Thinking positively isn't as important as being emotionally positive

I'm continuing to enjoy James Doty's book, Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything. As I indicated before, don't be put off by the title, which admittedly sounds a bit New Age'y.

With rare exceptions, and I'm approaching the halfway mark in my reading of Mind Magic, so I'm pretty confident that this is true, Doty stays within the bounds of modern psychology and neuroscience in his book. Which isn't surprising, since he's a neuroscientist and neurosurgeon. 

What's well known is that what we're consciously aware of is a very small fraction of what the brain perceives through the senses, and what the hugely complex brain -- about a hundred billion neurons with trillions of connections -- is doing behind the scenes of our conscious awareness. 

Robert Sapolsky told this story well in his book, Determined.

What we think, do, and feel is determined by causes and effects that extend all the way back to the big bang. If that's too far back for you, Sapolsky says that our recent genetic history, experiences in our life from the prenatal era to a few seconds ago, and societal/cultural influences combine to produce who we are and what we're doing at this very moment.

Where does an intention come from? Where does an emotion come from? Where does a thought come from? If we observe the working of our consciousness through mindfulness, meditation, or some other means, it seems clear that what spurs us to do, feel, or think arises from a hidden source within the brain.

Doty describes various brain mechanisms in his book. There's nothing supernatural or other-worldly about this. It's the current state of psychology and neuroscience, an incomplete and surely sometimes inaccurate guide to the brain/mind that nonetheless is the best knowledge we currently have.

Mind Magic is all about using knowledge concerning how the brain works to increase the chance that the life we want to lead is what we actually experience. Yes, this, like everything else mental or physical, almost certainly is determined, since free will appears to be an illusion.

But as I noted in my previous post about this book, it doesn't really matter if we possess free will.

Doty says that what's important is that we have the sense of free will, since that makes us feel more confident in our ability to chart our desired course in life through intentions that influence our subconscious, leading to a greater likelihood that those intentions will manifest as reality rather than mere imagination.

A friend of mind used to be fond of saying, "We humans are pleasure-seeking missiles." Doty would agree. In these passages from his "Clarify What You Truly Want" chapter, he talks about the necessity of being in an emotionally positive state of mind when we're visualizing intentions that we hope will manifest.

Positive emotions activate the reward systems of brains and therefore keep our inner compass set toward our intention. They also help us to free ourselves from the prison of old patterns created in our environment and past actions. One of the most powerful ways to indicate the value of an intention to our subconscious is through associating it with a strong positive emotion experienced in the present.

The more vividly we visualize our intention, the more emotionally heightened our inner experience will be. The more emotionally heightened the inner experience is, the more it has a chance to capture and hold our attention and alert the brain to give attention to it in the future.

Part of how the brain determines how to classify information is through a process known as value tagging.

Value tagging is part of the salience network and determines the importance of information entering our brain: emotional content concerning our sense of belonging, the strength of our bonds and connections with others, and life meaning, as well as our physiologic functioning and our immediate survival.

A strong positive emotion signals to our subconscious that the intention is highly meaningful and deserves to be cultivated through our behavior. For this reason, when we practice visualization, it is essential that in addition to imagining the physical circumstances of achieving our goal or intention in detail, we tune in to our heart and experience the joy, celebration, contentment, and connection in our bodies in the here and now. 

This change in the emotional pH of your consciousness, so to speak, is what sends messages to the brain to transform your hardware to prioritize future experiences that give rise to similar positive feelings. Where the emotions come from doesn't really matter as long as you can produce them, recognize their importance, and take the time to savor them.

You are teaching your brain to feel and become familiar with feelings of deep, authentic well-being, and having these feelings is what indicates to the brain to form a new neural circuit. Positive emotions increase the salience around an experience and teach the brain that experiences like these are important and worth pursuing. They then become the compass, or north star, for where to direct your intention.

...As we practice visualizing our desired result over and over again, our intention to experience the fulfillment of our desires is giving our attention (and therefore our subconscious) some velocity to influence the outcome. This is a tried-and-true practice used for years by countless elite athletes, who rehearse successfully executing a skill in their mind's eye before the big game or competition. 

