Dr. Richard Davidson, who is one of the world’s most respected cognitive neuroscientists, and who helped create the entire field of what is now being called Contemplative Neuroscience, and who is the founder and chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, gave a Google Tech Talk in 2009 where he

Let’s imagine we’re standing in a kitchen together looking at a bowl of ripe red apples. You see the apples. You see the color of the apples. You see their texture. You see the way the apples are stacked so they don’t fall out of the bowl. You may even have a thought that you’d like to grab an apple as a healthy snack. From there, another thought

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self. —Ernest Hemingway

Our mind’s self can attach as easily to a treasured family heirloom that becomes a part of our identity as we can to the idea that we like the loose sheets of toilet paper to hang from over the top of the roll, and not from behind and under it (or vice versa). So in reality, our self (aka top level self, aka ego, aka false self) is really more of a

Review your expectations regularly, take a moment to set expectations for those around you, and then simply take every life moment as it comes, ready for anything. If you do that, you’ll be as prepared as you’ll ever need to be if something doesn’t go as well as you wanted it to. And you’ll spend less time dealing with any negative emotional

mind’s {self} concept

The key to taking better control of your mind, and thus better control of our life and happiness, lies in your ability to enter the control room of your mind at will. It lies in your ability to enter meta-awareness at will so you can observe what your mind is doing and change what it’s doing if it’s not doing something that serves you. You

every action and reaction we have as humans, regardless of age, is designed to defend or perpetuate {self}.

you can actually enter the control room of meta-awareness at will if you want to. Would you like an example? What is your mind doing at this very moment? Are you simply reading or listening to this book while thinking about meta-awareness, or are there other thoughts or feelings vying for your attention within? What is going on in your mind? What