Episode 111 Transcript
Good morning friends and listeners! It’s great to be here and it’s great to have you listening in today!
In this series I have been talking about Metaphysical Humanism and the principles and mental faculties we can use to self-actualize and live the lives that we are truly meant to live and to become all we are meant to become.
The past few episodes I have been talking about what the late, great, Bob Proctor called “The Six Mental Faculties.” These are mental abilities we are born with – they are intrinsic – and they lead us to great wisdom if we recognize and learn how to use them.
So far we have learned about Intuition, Imagination, WillPower, and Perception. We have two more to go with Reason and Memory. Individually, these mental faculties bring you wisdom that can help you dream, create, decide, and understand the world and your place in it. But together they provide you with a superpower of the human mind.
This week I am going to explain how being able to synergize these faculties allows them to be more powerful in your life. In this episode I am talking about the intrinsic wisdom of Reason and really being able to use it in the right way. It becomes a superpower when you can tap into the other mental faculties naturally as you think and reason.
Reason is the act of Thinking. It’s a verb. To Reason. It’s an action. You know, everyone has thoughts. We don’t get to not have thoughts. We have thoughts all the time. But that doesn’t mean that we are thinking. Our thoughts are mostly controlled by our subconscious beliefs and paradigms and stories. We tend to operate on auto pilot where our thoughts are concerned and that’s why we end up with undesired results in our lives. Remember, thoughts create feelings, feelings lead to action, and action gets our results. If you want to change your results, you have to change your thoughts. And in order to do that – we have to be aware of – conscious of – our thoughts. We have to choose our thoughts if we want better results in our lives.
Reason is part of that process of choosing our thoughts. But not choosing just any thoughts.
See, reason is used in two different ways, and one way isn’t a superpower – people might say “be reasonable.” It is often synonymous with words like rational, logical, or sensible. And for most people, when they think, when they are intentional in making decisions and expressing themselves, this is the kind of reasoning that we have been taught to use – safe, reasonable, sensible thinking. It means to think inside this boundary of good sense and sound judgment coming from logic, rules, and paradigms. Mary Morrissey, my mentor in DreamBuilding, she would call this “common hour thinking.” Common because it’s what most people do, and it keeps us comfortable.
See, we have created borders for ourselves – it’s also called our comfort zone. We stay within this boundary, afraid to climb over the fence to the unknown on the other side – not realizing that on the other side is our unlimited potential- our dreams – our self-actualization. You can’t stay in your comfort zone and grow. The comfort zone is also called the no-growth zone!
So how do we take our reasoning from being bound by logic and sensibility and what’s rational, to an expanded, perhaps unimaginable, or unbelievable view of what is possible?
We need to tap into to our other intrinsic wisdoms – imagination, intuition, willpower, perception, and memory. These faculties open our minds and make welcome what is on the other side of our comfort zone. These are portals that transport us to the land of possibility.
Climbing over the fence of your current boundary and into your unlimited potential is right Reason – it’s bringing all your mental faculties together to truly think. Some call this “thinking outside the box.” My mentor, Mary Morrissey, calls it “Brave Thinking” and she built a whole training institute to teach people about how to be brave thinkers… it’s actually called the Brave Thinking Institute and it’s where I discovered my dream to get my academic degree in History finished and where I studied to become a DreamBuilder Coach.
Speaking of my studies in history…
I had a capstone research paper to write for my degree. Early that semester I chose my topic and created my thesis. Now, I don’t want to go too deep into my topic, but as someone very interested in women’s history, I chose to write about the Equal Rights Amendment and why it failed to be ratified. I grew up in the 70s when the fight was going on to see the ERA made law of the land and I was a teenager when Ronald Reagan became President, and the ERA ended unsuccessfully. My thesis, based on what I had believed for 30 years, because of my thinking as I grew up, was that Reagan was to blame for the failure.
When I dug into the research on this topic, had I been in common hour thinking, I would have based my research on documents and work of others that would prove my thesis. It would have been reasonable and rational and logical for me to focus on proving my thesis correct. But that is how biased historians research. As a good historian, I knew I needed to be open to everything on the subject – I had to climb over the fence of what I knew from my experience growing up in that time and read what others had to say and watch the events unfold with an expansive mind. I had to read newspapers and interviews of first-person accounts, look at the books others wrote on the subject, and talk to women who were adults in the 1970s.
Now, I’m not going to get into my research findings, because that’s not why you are listening today. But suffice it to say, my thesis could not have been more wrong. What I found was that the women involved in the movement had the biggest effect on its failure. It was shocking and disappointing for me to uncover this truth. I even debated today whether or not I would include this conclusion to my research in this talk because I wish very much this was not reality. But it was, and is, and as a historian that is what I had to conclude from my thinking – through my reasoning. It was a very good paper and the feedback from my professor and classmates was positive and I scored a very high grade.
More importantly, my perception was shifted, I faced some hard truths, and I gained wisdom.
This is how to use Reason in an inductive way. Remember I said there are two ways to use reason? One we call inductive reasoning and the other is called deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning means to consider everything before making a factual conclusion. This is the “brave thinking” way of using reason.
