We all have huge amounts of stuff running through our heads all the time. If we are not thinking about what just happened then we are thinking about what we are going to do.  Our brains are constantly jabbering away about one thing or another and try as we might, there seems to be no way to stop this incessant noise.

Internal dialogue as it is commonly called, can bring all sorts of grief, and is the little evil voice that seems to bring us nothing but misery. What all meditative practices are really out to accomplish is to bring this nonstop dialogue under control.

The reason is that it is this dialogue that creates the boundaries that shape your reality and your world. This internal dialogue keeps you focused on the dumb things when you are unhappy and screams in your ear that you can’t do something, that people hate you, that you are an idiot or whatever. Sometimes of course this voice goes on about how great you are and tells you that you are doing great and things are only getting better. Unfortunately it seems that for most of us, that dialogue of ours is usually quite negative and for the most part it’s more of a hindrance than any kind of help.

Some types of meditative practices and new age exercises focus on trying to wrangle this internal dialogue so that you can become ‘more positive’. Really the whole positive movement is the act of trying to turn this voice into your ally so that you can reap the benefits of a supportive internal talk. But more often than not, the little voice goes back to the doom and gloom and no amount of will power can win out over our little talkative devil.

A better approach to this problem and one that will help you far more in the long run, is to just stop the internal dialogue for a while. You can’t walk around without thoughts in your head, unless you are Paris Hilton of course, or else you are going to get into deep trouble. But what you can do is to stop your internal dialogue for a while so that you give yourself a rest from yourself and all of the worries and anxieties that the little voice brings your way.

The best way to do this is to just stop talking and start listening. Just listen; don’t try any mysterious posture or mantra, no need to learn the 56 ways of yogic breathing. All you need to do is to listen to all of the things around you. Engage your hearing and begin to pay attention to all of the sounds around you.

The act of listening is very special because for some odd reason it can stop the internal dialogue that you are engaged in right now. As you listen to all of the things in your environment, you will notice that the voices in your head have stopped, and the more that you can focus on what you hear, the easier it will be for you to let go of the incessant part of yourself that insist on thinking and talking about everything.

If you happen to catch your little voice going on about something, it just means that you lost the focus on paying attention to listening; all you have to do is to once again begin to pay attention to all of the noises around you. Of course if you are able to get back to nature, this exercise becomes pretty easy because there are so many beautiful sounds to pay attention to when you get out there.

But even if you find yourself in a crowded city, make it a point to stop and to listen to the world around you for at least fifteen minutes every day. The longer that you can go on just listening and nothing else, the easier it will be to let go to your internal dialogue.  And in very short order you will find that the relief from your internal talk will remove a lot of the misery and crap that is going on in your life right now.

The world without thought, which you can attain trough listening meditation, opens up a number of wonderful benefits and possibilities. Perhaps in future articles we can discuss some of these.

We have all experienced traumatic events. These events are a natural part of life on earth. I suppose you could say that the act of walking presupposes that you will fall down every once in a while.

Some of us though, perhaps not as lucky as others, have encounter personal trauma that has left incredibly deep scars. These traumatic events, whether they are a personal loss or abuse for example, can leave scars so deep that it becomes almost impossible to carry on with our lives in the same way again.

People that are plagued by traumatic events in their past, can find that the smallest thing might bring about a full memory recall of this past hurt. Like a taped video in their minds, any number of things can cause the brain to hit play on this old recording and the victim is forced to live through his old trauma again and again, all in full spectrum color and surround sound.

What is most debilitating is that these personal events or trauma can stop a person from doing normal things; perhaps you were walking down the street at night after a party and for no apparent reason, a man attacked you. From that moment on, you find that you can’t be alone much less go for a walk at night. A person suffering from such trauma would find that they have lost all their freedom and no longer trust others in any way.

What a person in this situation needs to do is to learn as much as possible from this past event and then learn somehow to move past this disability so that he/she can once again begin to live a normal life.  Much easier said than done of course but I hope that the following helps:

•    Anything that has happened to you or will happen to you is not your fault and even if it was directly your fault, then it was a mistake and we  all make mistakes.
•    No one is perfect, we all fall down.
•    There are no guaranties and what happened once might happen again but we can learn from those things in our past so that if similar things arise, we are prepared and forewarned.

To begin to understand those traumatic events that have happened to you, you need to be able to see the experience that caused your trauma in the most objective way possible. This of course can be incredibly difficult since the real power of these old traumatic memories is the intensity, fear, and pain that they provoke.
But we must understand the cause of our failures or else we are doomed to repeat these failures for the rest of our lives;
Begin by sitting or lying down in a nice quiet room where you are sure that you won’t be disturbed for a while. Close your eyes and imagine in your mind’s eye that you are seated on a nice comfortable couch in a nice living room. This place does not have to be a real place of any kind; just make it a nice cozy living room in your mind. In front of you, as you are seated in this incredibly soft couch, there is a large television and in your hand you hold the remote control to this television.

