Advancing AwarenessTo Get More Love In Your Life
The Psychology, Technology, Neuroscience and Spirituality of
Reducing Unhappiness by Becoming Progressively Loving
The 3 Mindful Practices ! Think Well !
Revolutionize Your Thinking
with
Daily Conscious Loving
&
3 Mindful Practices
(A good place to start: Background and Overview to the following)
1) Everyday Thinking Well
2) Personal Spiritual Practice
3) Everyday Shifting Negative Feelings
You can focus your awareness at any given moment on the negative or the positive. If you just sit quietly and do nothing but try to relax with no other real stimulation around you, for 15 minutes, you will likely end up feeling uneasy about something during that time. When you run out of things to think about, your survival brain will start scanning every part of your life, sending you warning signals about anything suspected of being a problem.
We actually spend about 45% of our waking day in this biological state of consciousness called Brain Wander, where we are not in conscious control of our thinking. Our brain is thinking for us. During this state of Brain Wander our survival awareness is keenly monitoring for problems and promoting worry,
which is actually designed to solve the problem. The problem with this level of thinking is, most of the time, there is really no immediate problem in our life -- but we will worry anyway.
The way to gain control of your Wandering Brain and reduce unhappiness, is by expanding your already existing Meta Awareness. Meta Awareness is the unique human ability to look at yourself, to evaluate your own thinking, and to recognize you are in Brain Wander.
Strengthening your Meta Awareness involves nothing more than actively, intentionally, consciously thinking about love every day.
That's All.
There are infinite possibilities of how to focus your attention on love. I would like to present three, very simple mindful practices which can be easily incorporated into your daily living and used -
Just below you will discover the 3 ways of moment to moment Thinking Well.
You can use these 3 ways of Thinking Well as a technique to help you approach a specific life situation or you can use them to be in a constant state of
Spiritualizing throughout your day.
You can use these practices on and off as needed to help you get out of feelings arising from survival consciousness. Having negative feelings are very important when they provide guiding information and motivation to do what you need to do for yourself. But there are many negative feelings that come from survival based Brain Wander or insecurities which are unneeded and destructive because they are based on distortions of reality, such as being uncomfortably self critical in social situations.
Most interestingly, you can go so far as to work to incorporate these ways of thinking into your normal awareness, which works to keep you feeling loving and positive almost all the time. Building this level of awareness involves creating an "Executive Meta Awareness" which keeps you in charge and prevents you from feeling negative and unhappy.
If you would seriously like to gain Executive control of your thinking, which puts You in conscious of control of your thoughts, be sure to see the sections below: "Creating an Executive Meta Awareness" and "Spiritualizing".
Learn to let your brain wander under the watchful eye of your Executive Meta Awareness. Say ”No” to survival thinking as soon as it starts. Say “BILAMAP” to focus yourself on love.
And for a more in-depth review of brain activity and levels of consciousness, how Brain Wander and Meta Awareness work, along with a teaching demonstration to show you your Wandering Brain:
STAY IN THE MOMENT BY BEING FOCUSED
IN LOVING META AWARENESS
here's how
In addition to the fun and excitement of receiving and sending Luv Splats,
this App will help you maximize the development of your Executive Meta Awareness.
Your Executive Meta Awareness can grow by simply using The Love Recorder to track the amount of
Loving energy you create with your Meta Awareness.
Download from
the Apple App Store or the Android Market Place.
The Introduction for "Opening New Thinking" is a good introduction to The 3 Mindful Practices
How To BILAMAP
BILAMAP is the intention to keep yourself focused on loving thoughts and feelings, rather than reacting to the brain's worrisome negative thinking. It is a mental reminder and stands for: Be In Love As Much As Possible.
So, if you struggle with love, Be In Like As Much As Possible. It is as simple as that!
But the bigger truth is you are not going to be in love all the time, just as much as possible. If you can even pepper your day with reminders to "Be In Love" it will create a positive feeling thread throughout your day, which should bring more and more good feelings over time.
If this still appears somehow preposterous, it is because no one ever told us how to avoid our brain's survival thinking and direct our awareness to the things around us, in the moment, which make us feel good. No one really taught us how to Think Well. So much of the time we just let the brain think for us. Would you believe, that in neuroscience, we now understand that this wandering level of consciousness is actually the Default Network for brain consciousness and is engaged about 30% of the time in any activity we do.
This Default state of our brain "thinking us" occurs when our thoughts seem to just randomly pop into our mind. And with such popping, how often are those random thoughts negative? You can also see your Wandering Brain when you intend to focus on a task, such as reading, and all of a sudden realize that you are no longer understanding what you are reading, but rather, are thinking about something totally unrelated that you did not consciously direct. Unfortunately this thinking often becomes negative when our survival brain ruminates on fearful possibilities.
