Archive for November, 2009
Personal Growth
How to Wake up Your Inner Psychotherapist
“Change is as inexorable as time, yet nothing meets with more resistance.”
Benjamin Disraeli
People seek personal growth for many reasons, such as: self-esteem, spirituality, success, and individual power. We want to feel good, find the meaning of life, become free of the past, and have good relationships. The difficulty has long been how to achieve these goals. The good news is that our bodies are way smarter than we thought they were; our brains are hard wired with a brilliant learning program that gives us a simple (not easy) way to achieve these goals. The instruction manual for this DNA- based learning program comes from quantum psychology, which is a synthesis of Eastern philosophy and Western science, especially quantum mechanics. Like using jumper cables to start a stalled engine, quantum psychology tells us how to jump start our psychological evolution.
Many of us have tried a variety of ways to achieve personal growth, such as yoga, meditation, and talking therapy. Interestingly enough, both in theory 
and practice, quantum psychology incorporates the fundamentals of these practices.
For example, mediation teaches us how to observe our thoughts. When you practice quantum techniques, you will utilize a psychological function of pure awareness, a personal Observer, who is free of beliefs, emotions or desires. Like a television camera, your Observer simply observes – what is. As Einstein explained, the presence of the observer influences change. When you put your Observer to work observing your thoughts, feelings, and behavior, your Observer influences changes in you, at the level of transformation.
Yoga bridges the gap between mind and body; quantum techniques bridge this gap using our emotional responses, which originate in the body. The evolutionary process gave us emotions for a good reason: they constitute a crucial, information- generating feedback system, which includes guiding personal growth. Negative emotional responses, such as anger, tell us that we have a problem; positive emotional responses, such as feeling good, tell us when we have solved it. Your neutral Observer notices your emotional responses to events in your everyday life and responds: “Hmm, that’s interesting. “
As far as talking therapy goes, when you practice quantum techniques, you will have a conversation with – yourself. You will establish a dialogue between your conscious and unconscious mind, using the language your unconscious mind prefers – pictures. When you do, your brain responds immediately and produces immediate, positive changes. Your Observer notices the pictures that emerge from your unconscious mind, notices the new abilities you acquire as you progress, and responds: “Hmm, that’s interesting.” › Continue reading
Good/evil, Quantum Psychology, Survival Instincts
Gang Rape: Look in the Mirror for Answers
The rapists acted like animals – Homo sapiens variety.
We were all shocked when we learned of the brutal gang rape of a 15-year- old girl on school property, while other teens watched and took pictures; no one called the police. What can we make of all this? The only way to make sense of heinous acts such as this one is to – look in the mirror. When you do, looking back at you will be your own image. Look deeper and you will see the human nature that we all share.
At the deepest, most fundamental level of our human nature is something we share with all life forms on this planet – survival instincts. These instincts tell 
us how to find food, reproduce (sex), and compete to the death for survival of the fittest. We must credit our survival instincts with allowing our species to defeat all competition and dominant the planet. The reason these instincts are so effective is because they are not moral or immoral. They are amoral and underlie our potential to do evil. Psychologically, they manifest as wanting to control, which is the driving force underlying rape.
The rapists acted like animals – Homo sapiens variety.
We find it easy to point the finger at a few individuals and wonder how people can commit such horrendous acts, such as gang rape. We don’t like to acknowledge that the actions of both rapists and spectators were not unusual. Nor can they be attributed to mental illness.
You might recall a time when, for years, rape, torture, and murder were the order of the day, and the perpetrators were – ordinary people. And who were the watchers who saw people being beaten in the streets, saw their 
neighbors being dragged away from their home, and moved into the now empty houses? Who were the French/Italian/ Hungarian policemen who rounded up the victims, and the Polish farmers who saw the skeletal victims peering through the barbed wire of concentration camps. Throughout Nazi occupied Europe, “normal” people, bakers, housewives, judges, and bankers participated, watched – and did nothing.
In America, the government watched and did nothing. In Italy, the Vatican watched and did nothing – except help Nazi war criminals escape to South America and pray for the Jews – to convert to Catholicism. Compared to the rape, torture and slaughter of millions, what’s’ one more rape? It’s not as though women and children are not raped every day America. As for the pictures the teenage spectators took of the rape, the Nazis took tens of thousands. Why should this rape matter? Poet John Donne:
Each man’s death diminishes me,
for I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.