This television can broadcast anything that you want it to, but what you are going to have it project, is the old traumatic event from your past. So get comfortable and take a deep breath and when you are ready, hit the power button on the remote. The tv will instantly start broadcasting the event that you must relive. But realize that this event is happening only in this tv, you are completely detached from it and your are holding the remote so that at anytime that you choose, you can either turn off the tv, fast forward or hit pause so that the event stops instantly.

You are not in the event but you are watching yourself partaking in this event. It’s just as if someone had secretly recorded this event on a video camera and you are now watching this video.

If you think that this event, even on a television screen, which is totally detached from you becomes too much, I want you to take a real close look at the remote; on it there is a button that has the letters BW on it. If you press this button, you will notice that the movie that you are watching instantly turns into a black and white show.
Not only are you watching a detached you perform on the screen, this movie is now black and white. So in this way, continue to watch and objectively see all that happened to you. Look at the actors on the tv and try and see what it was that led them all to this event. What happened to the protagonist of the show(namely you)? what led this protagonist to this place?

Could he/she have avoided what is happening? Is there a mistake that he/she made? How could the protagonist avoid this from happening in the future? If there was nothing that the protagonist could have done to avoid his/her fate, is there a way that he/she can help others so that it never happens to those that he/she cares most for?

Keep watching the video. Hit repeat and watch it again and see if it has the same intense effect on you? If it does, then turn down the volume on the show so that you can barely hear it. If that helps but not enough, I want you to look at the remote in your hands again so that you become aware of another button on it that you had not noticed before. This button has the letter B on it. If you hit this button, you will notice that the television in front of you will actually start to move backwards. The wall behind it will actually open up and the tv will begin to move away from you so that it becomes harder and harder to see it as it gets further and further away.

If you keep hitting the B button, the television will actually go so far back that it will actually disappear from sight.

When you are done with this, open your eyes and return to your real world. Hopefully you will have learnt many things about yourself and hopefully you will be armed with ways in which you can help yourself and others so that what happened to you will never have to happen again.

If you find that you are still feeling all of the trauma and pain just like before, redo the above exercise. Return to the living room in your mind and use your remote control  to remove the color, the sound and finally to move the tv back and away from you until it disappears from your site.

The more that you do this, the more that you will find that painful past events will lose their hold and power over you.  I hope that this will help you to end any trauma that you might have, forever.

Have noticed that the world seems to be getting freakier; The American Presidential race is incredibly odd this time around. You have one candidate that is doing everything to emulate the great JFK himself and he even seems to be making his wife dress like Jackie. He has a name that is derived from a word that means blessing in many languages but, to those in the know, it means a man in black who would beguile you with his tongue (just before he takes you straight to hell by the way). While the other candidate is an ex-POW that might have left a part of himself in the jungles of Vietnam.Spooky.

The mighty CERN has powered up and we have particles smashing into each other with a power and potency that rivals the supposed Big Bang. Many a scientist in that project has received death threats and most people fear that CERN will do too good a job, and turn our planet into the Big Bang.

Well, fear of CERN might be a bit presumptuous but people have a right to wonder and doubt. I have one word about that; Tunguska.

The stock markets have just gone belly up for the umpteenth time this year and the American government has announced that it will bail out a number of lending institutions in an effort to save its, and the world’s economy.Americans have been borrowing money on bad credit for decades now and the shoe finally dropped. Whether you should blame those late night, “ no money down”, commercials or George Bush’s lack of an exit strategy in Iraq is any ones guess. One thing is for sure, somebody has to penny up and take responsibility for the lack of forward thinking and its not going to be the bankers.

Terrence Mckenna proposed, using his model of the I-ching, that the world after 2008 would get very weird indeed, and a number of authors and visionaries have postulated a possible quantum shift in the beginning of this century. The Mayan calendar as we all know ends this 2012 and probabilities as we approach this date seem to be increasing. Probabilities are possibilities and new things are very scary indeed.

To think that evolution has stopped is silly and a child’s dream and to think that when the rapture comes, you will be one of those that will be saved is just as silly. Things are getting weird. The world is freaking me out and I don’t think that I am alone. Or I am just caught in a belief system and a reality structure that makes me think that. Most likely everything is just B.S. You decide.

