CHAPTER 1
The Magic of 134
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
—WB Yeats
Our world is a magical place.
It's filled with sounds, sights, and experiences that have imbued us with everything from surprise to awe to horror—everything from a walk on the beach to the setting of the sun to that first kiss.
What makes it magical is, in fact, the variety of experience. It's the longing for the taste of the dessert; the feel of his or her hand in yours; the expectation of a great movie, book, or play. These experiences make up every passing moment of our lives.
Each experience can, however, be seen through multiple viewpoints, multiple truths. Take, for instance, the experience of tasting an avocado. One person will love it, another will dislike it, and a third will find no reason to taste it whatsoever. Is the avocado tasty or not? It all depends on your viewpoint. We'll cover much more on perceived viewpoint throughout this book.
Right now, what is important is to understand how much information you are consciously aware of and how much is passing you by without your even knowing.
It is hypothesised that the human brain is bombarded by approximately two million bits of information every second. One bit may be the colour of a tree, the shape of a car, the weather, the feel of the pen in your hand, and on and on. Take a moment to imagine what two million matchsticks may look like, and add another two million every second until you have accounted for one minute. How many matchsticks do you have? One hundred twenty million matchsticks. That's 120 million pieces of information your brain receives and must process.
This is why the number 134 is very important. It represents the total bits of information your brain is able to process every second of your life. Out of those two million matchsticks, your brain is consciously aware of only 134. The rest are discarded, and we'll see in a moment just how that is done.
What I want you to understand at this early stage is that most of what you touch, see, hear, feel, and taste is outside of your awareness. What you call life, what we all call our experience in this world, is really only a fraction of what is going on.
This gives rise to a simple question: what does this say about what is real?
As you read this book, you are probably unaware of the weight of the book, the texture and smell of the pages, the humidity and temperature in the air, and the smells and sounds around you. Have you noticed how many times your heart beats per minute or the tension in your back? Are you aware of how your clothes feel?
Your mind processes all this information every second and chooses what will remain in your conscious awareness. This is incredibly significant.
The mechanism by which this choice is made is the sum of your beliefs and values. Basically, if an experience is important to you (i.e., it is part of your belief system), your mind will keep it within your awareness. If it is not important to you, you will not be aware of the information contained within it.
It leads to the question "What is real?"
If reality is defined by what we experience, what does it mean when we are unaware of 99.9 per cent of the world around us? What does it say for our decision-making processes, how we treat our friends and family, the wars we fight, the love we make, and the stories we tell ourselves?
Simply put, reality is not real.
Reality, as you define it, is different from the way I define it. We may have similarities we accept, but our fundamental way of seeing the world is dependent upon the 134 pieces of information we choose.
When you see a sunrise, you may be in awe of the light, the colour, or the taste in the air. For me, the sunrise may represent the birth of another day of opportunity. I may notice the colour and the light but only in the way you notice a passing tree. What we deem as important is different.
What you need moment to moment changes, so your mind must follow specific steps to accommodate your focus. It will
1. delete any unnecessary information it does not need or is marked as unimportant, such as the number of red cars you saw today.
2. distort information you are filtering, to make it fit into categories of importance you have unconsciously established. For example, the number of times you heard "I love you" today may be distorted to include the number of times it was also written to you.
3. generalise all the information into one group, giving all things with similarities the same meaning. You have seen thousands of doors with different colours, shapes, locks, and handles, but they are all still doors.
These two million pieces of information are reduced to a mere 134 bits you have conscious awareness of, and as you focus upon them, your mind takes this as a directive for what to include in the next second and what to delete, distort, and generalise.
Take a moment to consider your awareness of all the information coming at you from all your senses. You have 1,999,866 bits of information from the world around you not being used in your everyday life. What might be different if you become more aware? What relationships might be saved, what work might be improved, what opus might be written, or what grand opera might be choreographed? Ultimately, we are all projecting our reality, our world based on 134 bits of information. This is our perception, and this is how we see the world.
Our beliefs and values are constantly shaping what enters our conscious awareness. We could say that all we see is a projection of all we believe and value. We tend to project onto the world the way we perceive it, and so it is. It is important to remember, though, that each of us is projecting our own version, our own little opera.