For many of us, our survival brain no longer needs to be so active, but it is.
BY USING BILAMAP AND THESE 3 MINDFUL PRACTICES, YOU CAN MINIMIZE THE SURVIVAL BRAIN
So again, let's be clear, BILAMAP is not about being in love all the time, but rather, as much as possible. It is not intended to disrupt normal guiding negative feelings of anger, sadness, fear or shame, which are arising to teach us something. It does mean that you gain control over unnecessary unneeded and unwanted negative feelings. Which means, you can create a choice on how to focus your attention.
Most of the time that you worry, feel lonely or generally uncomfortable, you can recognize your survival brain in action, and then remind yourself to BILAMAP and use the III Contemplative Questions, to focus on the amazing reality around you. Or you can use Practice 3, Shifting Negative Feelings.
This intentional focusing of your awareness on using the word BILAMAP is the action of creating an Executive Meta Awareness.
Perhaps you have heard of Mindfulness? Being Mindful is being Meta Aware.
When it comes to the 3 Mindful Practices, it means you maintain a Meta Awareness about love by reminding yourself to be as loving as possible, whenever you can. When you find yourself in survival-fear awareness or thinking about anything else unnecessary, shift your focus by silently repeating "BILAMAP" in your mind.
When you want something more to think about than the quick focusing of repeating "BILAMAP", you can shift at any time to using The III Contemplative Questions, below.
If you consciously focus your attention on the things you love, your uneasiness will subside. And if you really dwell on what you love, you will feel love! You will Get More Love In Your Life.
WHAT DOES HAVING AN EXECUTIVE META AWARENESS LOOK LIKE? As you pay more attention to your thinking, you can see that your levels of conscious are regularly changing focus. You will have productive thinking time and you will have Free Thinking Time when your Wandering Brain takes over. When you notice yourself wandering, use BILAMAP, the III Contemplative Questions, or "What would Love Say?" to guide your conscious thinking. To take this a step further, your Meta Awareness can become progressively aware of when you are actually done with productive thinking and rather than relax your consciousness into the Wandering Brain, your Executive Meta Awareness preempts the Wander and focuses attention where you decide you want your attention to be focused. You can make yourself continually aware that practices of Thinking Well are always waiting in the ready, just behind and above both Productive Thinking and Brain Wander.
Use these mindful methods whenever needed or desired or spiritualize by using them continuously.
To get started, simply set your daily intention to shift back and forth between your Productive Thinking and the 3 Mindful Practices, setting your intention is the beginning of developing the "mental readiness" to shift.
Next, seek the shift to Meta Awareness as quickly as possible when you realize that you are worrying unnecessarily, thinking badly about yourself, or feeling bad about something that happened in the past. Usually, none of this kind of negative thinking is worthwhile! If it is very difficult to simply shift awareness (thinking and feeling) using the III Contemplative Questions, then use Practice 3, Shifting Negative Feelings.
With a little practice, this ability to be Mindful, with BILAMAP, The III Q's and "What would Love say?" will always be poised to come to the forefront of your awareness. This is what it means to have an Executive Meta Awareness.
Your Executive Meta Awareness puts you in control by focusing on generating loving thoughts and feelings rather than paying attention to the random negative thinking which comes from your survival brain. Don't let your survival brain think you into discomfort. Shift your thinking into Love.
Learn to let your brain wander under the watchful eye of your Executive Meta Awareness. Say ”No” to survival thinking as soon as it starts. Say “BILAMAP” to focus yourself on love.
B I L A M A P
e h s
b
e
How To Use The III Contemplative Q’s
There are three easy questions that you can carry in your mental readiness. This means you are always ready to focus your consciousness on one of the three questions, when the time is right. The time is right when you are not thinking about a real problem, a plan, executing the plan, socializing or engaged in some other productive activity. When you have mental alone time and your brain wants to take you to worrying about the future or thinking negatively about the past, or is engaged is some other useless or irrelevant thinking, you can resist going into such negative space by focusing on any one of the III Contemplative Q’s.
The III Contemplative Q’s are:
What do I appreciate?
What am I amazed by?
What do I love?
When answering these questions you can always contemplate on, "Why?"
When answering these questions, inside of your mind, you can:
STAY IN THE MOMENT: Look around you, right here and now and notice what you love, appreciate or are grateful for. Allow the good feelings to arise.
DO A LIFE SURVEY: Review the things in your life from the past or present which provide an answer to gratitude, love or gratefulness.