I do propose one thing though; maybe we should all look within ourselves a little more. Maybe we should look inward as much as we look out at this crazy world.

This site is our version of the great door in. Enjoy and ride and in the famous words of Dorothy and her cool canine pal,” Toto, I don’t think that we are in Kansas anymore.”

The world is changing very rapidly. We are being bombarded by new bits of information everyday, at a rate that would have driven our ancestors insane. TIME has just made YOU, that’s you and me and everybody else, person of the year. YouTube has created a universe that we might not have pondered just a few short years ago, and who knows what is on the horizon in the years to come.

Information, information everywhere! Introspection, self absorption, personal development, self motivation, personal growth, and internal development. The World Wide Web has opened our eyes to things that would make a demon’s toes curl. You can watch Saddam being murdered or you can watch the miracle of a new birth. You could buy a book on anything that you might wish to know about…That’s anything! What a miracle, or are we doomed because we live in such interesting times?

As any decent Taoist would tell you, all things are made of positive and negative furies. There is a positive and negative to all of this information overload; the positive is that we live in a time where many of the mysteries of our universe are being revealed to us, a time when we have more potential then we have ever had before. The negative is that we have too much information, and a big majority of it is BS, or worse yet, partially BS.

This Site will help you with what we see as some of the most negative aspects of our information age. Firstly it is a central bank of varied and helpful information. Here you will find information on all aspects of self development, information on self gratification, and information that will allow you to appreciate the vastness and the mystery of the world at large.

Secondly it is a BS free Zone. Now, all things are relative and what might be truth to a Christian might be BS to an atheist. But there is a big difference between Belief System and BullShit, I hope that this Site will also help you see the difference in that.

Look, enjoy, mark as favorite. It will take time to go through all of the information contained here. Just think of this site as a refuge and a coach

In an earlier article I introduced you to a method that would show you How to Beat Insomnia. This article introduces you to the method of keeping completely still in order to willfully put yourself to sleep.

This article will focus on the same technique but the outcome this time will be slightly different. I am going to teach you a very simple method that you can use to attain deep meditative levels. Essentially it is a method that you can use to get almost asleep and in this way be able to attain a greater understanding of your psyche and your subjective reality.

This meditative technique is incredibly simple and if it is done with diligence, it can open up incredible new vistas for you. These vistas that I speak of are inner ones; I hope that through this method you will begin to realize the depth of your inner reality, a reality that exists all the time even while you are wide awake.

This is such a simple way of meditating that there is no reason why you can’t put it into practice right now. It will require only one thing : Will Power. But even this is the simplest of things. It is so simple and so natural as a matter of fact that that you could actually say that it’s not really doing anything at all.

To begin, I want you to take a very comfortable sitting position. You must be seated to do this meditation because there is a natural tendency to want to fall asleep and this is not the goal that you are after now.

Therefore take a seat perhaps in a very comfortable chair or you can sit cross legged as you prefer. I personally recommend reading the article on how to sit properly. The reason is that as I said there will be a natural tendency to start falling asleep so you will want to sit in a way that will allow you to sit for a long time with minimal or no physical effort at all. You will see what I mean when you start to nod off or when your back start to bow and you lose your posture.

Once you have a good seat and you are confident that you can stay seated like this for a long time, I want you to completely stop moving. This is the basic core of this meditative technique; you need to sit for fifteen minutes to half an hour without moving in the slightest.

You must keep your physical body completely immobile. If you get an itch, you can’t scratch it. If parts of you start to fall asleep from lack of blood or discomfort, you can’t move them. Your body must become a statue just not a tense rigid one. This is why I advised you to find a very comfortable sitting posture; a posture that you don’t have to hold but a posture that is quite comfortable that requires little or no effort from you at all.
If you can stay completely immobile for fifteen minutes to half an hour, you will have helped yourself immensely because this exercise takes will power. To train your will is one of the greatest, if not the greatest things that you can do for yourself. It might actually be good for you to get an itch just so that you can see if you have the will power to go for the allotted amount of time without scratching it.

Try to increase the amount of time that you can go without moving. As I said, you can begin with fifteen minutes but see if you can increase this to half an hour, then forty five minutes and so on.

But we are not done…
What is your mind supposed to be doing all this time you might ask?

Well let your mind do whatever it wants. Do not try to do anything. Do not focus on anything. Do not focus on the here and now, do not focus on your breathing or any imagine. Do not focus. Let your mind do whatever it wants and think about whatever comes to mind.

The only thing that you have to do, is to BE AWARE of whatever it is that you are thinking about. Whether it is good or bad, whether it is pleasurable or painful; pay attention to what you are thinking about. Let your thoughts flow on their own and watch them as they interconnect and link together. Perhaps ponder what they might mean or follow a line of thought and see if you can use this time to solve some problems but DO NOT MOVE.

