will inevitably force you to reconsider your own viewpoints, weigh them against your own, and give you an opportunity to come up with a better response.

 

Force Yourself to Think from Alternate Points of View in Monotonous Situations

 

It’s not all about making yourself better at arguing a point. It can also be used as a form of stress relief for daily annoyances. In his commencement speech given to the graduating class at Kenyon University in 2005, author David Foster Wallace talked about the dangers of self-centered worldview and the importance of disrupting our our “default setting” and views of the world by considering other options.

His suggestion is pretty simple. When you get annoyed at a situation or another person, think about why you would do what they’re doing. For example, if you’re in the checkout line and a woman smacks her kid, consider how you would end up in that situation. Alternately, if someone cuts you off in traffic, imagine why (or even when) you’ve done the same thing. Putting yourself in that mindset can change your view of a situation. As Wallace points out, doing this on a regular basis disrupts your default-setting and makes you more conscious of the world around you.

 

Write Out Your Day From Another Point of View

 

In his book, Mr. Wilson talks about the importance of writing things down as a means to understand different perspectives and one way to do that is to take a look at your day—whether that’s work, your creative life, or happiness—from the third person. He explains:

 

Some researchers have developed a method where they say, if something is nagging at us, write about it in the third person so we can look at it as objectively as we can as opposed to immersing ourselves in a negative experience. That kind of distance can be really helpful to change our story and to look at it in a new way and give new meaning to it.
I think I try to do this sometimes. I remind myself that my interpretation of something is just that—an interpretation. It’s not the only way. Sometimes it’s good to to look at a situation the opposite way as an exercise.

It might make you feel a little like Bob Dole for a minute, but writing out your day from a different point of view will give you a unique perspective of your situation and can help you pinpoint where a problem is.

This isn’t just about altering your view of the rest of the world though, it’s also useful to recalibrate your perception of yourself. Let’s see how you can do it.

 

Alter Your Perception of Self to Expand Your Notions of the World

 

As we’ve seen above, we see the world through our own set of filters, but changing and recognizing those filters isn’t too difficult. More difficult is editing your self-perception in order to change how you view the world. It’s a bit difficult to imagine changing your own view, but here’s a few ways you can do it.

 

Edit Your Own Story

One of the central themes in Mr. Wilson’s book is the idea that you unconsciously form your own narratives that frame the world and shape your sense of reality. Like any story, these narratives can be edited with a technique he calls story-editing.

The goal of story-editing is to change your personal interpretations of yourself and the social world to make yourself happier. One way Mr. Wilson suggests doing this is using the Pennebaker Writing Exercise. The process is pretty simple.

1. Find a quiet, private place to write.
2. Commit to writing about a problem for fifteen minutes a day for three consecutive days.

Each time your write about a stress or problem, you reveal more and can subsequently edit your version of the story and understand it more. It’s the same premise as five minute idea mentioned above. The writing exercise creates a self-assessment of your view and helps you consider other sides of a problem. This helps you interpret yourself differently in the social world and can provide insight into how you umwelt affects your decisions, creativity, and productivity.

Change How You Present Yourself

New research from Northwestern University suggests that you may be influenced by how you present yourself. The researchers call this “enclothed cognition” and theorizes that clothes have an effect not just on how you’re seen by the world, but also how you see yourself. Basically, you can alter your self-perception and subsequently your reality by wearing different clothes.

The research doesn’t prove anything yet. Instead, it suggests that our clothes have an impact on how we view ourselves. As an experiment on yourself, outfit yourself differently for a day and take note of how people perceive you how you perceive yourself. Does wearing a tie make you feel like more of an adult? Does a uniform change the way you view work? When your self-perception is changed, so is your view of reality.

Try on a Different Personality for an Hour

The idea of trying on a new personality might seem a little strange if you do it around friends and family, but doing so on a short flight or even in with a random conversation on the bus is an experience that completely alters your reality. It’s also surprisingly easy to do. Mr. Wilson offers his experience:

 

The idea of trying on a new self can be a fun exercise. So, you’re on a train or a plane and you’re chatting with the person next to you and you just try on a new personality. For example, I tend to be a bit more on the introverted side and I often wish I was a little more talkative and socially skilled at parties and things. And that’s something you can change if you practice it. So sometimes I’ll just say, I’m going to be an extrovert. And you know, I’ll never be Mr. Extrovert, but it’s amazing how easy it can be if you just try to adopt a different trait.

 

I tried this idea myself. As a bit of an introvert, I tried on an extrovert hat while doing some work in a coffee shop one night. To my surprise, simply telling myself, “I’m an extrovert for the next two hours,” actually made me more forthcoming to the person who was clearly trying to ignore me at the next table. It also gave me an idea of the difference in perception between an extrovert and an introvert.

Where I typically would go to a coffee shop to work quietly in the corner, I took a seat closer to someone and actually engaged with them. I did this all automatically after I decided I was an extrovert and it wasn’t until I looked back on it that I realized my seating choice and disposition was influenced by the conscious choice I made earlier.

 

Create Hiccups in Your Physical Reality to Recalibrate Your Views

 

One of the problems of falling into a set notion of the world is that we stop being mindful of the world around us and that closes our perception even more. In a lot of ways it’s a good thing, because it’s a great boon to productivity to not have to give cognitive thought to a lot of our daily actions, but it’s still good to change your world slightly now and again. It’s easy to do and can have a surprising effect.

 

Rearrange Your Home Environment to See New Things

Rearranging your home is an oddly relaxing way to explore your own dwelling and take a good look at the reality you form. Over years of living in an apartment or house, objects get hidden away, pictures you meant to hang get stuffed in storage, and you get so relaxed in the world you create that you don’t spend any time paying attention to it.

You don’t have to completely redo your living room or go out and buy anything. It is as simple as taking down the art on your walls and rearranging them in new places. You could even consider flipping a room to offer a different perspective.

The goal is to provide that cognitive bump in the road so that when you walk into your house you’re forced to reassess the situation slightly and take the time to actually think about what you’re seeing.

Take Different Routes and Find New Areas to Explore

Like the rearranging of your furniture, taking alternate routes is about expanding your reality into something larger and breaking your routine enough to cause you to pause. This doesn’t mean you have to take a new way to work every day, but it might mean taking a different street to the grocery store or jogging along a different path. When you break your routine, you move away from your reality and take in another section of the world.

 

The end goal of recalibrating your reality is to expand your perception so you can make your life better and more interesting. The above methods can be used to work through creative blocks, problem solve issues at work, and even to deal with minor traumatic events. Once you recognize the umwelt and the embrace the idea that your perception is limited, it opens up all types of new ideas.

 

By Thorin Klosowski / Source: LifeHacker