Posts Tagged ‘Thinking Mind’

Brain Aura (My Work November 8-14)

Friday, November 14th, 2014

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

Every Friday, I discuss what I learned that week. Lost? Read the archives.

Last week, I set up my aura so I could feel it more easily. This week, I did the same for my brain’s aura, then used it to improve my communication with spirits and ethereal software.

Setting Up My Brain’s Aura

Last week, I embedded sensory connections into my aura. It lets me feel what my aura is connected to, how open or closed my aura gate is, and what energy signature the various parts of my aura are in.

And I got an idea: What if I embed sensory connections in other structures? Would I gain the same awareness?

I tried embedding connections in my ethereal muscles, but they refused. They’re too intricate and might be damaged.

But they said yes to brain aura. Just like last week, I simply asked my ethereal muscles to embed the sensory connections, and they handled the rest. I just focused on my consulting job and let my ethereal muscles do their thing. It took two days.

Looking around, my brain’s aura is vast. Several times larger than my body’s. I doubt I’m unique in that.

And, broadly, I wonder if creating these sensory connections is part of learning any skill. That is, if I’d simply practiced for years, would I have similar sensory connections embedded in my aura? Is this a unique setup, or just a short cut? Something to look into later.

Note: Remember thinking mind? Important ethereal structure, horrible name. I’ve renamed it “brain aura.” This section is all about embedding sensory connections in thinking mind.

Finer Communication

Here’s what I’d planned to do with those sensory connections in brain aura: Throughout the day, as I do and feel different things, I’d notice the signatures, build up a library of signatures I recognize. Later, I could use that to identify and influence mental states in myself and others. (Remember, healing = influence for good.)

I’ll get to that eventually. But I got sidetracked with communication.

Communication works by reading and writing my brain’s aura. And communication muscles very much wanted to use my sensory connections to do that reading.

So I engaged the muscles that handle sensory connections, had them work with communication, let that run for a day. That first attempt turned out bad — the signatures were precise, and everything else felt too large, mushy, even damaging to the sensory connections. So I updated some settings and ran it for another two days.

It finished on Thursday. Communication is working again, feels much better, finer, more precise. I’ll see how it affects my results. It feels promising.

Closing Thoughts

A week ago, I found that aura isn’t practical for a lot of techniques. I wasn’t sure if the time I’d spent on it was worthwhile. A few wrong turns are the unavoidable cost of doing anything new, I told myself.

But exploring aura lead to these sensory connections in my brain. Which lead to better communication. Which is rather useful.

This is why I describe my work as exploring magick, rather than learning it. Because it’s not a linear path. If I’d set out to improve communication, I never would have said, “Let’s learn to feel my body’s aura better.” But it turns out, that’s where I needed to go.

Magick isn’t a straight path.

Also, this setup lets my ethereal muscles interact with my body more precisely. With these sensory connections, I’m able to feel more than I could before. If I’d just intended to feel my body, but not guided my ethereal muscles to create these sensory connections, it wouldn’t work nearly as well.

This setup is one of the tools I use for magick, above and beyond intent, and I want to highlight that for anyone who sees magick as just about intent. You can do even more if you add some more tools.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Advanced Conscious Magick | No Comments »

Do Spirits Think Like Humans?

Thursday, August 16th, 2012

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

In Don’t Mock Demons, I said that, to rid myself of a malicious spirit, “I would damage the connections between the spirit’s mental muscles and its thinking mind.” Today, I’ll answer one of Ananael’s follow-up questions:

Do you believe that spirits have “mental muscles” and “thinking minds” that are in any way analogous to those of humans? The thinking mind as we understand it is almost certainly rooted in the brain, since damage to particular areas can cause much more profound dysfunction than I would expect if the thinking function was rooted in some spiritual process.

Yes. In my experience, the mental muscles and thinking minds of spirits are almost identical to those of humans.

Let me start with that experience:

  • When I communicate with less-skilled spirits, I’ll often connect to their thinking mind and handle all the steps. (I’ve done this with ascended spirits as part of training, too.)
  • I’ve fought spirits, and disabled their mental muscles and thinking minds to end the fight. (More on that tomorrow.)
  • I’ve trained spirits in how to awaken their mental muscles, and how to connect the new mental muscles to their thinking mind.

In all cases, the spirit’s mental muscles and thinking mind were roughly the same as a human’s. (Mostly, I’m talking about ascended or near-ascended spirits here, but the communication was with less-skilled spirits.)

Let’s define “thinking mind” before going any further. It’s a specific magickal structure which, in humans, sits between the brain and the mental muscles. Activity in thinking mind correlates with thoughts in the brain, and so, we use it for communication. But when I say “thinking mind,” I’m referring to that specific structure, not the cognitive facilities of the human brain.