Eventually you might notice that you moved. You might suddenly and involuntarily jerk in place from the surprise, but once you regain your external senses, you will realize that you had not moved at all and what you thought was physical movement, was actually internal. That is you moved subjectively in a daydream but your body was perfectly still (unless your jerked in place before in surprise). If you begin to explore these feelings of subjective movement, you might begin to understand how your consciousness can move without moving. Experiment with this.

Because your body is so completely still, you will be able to focus all of your attention on your thoughts and your subjective experience. Your subjective reality is the window to your psyche and by exploring and understanding the thoughts, ideas and emotions that fill your head; you will begin to understand yourself.

The exploration of your inner environment is actually the exploration of your outer one. Perhaps it is better to say that your outer environment is colored by the makeup of your inner reality. In order to understand who you are and where you find yourself, you will need to focus on what you are inside.

Practice, practice, practice; doing this bit of nothing and I guarantee you that you will find a world that you never thought existed through the power of Inner Space Meditation.

Is it me or do there seem to be more disasters lately? I am sure that if some research was done on the subject, it would be the case that disasters, hurricanes and volcano eruptions are no more prevalent today than at any other time. But to set my mind at ease, I submit to you the following article.

Water is the lifeblood of all that we do. We run our bodies with it and we also run our machinery with it. The average person can live only about three days without water.

Since one should always be prepared for the unexpected, I want to give you some basic knowledge on finding water in a survival situation and how to treat the water that you do find.

The most important thing to remember about water is that it follows a certain pattern of movement that can be studied and predicted. You can use this knowledge in a survival situation to help yourself survive.

The different processes are as follows:

•    Precipitation is condensed water vapor that falls to the Earth’s surface. Most precipitation occurs as rain, but also includes snow, hail, fog drip, graupel, and sleet. Approximately 505,000 km³ of water fall as precipitation each year, 398,000 km³ of it over the oceans.
•    Canopy interception is the precipitation that is intercepted by plant foliage and eventually evaporates back to the atmosphere rather than falling to the ground.
•    Snowmelt refers to the runoff produced by melting snow.
•    Runoff includes the variety of ways by which water moves across the land. This includes both surface runoff and channel runoff. As it flows, the water may infiltrate into the ground, evaporate into the air, become stored in lakes or reservoirs, or be extracted for agricultural or other human uses.
•    Infiltration is the flow of water from the ground surface into the ground. Once infiltrated, the water becomes soil moisture or groundwater.
•    Subsurface Flow is the flow of water underground, in the vadose zone and aquifers. Subsurface water may return to the surface (eg. as a spring or by being pumped) or eventually seep into the oceans. Water returns to the land surface at lower elevation than where it infiltrated, under the force of gravity or gravity induced pressures. Groundwater tends to move slowly, and is replenished slowly, so it can remain in aquifers for thousands of years.
•    Evaporation is the transformation of water from liquid to gas phases as it moves from the ground or bodies of water into the overlying atmosphere. The source of energy for evaporation is primarily solar radiation. Evaporation often implicitly includes transpiration from plants, though together they are specifically referred to as evapotranspiration. Total annual evapotranspiration amounts to approximately 505,000 km³ of water, 434,000 km³ of which evaporates from the oceans.
•    Sublimation is the state change directly from solid water (snow or ice) to water vapor.
•    Advection is the movement of water — in solid, liquid, or vapour states — through the atmosphere. Without advection, water that evaporated over the oceans could not precipitate over land.
•    Condensation is the transformation of water vapour to liquid water droplets in the air, producing clouds and fog.

(This information was gathered from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Please use this link if you wish to read more on the subject https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cycle)

Using the above information, you can begin to imagine the natural flow of water as it makes its natural cycle. Runoff is very important for the average disaster survivalist and through mental contemplation you can foresee and guestimate where major water currents will go(if you find yourself in a flood) and where water has gone in the past so that you might be able to find small creeks, and pools to satisfy your thirst.

Remember that water always seeks the lowest point. See the lay of the land before you and try to imagine where water has gone after a rain. Since water needs the sun (heat) for evaporation, look around you to see where pools of water might still exist even weeks after a rain. Sheltered embankments, wooded areas or rock formations can hold water for days or weeks.

You must assume that any water that you find in a survival situation will be highly contaminated with pollutants. We will cover water cleaning and preparation shortly.