When creating an answer you can:
CREATE A LIST OF ITEMS: Look around you and notice the many things that amaze you, or that you might love, or that you are grateful for. Remember to appreciate, "Why?"
DWELL ON ONE THING: Take one person or one item in your life and focus on the glorious aspects of it. Be with it in awareness until a feeling arises which you can enjoy.
Building a stronger Meta Awareness
Keep your mind full of your own conscious questioning and thinking. Use these questions as often as possible during any given day (See below for a step by step method for developing a level of awareness which will function as a consciousness bios.)
After you ask yourself the question and after determining the answer/s, you can then continue to dwell on WHY you appreciate, are amazed by or are in love with the thing/s you are contemplating. As you recognize these qualities, allow your good feelings about this contemplation to grow as large as possible. Spend time in that feeling and thought and enjoy the goodness of it all. Let the good thoughts and good feelings expand. Expanding love in your life is as simple as that!
Here's how
Practice 3 Shifting Negative Feelings
How To Use “What Would Love Say?”
What would love say is the verbal expression of BILAMAP. It is putting BILAMAP to work when you are in conversation with others. And it should be especially applied to those people with whom you have a stronger than casual connection. All too often, when talking with our children, our mother or our lover, we do not convey in our voice and words the connection we feel. We succumb to our anger, our sadness, even our neutrality rather than reflecting the good feelings we have about that person. This is often because we take our closest people for granted, to some degree.
All too often, with a cherished one, we will treat them harshly, when a different approach would have been better and more effective. Our sense of self importance becomes more important than the loving connection we feel for the person.
Keep your thoughts and feelings in check by filtering them through the attitude of, “What would Love say?”
Choosing to be mindful of BILAMAP by using The III Q's and "What would Love say?" will create
Daily Conscious Loving
Make your personal commitment to yourself
(Click here if you are still searching for the
Reason and Purpose for Using The 3 Mindful Practices)
Let your brain wander under the watchful eye of your Executive Meta Awareness. Say ”No” to survival thinking as soon as it starts. Say “BILAMAP” to focus yourself on love.
Let your brain wander under the watchful eye of your Executive Meta Awareness. Say ”No” to survival thinking as soon as it starts. Say “BILAMAP” to focus yourself on love.A Bios is a level of awareness shared with your normal consciousness. It is behind yet above awareness when you are engaged in "productive thinking" and is always ready to drop into awareness anytime the moment is right, when you have Free-Thinking-Time.
The bios in a computer is piece of flash memory, always running in the background, which interfaces between the operating system along with software programs and the drives, ports, chips and CPU, making sure they all function together. You never see it and it is always running.
So the consciousness goal is to have a level of bios awareness that effortlessly becomes apparent at the appropriate moments, when you have Free-Thinking-Time. Like the bios on every computer, it is always running in the background, keeping the various parts of the mind, brain and body communicating appropriately. An Executive Meta Awareness Bios maintains a Loving Awareness. Below is how you can create your own BILAMAP Bios as part of your conscious awareness.
To make developing an Executive Meta Awareness Bios simple, let’s break it down into 4 easy steps. While developing your bios, stay mindful of your intention to build this bios, as your self-growth-goal.
There is a suggested number of days given below for each step. Keep in mind, this is just a suggestion. It is best if you stay with each step until it becomes relatively easy to remember to do.
If you find it difficult to remember to do any of the steps below, it may be because your brain wander mode is intense. Use the technology you probably already own. If you have a smart phone, you can probably set multiple alarms on your phone. Use 6 alarms a day to remind you to do whatever step you are completing. Let the alarms act as Meta Awareness to alert you to be intentionally focused and break brain wander. Use the alarms until you remember to do it for yourself, with relative consistency.
Step 1. To begin, as much as possible, over the next 2 days, remind yourself to become aware of and analyze your normal thinking patterns. Begin to evaluate when your thinking is "productive" and when you slip into irrelevant negative or survival oriented thinking. It might be easiest to become aware of this by realizing what you are thinking about when you begin to feel uncomfortable, ill at ease or unhappy during any part of your day. Once you can see how you shift between positive and negative thinking, go to step 2.
Step 2. For the next couple of days spend any moments of Free-Thinking-Time, simply repeating the word "BILAMAP" in your mind. Anytime you have a moment, just say “BILAMAP” in your mind. You will then be using, "BILAMAP" as a kind of daily mantra.
When the word BILAMAP comes easily into awareness during Free-Thinking-Time, move on to the next step.
Step 3. Over the next couple of days, spend as much time as possible during Free-Thinking-Time, contemplating the meaning of your life if you were In Love As Much As Possible. What does it really mean? What would it feel like? What would you look like? Is it really possible? How much is AMAP?