Our differences of opinion, our heated debates, all point to seeing and experiencing the world through a different point of reference. What we argue about is not the thing itself but our need to validate and "correct" our belief in it. If I accept and internalise your belief in something, it now becomes mine, and consequently I project it into my world. We know this in some deep recess of our consciousness, which is why we fight so hard to validate our view of the world.
Try this exercise to see for yourself. Look around your room or wherever you are and count the number of times you see the colour blue.
Go on. Do it now.
How many times did you see the colour blue? Now, without looking, how many times did you see the colour red? Once, twice—maybe three times. Maybe you did not see it at all.
Now look around and count the actual instances of red.
Did you see it more times? The answer is likely yes. Why is this important to us?
The world is a wondrous place where opportunity and inspiration abound. If you spend your days focussed on all the things you do not have, on all the things that are wrong, on the way someone hurt you or how you hurt yourself, on the bank, your lack of money, the way the children don't behave, or your work issues, you will never see the beauty that exists outside your self-imposed bubble of pain.
Focussing on these negatives is like focussing on the colour blue. This is what your mind will find for you. It will delete, distort, or generalise the good, the wondrous moments of happiness and joy, of love and kindness, of gratitude and peace. Asking your mind to focus and prove all the negatives in your life will not make them go away. But we also now know that what you experience is only a fraction of what is truly out there. To access the positive, all we need to do is train our minds to look for it—the blue rather than the red.
When we are feeling flat, unhappy, and confused with our place in the world, we often vent our frustrations upon ourselves. We say terribly destructive words that serve no purpose other than making us feel worse. We berate ourselves for not living a particular way, for not living up to a certain standard, for failing when we should have succeeded. It is important to realise that we are in control of this self-destructive self-talk, and if we are being honest, we would never speak this way to another person.
Yet we do it to the person who matters the most.
We let the body crumble and let our minds think the same destructive thoughts. Is it any wonder we experience pain?
It is time to stop!
Make a commitment today to start treating yourself as the most important person in the world. You are more important than your spouse or your children. Without a healthy and prosperous you, you would be unable to take care of the family.
Start with the simple recognition, an acceptance that you have taken you for granted, that you have treated you unfairly, that you have disrespected your body and your mind. Take ownership today for the truly amazing person you are. There is not another person like you on this planet, irrespective of your colour, size, shape, creed, or religion.
I have news for you. You are already perfect. You have just forgotten it because you have lived inside your bubble of pain for far too long. You did not come forth to just be an emblem of possibility or potential. You did not come forth to be bound to mediocrity. You did not come forth to eternally ask, "What if?"
What if I had a better job? What if I had more money? What if my parents were more loving? You came forward as a child of light. You have just forgotten. It is time to remember. Let us examine how your internal perception of yourself can play out in real life. To understand this, we must talk briefly about your unconscious mind.
Your unconscious mind sits below your level of conscious awareness. It is the processing powerhouse running your body. Every breath you take, every muscle movement, every action of every cell in your body is regulated and controlled by your unconscious mind. It is akin to an incredibly powerful and vast computer with a single directive.
To serve you.
It does this through what we call the prime directives of the unconscious mind. Some of the more important directives are
1. the prime directive to preserve the body;
2. the prime directive to store memories;
3. the prime directive to repress memories with unresolved negative emotions;
4. the prime directive to run the perfect blueprint of the body;
5. the prime directive of clear direction;
6. the prime directive for repetition until a habit is installed; and
7. the prime directive of not processing negatives.
Let us break them down individually so you have a clear understanding how this plays out in your experience.
The Prime Directive to Preserve the Body
Your unconscious mind's prime directive, the most important of all its functions, is to preserve the body. Consequently, it will do everything necessary to make this happen, including burying negative emotions that may damage the body. Unfortunately, your unconscious mind is not very good at prioritising. It has a blanket yes/no rule. Is something a threat? Get rid of it. Sometimes, the things we bury can cause us more damage than facing them in the here and now.