A spirit’s thinking mind connects to their mental muscles in much the same way a human’s thinking mind does. I’m not sure what it connects to instead of the brain, or if it connects to anything at all; maybe the thinking mind does its own information processing, no brain required. But the thinking mind itself seems to be roughly the same in spirits and in humans.

So, what does “roughly the same” mean? Well, it’s like how a human brains is roughly the same as a monkey brain, a dog brain or a mouse brain. Made of the same stuff, operating by the same rules, and possessing many of the same regions. But I’m talking about structure and composition here, not information processing.

Which brings us to the difference between high-skilled spirits and less-skilled spirits. Here, I’ll quote Ananael’s comment:

What the data I’ve compiled seems to show is that spirits do have independent minds and a certain level of power in terms of their ability to produce probability shifts, but the two factors seem to be much more intertwined than they are in human beings.

Exactly. More intelligent spirits are generally much more capable at magick. Sure, more intelligent humans will generally be better at magick, too, but the correlation is much more pronounced in spirits. I think it’s because the spirit’s thinking mind does the actual thinking (whereas a human can rely on their brain), and so, more skilled spirits can use magick to improve their thinking mind, increasing their intelligence.

Incidentally, developing thinking mind to become more intelligent isn’t limited to spirits: When the magick parts of my mind aren’t connected properly, I become slower and less perceptive, too.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

Tags: ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Magick Anyone Can Feel: Testing it Out

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

Last time, we discussed my two bad plans. I knew they were bad, and I knew I had to sit with the problem until I created something good. That really is my recipe: Take a block of time, load as much of the problem as I can into my mind, see where the gaps are, and something will come to me. But between the surgery, packing, and saying goodbye to everybody, I just hadn’t found that block of time.

Then came my flight to LA. Sometimes, boredom is the mother of invention. Especially when you’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed by the problem, and by everything else.

It started with a question: How does the tingling sensation move from magick::energy to nerve cells? I saw two options:

Energy influences the nerves in my arm –> The signal goes up those nerves to my brain, like any normal feeling.

OR

Energy touches my arm –> My mental muscles notice the energy –> My mental muscles send a message to my brain.

In other words, is a tingle in my arm caused by the nerves in my arm, or is it projected into my mind, similar to how visions work, or how spirits can drop thoughts into your mind when they communicate?

I didn’t have an answer. It’s not the sort of thing you can reason out, because it could go either way. The only way to know is to test it.

Step 1: Observation

Before I could design the test, I needed to know what I was working with. What are the major moving parts, and how do I think they work? What’s the hypothesis? To answer that, I connected to my arm, my mind, and the arm and mind of a non-mage, to see what the differences were.

I started with the nerves in my arm, tracing the paths from energy layer to nerve cells. (Well, as close as I could get to the actual cells.) It was just a normal-looking set of paths, the same ones I work with all the time for energy healing. Later, when I looked at the non-mage’s nerves, he had the same paths. In other words, there was nothing unusual going on in the nerves in my arm.

Then, I looked at my mind. There were three components: Thinking mind, energy layer, and physical nerves. The energy layer and physical nerves are basically the same as the nerves in my arm, then thinking mind goes on top of them.

(Thinking mind is the layer used for communicating with spirits and ethereal software. They can read thoughts from it and write their responses to it. When I asked my trainers what it was, their concepts came through as “thinking mind,” which is how I got the term.)

I also looked at the non-mage’s mind, which had the same 3 layers. But there was a big difference: My thinking mind was more active, and had much bigger connections to the energy layer.

Don’t read too much into this. This doesn’t mean that I’m smarter, that my mind is more active, or anything like that. Thinking mind is a magickal structure used in magick. It’s involved in in sensing energy and connections, and in communication. As you learn those skills, I would expect this magickal structure to become more developed. I just want to be clear, when I say “my thinking mind was more active than his,” I’m not disparaging his cognative abilities in any way.

OK, back to the magick. So, we know that the magickal forms around the nerves in my body are basically the same as a non-mage’s, but my thinking mind, and its connections to the energy layer of the brain, are quite different. This gave me a hypothesis: The sensations associated with energy originate in mental muscles, move from thinking mind to brain, and do not involve the nerves in my arm (or wherever I’m feeling the tingle). After having zero traction on this problem for two weeks, I was pretty excited. But I had to test it first.