Condensation can be a great friend to the survivalist looking for water. Condensation occurs when water vapor is cooled and transforms from vapor to water. That is the reason why you will see all those water droplets around a cold container; the hot water vapors come in contact with the cold container and as they cool, they are changed into liquid all around your cold container.

Using this principle, a survivalist can collect large quantities of fresh and clean water. To do this, you must wake up very early in the morning and using a small rag, begin to collect the dew that is created from the morning mist.

You have to use a small rag to wipe down the surface of things where the dew has collected. By wiping your CLEAN rag over all of the cold surfaces that you can find, you will be able to collect enough water to get you through the day.

You can either squeeze the wet rag over your mouth so that you can instantly drink the collected water or you can squeeze your rag into a container and save the water for later use. With patience and some hard work, you will be surprised at how much water you can collect.

DO NOT collect water in this way from any surfaces that are questionable. There could be pollutants on the surface of things so please be careful how and where you do this. Grass and any kind of plant life are your best bet for collecting water this way.

This method works best by the sea or in a wooded environment. A large city will usually have very little of this morning condensation because the concrete absorbs most of the moisture in the area.

The best defense in an emergency is to have a fresh supply of stored water. Try to have a minimum of three days worth of fresh water but if you can help it, make it a week. Most people need at least a quart of water a day so plan for a quart for each member of the household.

If you do not have enough water in your house, and the city has cut the water supply, there is still some water trapped in the pipes of your house. In order to get to this water, close off the main shut off valve in the house (usually located in the basement). This traps the water in your pipes so that it doesn’t drain out. It is important therefore to shut this valve off as soon as you suspect that the water from the city has stopped.

Once this valve has been turned off, go to the top floor of the house and open all of the taps; both cold and hot. Drain any water that you get into a good container. Work your way down all the way to basement. In the basement drain the water taps that feed the washer. Finally drain out the water that is in the water heater.

Be careful though, as I said before, do not assume that any water in a survival situation is clean. Even the water that you collected in your home can be contaminated so treat everything before you ingest.

TREATING WATER

The best way to treat questionable water is to filter it through a commercial water filter. Camping stores carry many different brands and models so it is a very easy thing to make an investment and purchase this life saving device.

Try to get a heavy duty model that will meet all of the requirements of your household. Don’t skimp on cost.

If you do not have a water filter then begin any water treatment by filtering any murky or dirty water through a handmade filter. The best thing to use in a pinch is a clean cloth.

After your water is as clean as you can get it by filtering with the cloth, you will want to boil it. Water must be boiled for at least twenty minutes to kill all possible bacteria, anything less is risking sickness.

You can also use distillation to clean water. In order to do this, you need to bring water to a boil and then collect the water vapor that you are creating. Finally this water vapor is cooled, once again returning water to liquid form.

One of the best ways to do this is to use a water kettle. The kettle will bring the water inside to a boil and will send all of the water vapor out of the spout. In order to condense the vapor back into liquid from, attach a long copper pipe to the end of the kettle spout.

You can get copper piping by taking apart some of the water piping in your basement. To attach the pipe to the end of the water kettle spout, use cloth and make sure that it is wrapped very tightly around the connection point so that you have a water tight seal.

I recommend using anywhere from one to three feet of copper tubing. It’s better to start with a longer tube and then shorten it if you have to. Make sure to bend the tube slightly so that the water vapor has time to cool off before it exits the tube.

Also make sure to place a container at the end of the copper tube so that you can collect all of the water that you have distilled.

Knowledge is power. I hope that this will help you to always find good water; Stay safe.

(resources; Wikipedia & “Tom Brown’s Field Guide to City and Suburban Survival” by Tom Brown, published 1984)

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. “
— Frank Herbert, Dune

I like that quote. I like it because it is very true, fear is the little death;  it obliterates your mind and your common sense. Fear, if unchecked can destroy any good effort that you might achieve. Everyone gets nervous, anxious, and fearful. But if you let these emotions overpower you, YOU are lost…literally.

Let us take for example one of the biggest fears that people have; the fear of Flying. This fear is so powerful that many of us have had nightmares about it. According to the TIME magazine’s article What Are We Afraid Of?*  the fear of flying is our biggest present fear and it even outranks the dreaded fear of public speaking.
But how do we define fear? Dictionary.com defines fear as:

1.a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.

Simple enough to understand; you imagine or perceive danger and you become fearful of possible danger??
If you have an image of a snake eating itself, then you have a basic understanding of what most fear really is. What this means is that you correctly or incorrectly perceive or imagine danger. This is a healthy thing and it allows you to steer clear of things that might harm you or worse kill you. But if what you have perceived or imagined is wrong, then you are really fearful of self created illusions which build on themselves until the snake eats itself out of existence.