The Prime Directive to Store Memories
Your unconscious mind has recorded everything you have ever seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. You may like to picture a vast hall filled with filing cabinets, each one filled with memories and experiences. Your powerful unconscious mind has captured absolutely everything, from your very first touch to the doctor voices in the delivery room. One of these filing cabinets labelled "Deleted" holds everything your mind has deleted from your conscious recollection. It is still there though, faithfully filed away just in case you need to remember.
The Prime Directive to Repress Memories with Unresolved Negative Emotions
As noted in the first directive, one of the key functions of your unconscious mind is to repress emotions you are not ready to deal with. They will bubble to the surface later, usually as your unconscious mind checks to see if you are ready to handle them.
The Prime Directive to Run the Perfect Blueprint of the Body
Your unconscious mind holds the blueprint of your perfect body within its filing cabinets. It knows exactly what every cell needs to function at its optimum and what your body needs to heal from every sore throat, flu, and serious illness. Your unconscious mind has complete control over the functioning of your body, and once you learn to communicate with it, you will be able to influence your body by thought alone.
The Prime Directive of Clear Direction
Just like a child, your unconscious mind needs clear directions. It is desperate to serve you but is easily confused. If you ask your unconscious mind to help you sleep peacefully whilst you are playing violent video games, you are sending mixed messages. Likewise, if you ask it to focus on bringing you prosperity and you continually reinforce what you do not have, you are sending mixed messages. What is it you want your unconscious to focus on? Be direct, clear, and to the point.
The Prime Directive for Repetition until a Habit Is Installed
You have probably heard that a habit takes twenty-one days to form. This is especially true for your unconscious mind. It has been following your direction for years. In order to put the powerhouse of its ability to work, you must become diligent in sending the same positive instruction. Just like a habit, you must maintain this practice until it is your natural way of behaving.
The Prime Directive of Not Processing Negatives
I do not want you to think of a tree. Can you do it? It is actually impossible to start the process of not thinking of a tree. Your unconscious mind cannot process a negative instruction. In order not to think of a tree, you must first think of it and then decide not to think it anymore. This applies for all instructions. Have you ever wondered why a child told not to do something will often go ahead and do it? The answer is that your unconscious mind does not hear the "don't" or the "not." It hears only the instruction of what to do. This is very powerful and critically important in understanding how your self-talk can in fact manifest more of what you do not want. Here is an example: You do not want to think about how much your boss is annoying you. Yet in order not to think it, you have to think it and then decide not to. You are in the loop of positive and negative thinking. You must give clear and concise positive instructions to your unconscious mind.
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Your unconscious mind is incredibly powerful in shaping how your experience of the world will play out. Let us now discuss your reticular activating system (RAS) and see how the two come together. Your RAS is a series of neural circuits connecting your brain stem to your cortex at the base of your skull. It is your brain's way of ensuring you survive. Our ancestors needed their RAS to ensure wild animals or a competing tribal leader did not kill them. Losing your possessions in ancient time was tantamount to a death sentence. The RAS acts as a focussing tool. It will find examples to validate whatever you are placing your attention on. In the previous example, the focussing of your attention on the colours blue and red activated your RAS. Whatever you place your attention on is what your mind will look to find and validate. Here is another example. Have you ever considered buying a new car and then noticed the exact make and model you were researching popping up on every street corner? The surprising fact is that the proliferation of that model has always been there and it is the activation of your RAS, your focus upon it, which has brought it into your attention.
You Will See More and Experience More of Whatever You Place Your Attention On
Sally is a twelve-year-old teased by her friends for being a little overweight. Initially, she does not believe in the story, but they keep at it. She starts questioning herself and a habitual thought pattern forms. She looks around and sees television and magazine examples of girls who are thinner and in no time starts to believe the "fat" label. Her experience starts to validate the belief through further examples on magazine covers and peer-group discussions.
At some point, we have all fallen into a cycle of negative self-talk reinforced in the real world. It is real and validated by our experiences, our perceptions, and our beliefs.
We can break this cycle once we understand that what we perceive and believe is what we project out into our experience.