Step 2: Test it

We tested the model by seeing how to turn off the tingling sensation. If the path goes:

Mental muscles –> Thinking mind –> Nerves

Then we should be able to turn off the tingling sensation by blocking either the connections between mental muscles and thinking mind, or the connections between thinking mind and nerves. In contrast, if the path goes:

Energy –> Nerves in my arm –> Ordinary nerve signaling until the feeling reaches my brain

Then blocking the messages from mental muscles and thinking mind shouldn’t have any effect, because the message enters my brain through normal neural signalling.

At my request, my trainers blocked each set of connections (mental muscles –> thinking mind, and thinking mind –> brain). It was easy for them to do. And in both cases, it turned off the tingling sensation. The testing confirmed my earlier observations, and now we have a model: The tingling sensation is caused by mental muscles placing sensations into thinking mind, in much the same way as visions and messages are placed directly into thinking mind. The actual nerves in your body at the location of the tingling are not involved.

For now, it’s a tentative model, since there could be some other possibility I haven’t thought of. Once we develop the tingling technique based on this model, I’ll call it confirmed.

Why It Matters

For anyone casually following this blog, it might seem like I’m splitting hairs. Why do I care so much?

First, all of my previous research had focused on the nerves in the arm. I was imagining to cause tingling by applying the right energy to those nerves, in the same way I do energy healing by applying the right energy signature to the nerves experiencing the pain. But now, I know that focusing on the arm was unlikely to yield a success, and that I must instead focus on the mind.

Second, I have plenty of trainers, but if no one knows how to cause a non-mage to feel energy, I can’t ask for training in that. But now, I know to ask for training in the connections between thinking mind and brain, and I’m already in touch with an expert in that field. So, having this model tells me what to learn and how to learn it.

Third, it once again showed me the importance of good terms. Did you notice how I kept talking about the “energy layer of the nerves” in this post? I used to call that “thought layer,” because it reflects the moment-to-moment signalling of the nerves. But “thought layer” sounds a lot like “thinking mind,” and I hadn’t been able to keep those two completely different structures straight in my own thinking. If I’d had better terms, I probably would have checked this weeks ago.

So, coming up, I’ll make some better terms, get training in the connections between thinking mind and brain, and then come back to developing this technique. Also, now that I’m mostly over my jetlag, I’ll get back to writing the book.

Question for you, as readers: Is it interesting to see what my work actually involves, or are you lost in all the technical jargon, or otherwise uninterested? I’m fine either way, just want to make sure my writing is helping you, or at least entertaining you. Thanks!

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Advanced Conscious Magick | 7 Comments »

What is Thinking Mind?

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

Responding to yesterday’s post on thinking mind, a reader asks:

[By] Thinking mind, are you trying to talk about a physical aspect relating to brain waves and the brain?  Or are you talking about in effect the part of the spirit that interacts with the brain?

It’s a good question, but one I can’t answer directly. It requires a bit of a walk through how I explore magick. But I’ll try to make it interesting.

A Priori vs A Posteriori Models

A priori (Latin for “before the fact”): You reason about how magick ought to work, based on how you understand the rest of the world.

Observation (or “a posteriori”): You use sensory connections to see different parts of magick, watch them work, and try to figure out what they do.

Most people haven’t learned sensory connections, so when they model magick, it has to be a priori. Which is why you have all these models — the energy model, the spirit model, etc. — that don’t just disagree on the details, but disagree about what’s going on at a very fundamental level. It’s because we’re trying to tell a story based on observing the results of rituals, without being able to look at each step that produced that result.

In other words, most models start by saying, “There must be a thing that does X, so let’s assume it exists and name it this.” And, if someone tells you “There’s this thinking mind that sits between physical nerves and your mental muscles,” it’s natural to ask whether the idea grew from the idea of brainwaves, or from the idea that your spirit must connect with your brain at some point.

But I never expected thinking mind to be there. It doesn’t grow naturally from anything we normally think about. When I first started actively connecting mental muscles to my mind, around 2005, I just thought I was connecting them to my brain. And if someone had suggested an extra layer between mental muscles and brain, I would have tossed it out via Occam’s Razor.

Finding Thinking Mind

Then, around 2007, I was learning energy healing and getting good at connecting to different types of tissues, noticing the signatures of various injuries, and all the other aspects of sensory connections specific to observing the physical body. My focus was knee injuries, but one day I connected to my head, and noticed two sets of signatures in the brain. All other tissues have one signature. Totally surprising.

I looked at other nerves. They also had two signatures. And I traced the connections between mental muscles and what I thought was the brain. The connections only went to one of the signatures.

One signature seemed to change quickly as I thought different things, so I called it “thought layer.” The other changed slowly, in response to moods and drugs and such, and I called it “nerve layer.” I conceived of both of them as being part of the brain.