The fear of flying is like this; you perceive danger but in reality flying is far safer than driving. It is actually one of the safest forms of transportation that we can use. The average airline pilot has a decade of flying under his belt, he is using top of the line equipment that has to meet rigorous testing and your entire flying experience is coordinated by hundreds of trained professionals. Compare this to the average highway trip and you begin to get the basic idea.

But, what about if you perceive danger and there is danger. Let’s take a closer look at the fear of public speaking. What about if you have to give a speech in front of a large audience and your future depends on you doing a good job?

Then you have a righteous fear. You perceive an obstacle that can make you or break you. You have to stay aware and focused because if you screw it up, you are done. Certainly then fear is good , it keeps you focused?…Well yes it will make you very present orientated which is good, your sharp; but unless you have a great deal of mastery over yourself, fear will come on you like an avalanche and suffocate the life right out of you.

Fear does not have a dial. Its fight or flight, all go. Standing on a tarmac or on a podium, you have nothing to hit and nothing that you can run from.
So what do you do?

Well I hope that the following technique can help with this. It is very good and tried and tested, an old bald guy with a big moustache taught it to me. I like to call this technique ‘The Third Person’.

The best way to understand this technique is to think of the points of view that a story can be written in. A story can be written in the first, second or third person. If you write something in the first person, then you are writing about it from your personal point of view. Everything is me , myself and I. For example you can say, “ As I stepped on the stage, I saw the audience and I felt a nervous spasm pass over me.  I was instantly scared out of my wits!”

Writing from the second  person point of view involves talking directly to your audience. The writer will use a lot of ‘you’ language. For example, “You have to give this speech. It’s in your better interest so don’t screw it up!”
Lastly we have the Third Person point of view. Writers use more DISTANT language. There will be a lot of “he”, “she”, “it”, and “they” used. In this case, the writer is looking down on a scene, he is writing a report of what he sees from a distant position, usually seemingly above the epic scene below. “ As William stepped on the stage, he looked at his audience in fear and discomfort. He fumbled with his notes and prepared himself for his first words.”

Imagine if you could automatically put yourself into a Third Person perspective. What if you could get away from yourself, your fear, and from any terribly frightening situation in general? You could look down on yourself, separated from your emotions, seeing everything, and most importantly seeing everything with a clear vision that is not distorted by fear or anxiety. What you need to do to control your fear then is to start seeing everything in the ‘Third Person’.

To do this, imagine that you are having an out of body experience. Imagine that your consciousness flies up through the top of your head and in one instant you find yourself looking down at your body and the entire scene below.
From this position you can see everything that is going on around you and you can keep a special eye on your body below. Funny as it might seem, you can even control your body, sort of like a puppet master. Very cool.

HOW TO MASTER THE ‘THIRD PERSON’ PERSPECTIVE

I want you to practice the following exercise at home on your own until you feel very comfortable with the Third Person perspective. It will allow you to get into the third person very quickly, and through this technique, you will find that you will be able to conquer just about any fear. Actually as long as you have perfect concentration, there is no fear that cannot be conquered by this method.  The goal is to be able to put yourself instantly into this new perspective, at the drop of a hat, when you need it most.

To begin the exercise I want you to take a comfortable seat in a quiet area. This designated area can be inside or outside but it has to be in a quiet place away from others. After you have sat down in your quiet area, I want you to imagine, with your eyes open, that you are somewhere else in the room. For example; if you are sitting on the bed in your room, I want you to imagine that you are standing next to the far wall on the other side of the room.
I want you to imaginatively look at the world around you from this new perspective. If you are imaginatively standing by a wall, then I want you to imagine what the wall from your new perspective looks like. Perhaps you are right next to the wall in your new imaginative location, do imagine that you can actually see the wall really close up.

You can touch the wall from your new location, since you are imaginatively standing right next to it. So touch the wall with your imagination with your imaginary hands and imagine how the wall feels. Feel the wall therefore with your second imaginary hand. Is the wall cold and smooth perhaps? Imagine what things feel like to your second self.
Do this with all your senses so that there is a real you that is perceiving one thing and a pretend you that is standing a few feet away perceiving things from a slightly different angle.  You are creating a double for yourself. An imaginative double that can be anywhere you want him to be and can do anything that you want him to do.

This exercise will take time and good visualization skills but its fun and most people get good at it very fast. Keep your double close at the beginning of the exercises, no more than a dozen or so feet from you. The trick of the exercise is to try and imagine with each sensory organ what it would be like to be in the doubles position. See, hear, feel, smell, and taste through your double.