Versus deductive reasoning where you believe something specific and then look for proof of its accuracy. Our subconscious minds use deductive reasoning. It believes everything we tell it, then shows us proof in our life that it’s the truth. If you tell yourself you are not worthy of love, your subconscious mind believes it then finds you relationships to prove this to you. So, we need to be conscious of our thoughts and think of intentional, healthy, loving things to say to ourselves so that our subconscious can deduce that is our belief and will set out to prove it.
Deductive reasoning is also the way we come to safe, logical, rational, decisions. Deductive reasoning would have found me researching to prove my thesis correct rather than researching for the truth – and not being a good historian or researcher. We might call this “common hour thinking” or, staying in our comfort zone – even being on auto pilot.
Inductive reasoning is being open to all the facts and stimulus and then making a conclusion – this is the conscious mind. With inductive reasoning you are taking in and noticing everything from your 5 physical senses – sight, sound, hearing, touching, tasting – then you also use your metaphysical senses like intuition and imagination and memory. Or in the case of my research, I read documents that might have disproved my thesis or lead me to a new thesis. I was open to the truth even if it took me out of my comfort zone.
Deductive reasoning keeps you in the boundary of logic. Inductive reasoning takes you over the fence into the realm of potential and possibility. Inductive reasoning is your superpower.
For my research it was logical for me to deduce that Reagan was responsible for the ERA failure since he failed to sign it into law and did nothing to promote it’s success. I probably could have found some evidence to support my thesis, maybe even enough to argue successfully in my paper. But it would not have been the truth. It would have ignored other potential findings. It would have been biased. And the results likely would have been a lower grade, and a missed opportunity for me to grow.
And so, in your life, when you have a problem or circumstance – when you have a longing for a dream but can’t find success– most often you are likely thinking within the boundaries of the problem and your current circumstances. You deduce – you believe – you think – your circumstances control your choices and outcome. You’ll find an answer to your problem– it’s just never going to be THEE answer – the one that gets you the results you would really love. Not until you can use right reason – inductive reasoning – and bring all your senses, including the metaphysical ones, into your thinking process.
There is a time and place for deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning can be very helpful in a pinch and if you have a clear set of facts in front of you. What will I order for dinner at a restaurant does not need you to use your mental superpower of Reason because the choices are on the menu. You don’t need to go into the realm of unlimited possibility because the possibilities are defined by what the restaurant serves.
Now, What will I cook for dinner might take inductive reasoning if you are standing in the grocery store asking the question and have almost unlimited options in front of you. You are going to have to imagine what you would enjoy eating. You might need to consider how long it takes to cook it. You might need to listen to your intuition telling you what the best option would be. It’s going to take you a deeper level of thought to figure out what’s for dinner if you’re in the grocery store versus sitting in a restaurant.
And yes, that was a silly example of daily life, not a big problem to overcome, but it’s one in which we often live on auto pilot. How many times do you run to the store and just pick up the same old thing you cook every week because you hit the “easy button” so you don’t have to think about what to fix?
If we do this for something as simple as grocery shopping – you can imagine we do this with much harder things in our life. We run on auto pilot – we think the same things and make the same choices over and over – and we get the same results time and time again – and then wonder why we aren’t living the life we want.
We aren’t using right reason to solve our problems. Reason is like a muscle – if you want it strong and there for you when you need it, you have to practice. Silly things like thinking about what to pick up at the grocery store are actually great moments to practice because it’s hard to go wrong. But imagine if you did use your power of reason to choose what to fix for dinner and you pick up something new – a new recipe – you used your faculty of imagination and memory to pick something you think will be great, but you are unsure. And it turns out amazing and it’s your new favorite dish and you now take it to all the potlucks, and you get rave reviews from everyone who tries it… think about that! How cool would that be? Not so silly after all!
And once you get better at thinking and using your reason to make decisions – and this is really important – you stop reacting to everything in your life and begin responding to problems and circumstances that come up and catch you off guard. Reason becomes instinctual rather than hitting the “easy button.” You stop feeling into the problem and starting thinking about solutions – you ask yourself, “what would I love to come from this situation” and you climb over the fence into the land of potential and possibility, and you think your way to a better result for yourself – even better than you could have imagined.
Superpower, my friends. This is the way to a better life. This is the way to creating the life you love and the results you want no matter the situation or circumstance.
But it means getting off auto pilot. We live so much of our lives letting our subconscious beliefs control who we are and what we do.
I get it. My brain is tired too – tired of the stress and the ugly in the world. I want to come home in the evening and turn my brain off to rest. But if I do that and stop thinking when it’s important that I do so, my life will never grow or be any different than it is today.
This is a choice for you. This is a moment in life where you get to decide what you want and who you want to become. You are more powerful than you can imagine – your mind – your consciousness – is a powerhouse just waiting for you to call on it. But it takes effort. It takes awareness. It takes intentionality. It takes willingness to leave your comfort zone for the unknown.
These mental faculties are yours and they interact with the spiritual laws of the universe – the metaphysical laws of the universe. Yes, Law of Attraction being one of those laws! They are here to support your life. They are here to support you in your becoming who you would love to become.
Choose to become a person of right reason. Tap into these extraordinary gifts and use them the way the universe, god, nature, Consciousness intended them to be used… to lead you to self-actualization.
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