Research has even shown that just thinking about an action such as building muscle can result in a measurable increase in muscle mass, and thinking about rehearsing the piano can measurably improve a musician's performance, whether they have touched a keyboard or not.

The paradox is that, through mental rehearsal and visualization, we are "reminding" ourselves of how the positive outcomes will feel when we experience it in a moment to come. Our minds are literally going back to the future.

Comments

[sant64]

So much for the Church of Hard Determinism.

[Spence Tepper]

The power of positive thinking has been around a very long time. "Think and Grow Rich"...
You have a job to do and within that job, creative visualization can help.
And most certainly, "I can't afford the luxury of a negative thought."

But what about those things you think you want, but are not obliged by job or duty to complete?
Why impose desire upon yourself? Or give undue power to single chosen drives, and suppress the rest of who and what you really are that you have yet to see, to meet, and become friends with?

Why not, instead, use the power of meditation to observe those desires you see and all those you don't, in their native form, in their natural state of balance or out-of-balance (however they arise without effort to control when you simply go to the trouble to calm down, put aside your desires for a moment, and have a look) and see where they actually come from? At least a layer or two down, before imposing those limited, chosen, and possibly unrealistic images upon yourself?

Why imprison yourself further, by your own limited thinking, when, in fact, you have instead, a limited capacity to open the door to your own liberation? If you choose to stop controlling, and start listening and observing?

If there are natural capacities within you, why not spend time listening and letting those arise in their own way? Rather than leave them in the unconscious, or worse, bury them deeper and deeper behind chosen "goals"?

Put your attention on something real, what you discover within yourself.

Why do we want to impose limitations from our blinkered and limited imagination, memory, limited attention desultory cat brain upon the entirety of our our own nature?

There is far more there we don't have a clue about, than what we think we know (but just believe). And that is more discovery than control. Why attempt to "control" what is already in a balance you have no clue about?
Rather, let's seek to understand what's there first.

[Karim W. Rahmaan]

This 'New age Manifesting' heavy heavy stuff.

Reminds me of the Sikh story of Atal Rai.

He was so good at manifesting, he brought one of his friends back to life with only 1 wish.

Then his father Baba Hargobind Singh the 6th Sikh Guru told him of the consequences of interfering with the boy's natural life line. That same night or a little after the Guru's son had to die to pay off taking on the heavy karma load of the siddhis power he displayed:

https://www.thesikhencyclopedia.com/biographical/famous-sikh-personalities/atal-rai-baba/

Yep, that manifesting can be heavy, too heavy. But Naam/Kalma/surat-Shabd is the easy way -no karma is the aim.

[Appreciative Reader]

Agreed, this is all perfectly reasonable, nothing woo to it.

What I see here once more points towards my initial impression when I read your first post in this series, Brian: that what he’s “teaching” is, apart from general mental-wellness, essentially a deliberate cultivation of monomania as far as some specific goal. Which, in specific instances, may well work, for some limited definition of “work”; but in general is probably not a very healthy thing! (I mean specifically the cultivated-monomania part, as it appeared to me. The the general-mental-wellness part is perfectly fine!)

Beyond that, I still don’t see any “manifestation” per se.

As you say, you’re only halfway through the book. No doubt the rest of it will clear that up.

(But again, the general mental-wellness part --- minus the induced-monomania-part-as-it-appeared-to-me, and minus the mention specifically of “manifestation” --- that makes sense, sure.)

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I’m afraid I’ve still not gotten down to watching/ listening to the rest of Dr Doty’s interview, that I’d referenced in my previous comment (on your other thread). Like I said, it’s a cool interview, as in informative about his overall thesis --- although, like I’d said there, he hasn’t yet, in the portion I’ve watched so far, actually spelled out the part about the manifestation per se.

I’ll jot down my specific notes and overall comments on the video once I’ve finished watching the rest of it.