If the exercise seems to be too hard, close your eyes. Open them from time to time to get reference points so that you can picture yourself and your environment correctly but after you have taken a mental picture of your room, close your eyes and imagine yourself by the wall again.

Practice this exercise until you can keep your eyes open and still have two very different perspectives of your room. One is your actual physical perception and the other is the imagined perception from your double.
After you have become really good at seeing the things around you from your doubles perspective, I want you to look at yourself and see yourself as your double would see you. Weird stuff right! You are looking at yourself looking at yourself! Imagine again what it would be like to see yourself sitting on your bed from your doubles position. Practice looking at yourself from the new perspective until it becomes easy and second nature.
When you have a good grasp of the exercise above and are confident with your skill, I want you to go outside and imagine that your double is flying above in the air looking down on you. The double is not too high up, it’s about three to six feet above your head and a bit to the right.

Imagine once again what the world looks like to your double. Imagine what the world looks like through your doubles eyes, what and how does it see. What does the world feel like from your doubles position, what does your double hear and smell from up there. You certainly have a better visual perspective from your double’s point of view. Use this new visual perspective to your advantage, look at everything. Get a lay of the land.

When you are good at this newest variation of the exercise and are comfortable with your new imaginative doubles position, I want you to go for a short walk. Just a nice short walk around the block, but I want you to imaginatively see, feel, hear smell and possibly taste everything ONLY from your doubles point of view!
Try really hard to only keep the doubles point of view. This is a pretty hard exercise at first but with a bit of practice, you will be amazed at how good you can get at it. Practice this until you are good and can extend the length of your walk as much as you want without losing focus.

So let us tackle fear number one; You are about to get on a plane and you have cold sweats and there is a big possibility that you might lose your lunch.

Instantly get into Third Perspective. Hopefully you have practiced and are very good at imagining that a second you is flying three to six feet above your head and is looking down on you. Go to your double now. Imagine that you are up above looking down on your scared self.

Look through your doubles eyes, FEEL through your double. Look at all of the things around you through your double’s senses. Put most of your conscious self in your doubles place.

As you do this, and if you do this with enough concentration, you will notice that you will feel distant and detached from the scared person below. By changing your point of concentration, you will instantly change how you feel. By changing your point of view, you will see other angles and this will give you alternatives if you need them.

The you up above, your Double, is objective and detached. Maintain your focus on the perceptions of your double and forget about the feelings of the person below. You are an objective viewer of the happenings below. You are the puppet master controlling the avatar below+.

The idea here is to see your physical self like just one of many players on a play below. You are up above and you are watching the actors below. You can make the one main actor, your avatar, do anything you like, you have direct control over him/her. But during the duration of this trip and until you feel comfortable again, the real you, your conscious being is going to be seeing the world from the doubles perspective up above.
If it’s a long trip, then at anytime you can return to First Person position and see how you feel. If you feel panicky once you get back to first person, then go right back up to your double’s position. If you fall asleep, when you wake up you will most likely wake up in First Position and you can wake up a bit panicky again. If this is the case, instantly take a deep breath and go to Third position. Don’t worry, it’s that easy to quickly leave your First self and begin to see the world again from the Third perspective.

How about giving a speech in front of people? Well again you want to go into the ‘Third Person ‘ position.  You have hopefully rehearsed your speech so that you won’t have to look at notes too much but if you do; you will find switching perspectives is very easy. You can read something from your physical perspective for example but you can instantly return to the doubles perspective up above.

Remember how I told you to think of the person below as just another actor in a play or show, well using this premise, let you actor/avatar/physical self act below. This is an easy task with a bit of practice, and you will not believe the results that you will get.

If the avatar needs to wave at the audience then have him/her wave. See the avatar waving from your position up above. Have the avatar smile and make eye contact with the audience. Forgot a line of your speech? Then have the avatar look at his notes, see through his eyes and then return to your higher position and continue with the speech.

When the tension is over and you find yourself in a quieter place again, then go back to First person. You should be able to switch positions now at a moment’s notice.

With this method; properly mastered and extensively practiced, there is no fear that you won’t be able to overcome. I hope you well.

*Thursday, Mar. 29, 2007 By BILL TANCER

+Those of you that are video game players and gamers in interactive worlds like ‘Second Life’ will have a great time with this exercise.

We tend to hear a lot of terrible things about the ego. How the ego destroys your life by burying you selfish emotions and acts. I have written a few articles myself on how the placation of the ego can be a most draining and self defeating idea.

But I think that there can be a great mistake made if you pursue this to extremes. The problem comes when we get lost in semantics and when slight variations in language obscure the greater reality. This happens when as Alfred Korzybski said, we “confuse the map with the territory”.

