Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ Beyond Human Rethinking the Foundations

Lately, I've been wondering about some of the assumptions which seems to be the base of a lot of thing in the field of self-improvement, Accelerated Learning and so on. For most of these things, I have no source. They just get re-told and re-written over and over again.
So, please, if someone has any clue to where these things come from, post it here or eMail me directly.

Here we go:
No no
The subconcious mind/other than concious mind doesn't understand the meaning of "not".
Classic: "If I tell you NOT to think about a pink elephant, you will instantly think of one." From personal experience, I must reject this.
Contradiction: "Saying I can't do this" has an effect on the unconsious part of our minds, even if it has a negation in it.
So: "Negative Selftalk Works", "Negative Goal-Setting Doesn't". Where the common ground here?

Everything we sense, think and experience is stored in our mind
Where does this come from? Is there any proof? Statistical, theoretical, anecdotical? And, if anything is stored, why hasn't anybody developed a method to access this vast storehouse?

Hemispheres
As far as I know, the concept of left/right-brain-functions comes from Robert Ornstein (and others), but has by now been updated to a much more complex model of the human mind and brain. This does not mean that methods based on the left/right-scheme don't work, but are there any methods out there which take in account the current models?

Brain Waves
Is there any material on how brainwaves and mind-states really correlate? To me, it seems a bit funny that a certain frequency is good for learning and that another frequency, just some hertz away is good for something completely different.
And, as I remember from other posts, the "enlightened" mind has a frequency spectrum spread across the whole range of brain frequencies. So, why is everyone shooting for only a small range? And why is "beta" so often looked down upon?
(It would be really nice to monitor ones own brain frequencies continously for some time, so one could see for one's self what is happening wiht one's mind.)

A closing remark: I think that all the notions above have (had) some strong influences on "The Self-Improvement Movement", but as far as I know, most of these assumptions/findings are at least some years, if not decades old. So, are they still current, or have they been already fossilized? Or, to play devil's advocate, are they still in use because they are simple and nobody wants to deal with more complex, yet more accurate knowledge? Or, to get really nasty, does newer research contradict this foundations of self-improvement?

Critical, but still a believer,

Jens

[This message has been edited by Jens (edited May 21, 2001).]

The most relevent concept here is that the subconscious doesn't really "understand" anything. That's the domain of the neocortex and conscious thought. I think of the sub/un/other-than/pre/-conscious mind as more reflexive. And it seems to respond most strongly to perceptual and emotive input and much less strongly(if at all) to abstract concepts. Forming affirmations in the negative creates a conscious associated image/emotion of the negated and that registers stronger in the subconscious than the conceptual appendage of its negation. Example: I will not smoke. To make conscious sense of this sentence you HAVE to think of smoking and only then can you try to negate it. Otherwise you wouldn't know what to try to negate. So your mind imagines smoking and all the perceptual and emotional experiences associated with the word smoking are activated and the subconscious responds primarily to those perceptions and probably isn't even equiped to handle the concept of then trying to negate it all after the fact.

Conscious affirmations only work if you can associate the words with a powerful sensory image and/or emotion. That is the "language" of the subconscious mind. The most powerful affirmations are those repeated with absoulute conviction and certainty. The subconscious mind may or may not be able to differentiate between "reality" and the imagination, but it certainly can tell how strong of a stimulus it is recieving.

One possible reason subliminal affirmations have various levels of effect on people is that everyone's subconscious is going to have different associations with the words and phrases used. Some may have very powerful and positive associations, other may have weak or even possibly negative associations. You don't really know.

A good thought, very reasonable. So, if I'm thinking "I cannot do this" (negation) I simultanuously imagine myself failing (no negation).
If I'm saying "I will not smoke."(negation) and have the image of typical smoke-situation just without myself smoking, doing something other (no negation), the conscious negated goal should not be be problem for my other-than-conscious-mind.

Jens