[umami]

Careful what you wish for, you might just get it.

[Appreciative Reader]

Finished watching the rest of that video. Finally!

Afraid I’d been completely rushed these last few days. Still am, in fact. But I thought I really should finish watching this interview, no matter what --- because I actually found it very interesting!

I see Brian’s posted two new articles, on subjects that look very interesting, very promising! Afraid I’ve only glanced at them for now, not even taking in the actual content of them. I’ll get back to them later on, when I’m free. …For now, having finished watching the video --- and it took quite a bit longer than the half an hour that I’d left off watching last time, because I was pausing ever so often to jot down notes, and also repeating some portions, including portions I’d watched earlier. …Very interesting stuff, and I’m grateful, Brian, that you’ve introduced us to this guy and his work. …I was saying, for now, having watched the vid, I’ll try to quickly organize my thoughts and my notes, to put out my views about this video and about Dr Doty’s manifestation thing.

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Here’s how I’ll do this. For now I’ll just jot down my conclusions, in detail. And, should anyone actually be interested, and ask, then, in a separate comment, later on, I’ll try to flesh out why I think what I do, back up my opinions, bringing in specifics from the notes I’ve made of the video.

First, about Dr Doty himself: Great guy. Perfectly sincere. Multi-faceted talent, and very successful, in diverse fields. Genuinely compassionate. Not sanctimonious in the least.

Second, about his message generally, his teachings generally (not so much about his manifestation per se, let me take that separately, but about his message *generally*): It’s very positive, very affirming. I can see how it can be very helpful to many people. It’s generally free of woo. However, although Dr Doty’s a scientist himself, and although he keeps saying, many times, in so many words, that what he’s saying is nothing “woo woo” at all: nevertheless, I’m afraid there is actually quite a bit of woo in his message --- quite a bit that I found iffy. …Let me let me clear, when I say “quite a bit of woo”, well, it’s nothing like the Rhonda Byrnes nonsense, and by far the majority of what he says is perfectly reasonable and grounded in science and rationality. But I do want to point out that there are, indeed, elements of woo in what he teaches. …But I’d still say that those specifics are probably more like details, and by and large I found his message both reasonable and affirming and, by and large, these specifics excepted, indeed free of the “woo woo” that he himself keeps distancing himself from.

Third, about how I’d summarize his manifestation process per se: No, it’s nothing to do with the Rhonda Byrnes nonsense, like Brian’s spelled out already. Also, it isn’t, at all, about “inducing monomania”, as it had appeared earlier to me. What it amounts to is: Well, first, some breathing exercises, that sounded like elementary Pranayama exercises to me. Then some mindfulness practice. Cultivating a feeling of gratefulness. Arriving at centeredness. Realizing the futility of purely material desires. Understanding the dysfunctionality of craving, and so giving up craving. All of which helps the process of manifestation.

Fourth, the flaw in all of this: You may have noticed it yourself, when reading the above. It isn’t clearly mentioned how all of that results in manifestation.

In conclusion: Dr Doty’s a great guy, completely genuine. His views and methods are by and large reasonable and scientific. What he teaches can help people, certainly, particularly those not already acquainted with meditation. However: the big “however” is that it isn’t clear how the manifestation per se happens; and personally I’d be fully comfortable with his teachings if only he’d get rid of the “manifestation” label altogether. And the small “however” is that there’s definitely some bits of woo sticking to his message, even though he keeps claiming he isn’t “woo woo”; but again, the good thing is that the woo bits are probably not central to his message and so do not weigh down his message too much.

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And of course, all of that is basis my perusal of one single if very detailed interview video. No doubt there’s much to his actual message that might not have been captured in that video, and maybe stuff that I’ve gone away misunderstanding.

I’ll look forward to Brian’s further instalments of his review on this book, in order to arrive at a more complete understanding of Doty’s message.

Thanks, Brian, for introducing us to Dr Doty’s work. Very interesting, and I can see how in some cases that kind of message, properly delivered and absorbed, particularly by younger folks, can actually change lives.