Tomato and tomatoe might sound different yet be the same thing , while ego for the sake of self centered self importance might be one thing while ego for the sake of personal power, might be something all together poles apart.

The inability to write down in a coherent way, what you know and what you have experienced is a topic that has kept philosophical debates alive and well for centuries, and this subject matter is much to deep to pursue right now, it is also not the matter of this present article.

I want to discuss something that seems altogether simpler yet if understood in its profundity, if grasped beyond the map level to the point where you can make it your own at a personal level, it can change the way you function and can turn your efforts into truly grand endeavors.

The ego is a black sheep in the modern psychological cosmology.  The infusion of Eastern and specifically Buddhist thought, have put a black cloud over the ego and its selfish ways. Me culture is bad culture and we are reminded everyday about how terrible it is by watching the latest Hollywood star giving the bird to the cameras as they snort coke and mistreat everyone around them.
Sadly the poor ‘self’ sufferers from a case of simplification and before you know it; everybody wants to eradicate something that is literally holding them together. An explanation of the power of the ego is perhaps in order so that all the righteous ego killers can be somewhat appeased.

The ego as we understand it is the one thing that holds the being that you call (I) together.  Your ego is you. Within your psyche, you find an infinitude of individual thoughts, beliefs, ideas and selves that fight for dominance over your present being.  I am legion, means that you are made of a multitude of selves that are constantly asserting themselves for dominance over your individual being.
The Ego is the one cohesive factor that holds them all in place, and a healthy Ego maintains a living network of realities that coalesce into what you call ‘you’.  I am at times practical, while at other times I can be quite clever or subtle or loud or strong, etc. At each one of these moments, I assert a differ part of myself, a different part of the legion of me’s the exists within my psyche.
If my Ego is strong and healthy, then my selves are never over dominant, to anyone degree or another. I am balanced knowing that right now I might feel timid and afraid but that this is not the totality of myself; but just another facet that will most likely be replaced shortly by an equally powerful and dominating me.
Therefore thank your Ego for it is the lord of the manor and the holder of the keys to the castle. A person that has a weak Ego, or an Ego that has been damaged in some way by a traumatic experience, would show any one of the many symptoms that you see in an insane asylum.

But beyond this we must realize that a strong sense of ME identity is a very good thing. In order to face the world in a powerful way, you need to have a strong self presence. You need to believe in yourself, in your abilities and in your destiny.
I am that I am.

Certainly I will fall but I will get up to fight again because I am strong and I will prevail. I was meant to be happy, and wealthy, and I am here to see and feel all of the joys of this world. I am that which loves and I am that which hates.

It is the weak Ego that falls for the seven deadly sins. It finds that it cannot contain its desire to eat and eat, or rage and hate, or…pick your poison.

In order to be strong, the Ego must be made stronger. The old masters forever tell their pupils to let go of the self and attain perfection; this is a case of semantic error. The master does not mean eradicate yourself, what he is trying to say is that you must develop a more educated Ego. An Ego that can encompass the idea that there are times when it has to let go of the reigns ever so slightly so that ‘I’ can accomplish that which ‘I’ could not accomplish before.

I was scared and that scared self KNEW that it could not jump over that chasm but I let go of all those things in me that held me back until something inside me made me jump, and when I awoke, I was standing on the other side. Afterwards I knew that I was the one that was holding me back, but now I have become more than I was, and I now understand that I can be the scared person that will not dare and the person that can transcend that person who could not.

So the Ego was not terminated, and it is not the lack of Ego that will set you free. What will allow you to do the impossible is the ability to let your Ego grow in complexity and strength. To do this you will have to learn to stop your current self or selves from asserting their dominant beliefs upon you, ever trustful that your strong Ego will hold together the totality of your being. And when you act and are successful, a new self will be born that will understand that what it thought was impossible was just a limiting thought held by a different self, and at a different time. A self that is not the totality of your being but just one of the many aspects of your being, a wonderful being, with a strong and flexible Ego as its front line general.

So begin your journey towards a better you by loving yourself. Tell yourself that you are great and that you will do great things. That all the pleasures of the world belong to you and whatever hardship might come, you will overcome.

Realize that you are more than what you believe that you are. That even if you fell into the chasm of everlasting darkness, You will survive for you are never ending.

I am myself but I can also imaginatively be that tree over there. I will not stop being myself, for I cannot be destroyed, so I will learn to allow myself to be the tree completely, and the person that imagines that he is the tree completely. And in this way my Ego grows so that while just before I was just me, I can now be; me, the tree, and myself being me and the tree together.
I am that I am.