"What You Pay Attention To Creates Your Life III

By Bill Harris November 24th, 2007 
Source Dream Manifesto

"Mastering your Internal Map of Reality This may all seem incredibly complex, and in a sense, it is. (In fact, we’ve just scratched the surface of your Internal Map of Reality, looking at just a few aspects of it.) You are fluent in your native language, however, and even the simplest language is complex. Mastering your Internal Map of Reality is like anything else - you start where you are, you practice, and you make progress.

Since this process is one of discovering yourself, and how you create your experience of life, it’s a fascinating undertaking, with profoundly positive rewards. Mastering your Internal Map of Reality is much the same process a jazz musician uses to learn to improvise. The musician practices chords, scales, and other pieces of musical vocabulary. He consciously thinks of these things and how to arrange them while he practices.

At some point, however, his ability to play no longer requires conscious thought. He relaxes his linear mind and turns his playing over to that part of his mind I mentioned a moment ago, a part that knows how to utilize the skills he has practiced. This other part of his mind can see all the possible choices for what to play in each next moment, evaluate them, choose the best one, and then play it - all in a fraction of a moment, and without conscious thought.

The musician must play this way. The music happens much too quickly to allow him to think his way through it with his linear mind. So, he plays with little or no linear thought, in the same way you talk to others without considering grammar, syntax, or even giving much thought to the content of what you say.

Okay, so you aren’t a jazz musician. But you probably do know how to drive a car.

When you first learned to drive you had to think your way through each move. “Time to stop. Where is the brake? When, exactly, do I step on it, and how hard - in order to stop at the right place and the right moment?” “Okay. Time to change lanes. I’ve got to look over my shoulder, judge how much room I need, decide how fast to go, and when to go, and then use the right amount of gas, breaking, and steering, all at the exact right time.”

It was a lot of work because you had to do it all with your conscious, linear mind. Now, though, you drive with little if any conscious thought. To be a little bit Zen about it, when you drive you’re one with the car. How did you get that way? By practicing, by driving until you developed the ability to evaluate all the possibilities in each moment, choose the right one, and then do it - all without consciously thinking about it. Just like the jazz musician, you began by being unconsciously incompetent (you didn’t know how, and you didn’t even know what you didn’t know).

Then, with a little bit of practice, you became consciously incompetent (you began to realize what you didn’t know, and what you needed to work on). Next, you became consciously competent (you could do it, but you had to think your way through it). Finally, you became unconsciously competent (you turned it over to a part of your unconscious mind that can evaluate an infinite number of variable, instantly, decide what to do, and then do it).

The ability to move through these various stages, by the way, is connected to the amount of neural real estate devoted to whatever it is you are learning. Once you have practiced enough, the part of your brain responsible for driving, or playing music - or consciously and intentionally operating your Internal Map of Reality - takes over and does its job.

So you can learn to take charge of your Internal Map of Reality. First, you learn the basics of how it works. Next, you notice how you’ve been using it and what results your way of using it has been creating. Then you play with each part and find out what it does, and notice all the other choices you haven’t been exercising. You play with those and find out what they do. Eventually, the same mechanism that allows you to drive a car while you eat, talk on the phone, change the radio station, put on your makeup, and talk to your passengers, will take over.

You’ll be just like the jazz musician who, after practicing for many years, effortlessly generates beautiful music. The fact that you may not know anyone with this kind of control over his or her mind shouldn’t keep you from believing that you can learn to do this.

It can be done (I’ve done it, and I have taught many others to do it). All that’s required is the desire to do so, and the persistence to practice. The process is fascinating, and the rewards are huge. What would you do if you really could be in charge of what you feel, how you behave, and what people and situations you attract into your life?

We each have a choice. We can continue to automatically create whatever our Internal Map of Reality has been pre-programmed to create, or we can develop the awareness, and the flexibility, to intentionally and fluidly change our Map of Reality, moment - by - moment, as needed, in order to create whatever we want.

You may not have realized, up to now, that this choice existed, but it’s a real choice. You can take the reins of your mind, and in mastering your mind, you can master your life."

http://www.dreammanifesto.com/part-3.html