Shortly after finding thought layer, I reasoned that, if thought layer carries messages, then energy intended to numb a person should act on thought layer. So I did, and my energy healing got worse. Turns out, you need to change the overall signalling pattern of a nerve, not the current message it’s sending, so you need to focus on the nerve layer.

Thought layer was central to developing consciousness integration in 2009, and it’s been the basis for my communication with spirits and ethereal software since 2010. I mention this because a priori models often include parts that “have to be there” based on the preconceptions of the mage, but that you can’t actually interact with. Thought layer isn’t in that category. It’s really there, and I interact with it all the time.

In 2010 or 2011, as I did more training in communication, the spirits I work with called the entirety of thought layer “thinking mind.” They conceived of it as separate from the brain — as something spirits have, too. So I adopted their term.

Summary

I never expected a “thinking mind.” It’s only in my model because of what I saw with sensory connections. Later, that model lead to useful effects, which cemented thinking mind in my understanding of magick.

This has a down-side, though: I can’t guide you to understand thinking mind, because that process doesn’t start with “Your brain has brainwaves” or “Your spirit must connect to your mind.” It starts with sensing two signatures from nerves, and going exploring.

I’ll revisit this after doing a better job teaching sensory connections later this year.

PS. If you need an answer to quiet your curiosity, “Thinking mind = How your spirit connects to your brain” is close enough, as long as you’re not trying to connect or work with thinking mind.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

Tags: ,
Posted in Advanced Conscious Magick | No Comments »

How Mental Muscles Connect to Your Brain

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

Mike asks:

How do mental muscles interface with the brain?

I have 3 answers for this: Short, medium, and needs-its-own-book. You’ll get the first two today.

Quick warning: This is all fairly technical. I wasn’t planning on talking about this yet, and haven’t really laid the groundwork to make it easy to follow. If you’re still working on finding your mental muscles, you might want to skip this post for now.

Short Answer

The short answer is: Thinking mind.

Yes, I know that’s a funny term. But it’s how the spirits that teach me refer to it, and I haven’t gotten around to a proper naming.

Think of thinking mind as the brain’s energy layer (although this isn’t quite correct). It connects to your brain, and it’s laid out to be easy to communicate with, both for spirits, and for ethereal software, and for mental muscles. Everyone’s brain is different, but everyone’s thinking mind is similar enough that you can find your way around it, even if you’ve never worked with that person before.

Mental muscles seem to know where in thinking mind they want to connect. Then, as you learn to use that mental muscles (that is, as you learn to do that sort of magick), you’re also learning how use your brain to send the right instructions to thinking mind, and how to listen for replies.

When you awaken mental muscles, it’s important to connect them to thinking mind. That’s what that previous post was about. In it, I simply said “mind,” instead of “thinking mind,” since I try to avoid specialized terminology when I can.

Medium Answer

The medium answer is: You should really see it for yourself. There’s only so much I can do with words. Real insight comes from watching it in action.

But to do that, you’ll need sensory connections. Which are somewhat advanced if you haven’t done them before. So, this isn’t so much a longer answer, as a more hands-on and advanced one.

But, assuming you’ve done all the exercises in that sensory connections series, here’s the basics of thinking mind:

Connect your head. You’ll notice two sets of signatures: One for the brain, another for thinking mind. Both have their own energy layer. If you trace the paths from each energy layer toward the physical cells (nerves, in this case), both sets of paths meet up at the first level below energy layer (which I call “state layer,” because I haven’t done a proper, metaphor-type naming there, either).

Each area of thinking mind is made of nerves that fire together, even if they’re not physically adjacent. If you trace the paths that connect thinking mind to the brain, you’ll find that one area of thinking mind often corresponds to many areas of the brain.

Certain effects should focus on thinking mind (ones dealing with information), while other effects should focus on the brain (ones dealing with the overall state of the mind, like fatigue or relaxation). In 2013, I’ll probably get more into the details of communication and mental effects. For now, see the series on consciousness integration for some tips on finding thinking mind.

Long Answer

How, exactly, does a thought travel from brain to thinking mind, and out to the mental muscle / spirit / ethereal software? That’s a long answer, and something you really can’t use until you’ve thoroughly learned all the aspects of sensory connections.

That series is from a year ago, and it drops you into advanced topics quickly. I’ll be covering sensory connections in a more thorough, easier-to-follow (hopefully) series coming up, and in the book, so that afterward, we can have better discussions about things like thinking mind.

Read the follow-up post with more on thinking mind.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Advanced Conscious Magick | 5 Comments »