Mind Magic

Kintsugi embodies the recognition that the nature of life results at times in us being broken, but it is the very nature of this brokenness and the repair that defines who we are. These scars define our humanity: every one of us is a frail, fragile human being who is struggling in some way and feels that no one else is struggling as they are. And y

At the core of wabi-sabi is the humble understanding and realization that we are ourselves incomplete, impermanent, and limited by being bound in time. That is the nature of our existence, and its denial further creates suffering. When we accept this reality, it allows us to move forward without fear.

With practice, we can learn to accept that the amygdala will accompany us on our journeys, doing its job of trying to protect and care for our physical survival, but we do not need to let it make our decisions for us. Specifically, we do not let it choose where we direct our attention.

Humans have a limited ability to process information; they cannot attend to every aspect of a situation. As we will see in greater detail later, the salience of a thought, idea, or intention determines which bits of information will most likely grab one’s attention and have the greatest influence on one’s perception of the world.

The more fear we bring to an event, the more we are telling the amygdala that the salience of the event is very high and very threatening; and the less fear we bring, the less we are going to activate the threat salience, leaving our attention free to be directed as we choose.

Once that importance was established, her subconscious was primed to bring such experiences about in reality in order to get another hit of the same good feelings. Through repetition, we can make the intention we are attending to salient to the exclusion of other inputs. By doing so, we create what is known as salience bias or cognitive ease, causi

When we start thinking of what we want to manifest, how to set our intention and where to direct our attention, it can help to cast our mind back to a moment in our lives when we knew in our heart and in our gut that we were on the right track. This will empower us to attune to our inner compass. Ask yourself: What are the things that give me a sen

They also identified major differences between a life full of pleasure and a life full of meaning.

The challenge of human life is that the vast majority of the habits that shape our lives are established before we are consciously aware of them. By the time we wake up to this fact, usually as the result of our lives not turning out as we would have liked, we discover we have been playing out conditioned patterns subconsciously, and these were the