Spend several days wondering and speculating about making a commitment to thinking about love everyday.
When you can see the possibilities, go to step 4.
Step 4. Begin using The III Contemplative Q’s, AMAP. The more you use them during your Free-Thinking-Time, the more naturally these questions will arise in your mind when they should. Let your answers bring up as much feeling as possible. Consciously think to yourself, encouraging yourself to ask the III Contemplative Q's. Most people can easily ask themselves 10 – 20 times a day.
In addition to using the III Contemplative Q's, you can also continue to use the word "BILAMAP", like a mantra, repeating it in your mind whenever you are in need of focusing your awareness. This will be the easiest Mindful activity when you are not interested in becoming fully contemplative, but want to keep your mind positively focused. Just repeat the word, and when desired, let the word BILAMAP direct your awareness to embrace the idea of Being In Love As Much As Possible.
It also never hurts to put a little half smile on your face when focusing your awareness on your loving thoughts and feelings.
Incorporating "What would Love say?" into your Bios
As you begin to notice inner shifts in your thinking, because of your focus on the 3 Q’s, begin to contemplate the idea, “What would Love say?”
Spend a little time analyzing things you said to loved ones over the last couple of days. Could your communications have been said more lovingly? How might you have said it differently? Use this question like a filter, to help you direct your thinking before you actually speak. In other words, if you want to say something as lovingly as possible you should ask yourself before you say it, "What would Love say?"
What would it be like to start using this level of verbal communication through your BILAMAP bios? Would this be an appropriate level of thinking and speaking for you to adopt.
If your contemplation results in you wanting to adopt this principle, begin to allow it to shape the way you say things. Decide how much you should make this a focus. Should it be with specific people and not others? Should it be in certain locations and not others? In your mind determine your goals of how you best see yourself using this Love filter.
Progressively become aware of your tone, the actual words you use and the manner in which you deliver your messages. Modify and increase over time, as your sense of love allows.
Within a short number of days you should notice that you are spending much more time each day thinking about love, feeling love and acting in more loving ways.
And remember, not only you will benefit from your efforts. All of us will be better off because of your Daily Conscious Loving. So, “Thank you”, in advance.
!Think Well!
Spiritualizing requires a desire for a continuous Awareness of being connected to something bigger and grander than oneself, like a Universal Loving Consciousness, The Force, God or whatever you experience as that Higher Power. Whatever it is, Love will always be at its roots. This level of focused attention is obviously for people intentionally seeking spiritual growth.
The 3 Mindful Practices can be a large part of your conscious awareness if you want them to be. This type of mindful awareness is an addition to any of your other spiritual practices. You can "install" these III Q's in the Conscious background of your Awareness so they are silently running and consciously available at all times as a bios (see above).
Learning to consciously control your awareness does not take the place of traditional times devoted to prayer or meditation. It is a supplement. Spending 20 minutes a day in communion through prayer or stilling the mind through traditional meditations can be invaluable. See Practice 2, Personal Spiritual Practice. But what do you do the rest of the waking day when the Wandering Brain is going to think? This is where the 3 Mindful Practices come in.
Having spent many years doing Transcendental Meditation and trying many forms of meditation, I can highly recommend a non-traditional program, simply called The Meditation Program. It uses interesting technology called "binaural beats". It is a 10 week program that involves simply listening to 30 to 60 minute recordings of interesting environmental and instrumental sounds, with the binaural beats playing in the background.
The theory is that two different frequencies of beats are being presented auditorily and the speed is being modulated. As the brain attempts to listen to these different frequencies, one in each ear, it actually alters its own brain wave patterns to attempt to make sense out of the discrepant sounds. I can only say this: For the last three years, I have not felt any biochemical (adrenaline, epinephrine) surges that reflect fear.
This program is not cheap nor outrageously expensive. Just below the first link below, you will see another link which allows you to purchase the program for $67.00 rather than $85.00, which is the standard selling price on the site. When you know that you want to purchase the program, be sure to return to this site and get the discount by logging in through the second link below.
http://usd.swreg.org/com/shop/30253/cart/4620970801
Of course, a daily 20 minute practice of prayer or meditation does not address what happens with your brain and mind throughout your conscious waking state. Your journey will be enhanced by developing your own BILAMAP bios. It can be developed as a subsystem of your consciousness awareness, which is always ready to push to the forefront of awareness when appropriate. The more you use the III Contemplative Q's each day, the more you remind yourself to BILAMAP and the more often you stop to think, "What would Love say?" before speaking, the more you will functionalize this subsystem in your consciousness. It will progressively help you in achieving your loving, connecting spiritual intentions.
The Cause: In the Spirit of Advancing World Peace.
