By George Gillas of the Janus Center for Personal Growth
www.JanusCenter.com
(How Becoming a POET© can Increase Your Awareness)
How our minds work is an endless source of fascination and amazement to me. How is it that a pregnant woman notices other pregnant women “everywhere”, sometimes even before she knows she is pregnant? How does a new car owner suddenly see other cars on the road just like the one he just purchased? Have you ever heard someone saying your first name in a noisy and crowded room? Have you ever noticed someone else’s shoes, tie, suit, dress, etc. because it is the same designer brand that you are wearing?
How does this work? Is it a simple coincidence or is there some great cosmic power at play? Is it best to be totally aware of the event; perhaps even to stop what you are doing and go to a quiet place to meditate on the “synchronistic power of the universe”, or is it best to just let the moment pass and discount it as a meaningless, albeit interesting, happenstance?
As with so many things, I believe the answer lies somewhere in the middle ground, where there is less conscious effort and more unconscious processing. One function of our brains is to generalize information. You need not see every chair ever created to know a chair is a chair. Your mind/brain generalizes “chair” so it will interpret the next “chair like event” as a chair – something you can sit in. It is a good thing we generalize; we learn this way.
When something that was formerly unknown and unfamiliar suddenly becomes known and familiar, we “see” more of that same thing – or similar (generalized) things around us. The non-pregnant woman passes by pregnant women without giving them a glance. Suddenly a physiological change takes place in her body and her unconscious mind is fully aware of her new state of pregnancy. What happens? She notices pregnant women. It is not as if she is seeking them out; she simply sees them when previously she did not. At the unconscious level, her body knows she is pregnant. Pregnancy is known and familiar to her unconscious mind before she is consciously aware of the fact.
A new neural network is forming in her brain. Billions of neural connections are being made in response to her new physiological state. Pregnancy becomes known and familiar at the unconscious level and she literally sees things differently. We experience the same process when we notice a suit of clothes or a new car. Once something is known and familiar at the unconscious level, we notice those things around us. Imagine what it would be like to have gratitude, love, abundance, joy, or laughter all known and familiar at the unconscious level. What might you notice around you then? What would you see and hear?
Some researchers believe this is a function of a deep brain system called the Reticular Activation System (RAS). The RAS is responsible for, among many other things, consciousness and awareness. This part of the brain makes outside information known, conscious, and aware.
We can consciously build a neural network to help enhance this system. This is a simple exercise that has only four steps. As with most new things, it may feel a little cumbersome at first; and then will do it quickly and easily.
The steps form an acronym: POET. P – Pause. O – Observe. E – Examine. T – Thank.
You can use POET for positive and negative examples to build your neural network to your desire. First the positive example. Let’s say you happen to catch yourself feeling really good at some point. Rather than just letting the moment pass (such a waste), pause for a moment. Catch yourself catching the moment. The question I use (for me) on a daily basis is, “Huh, how do I do this feeling?”
Now, the “huh” to me is an interrupt. “Huh,” causes me to stop the process of the feeling for a moment. Then the question, “How do I do this feeling?” Not “why” am I feeling this way or “what” am I thinking about but HOW do I do the feeling. Asking “how” becomes important with negative feelings. Do it for both positive and negative emotions; it is easier to learn one system so you can master the technique quickly. “How” do I do this forces you to examine the process of the feeling. This simple question takes care of P (pause) and O (observe).
Next, E - Examine the event. A great question to ask is, “What can I learn from this… what is the lesson that is here for me now?” Or you can ask, “What was the thought that preceded the feeling? And how is this thought important to who I am becoming, or where I want to be, or what my goals are?” Ask relevant questions of your mind. Now, the really important part. Think no more and let it go. Do not analyze this and search for meaning or try to pull meaning out of it. Let your unconscious mind do that.
Can you remember being a kid in high school and having a difficult problem to solve for homework. You can recall not being able to solve it and finally going to bed, can you not? How many times did you wake up and have the answer magically appear? While you slept, your unconscious mind worked on the problem. Your faithful unconscious servant searched your entire data bank of experience and knowledge and awoke with the solution.
The final step is to Thank (the T of POET) yourself for catching the emotion and the thought. Thank your own power of observation. Thank your awareness and your intellect for taking a moment to enjoy the feeling. Feel the gratitude.
Do not make the mistake of slowing down your unconscious mind with your logical, rational, conscious thought. Let your unconscious mind find the meaning. Let your unconscious mind generalize and build the neural network for you. Then, as similar situations occur, two things happen; first, you will recognize them faster and second you will notice them occurring more often. Each time you take the time to run POET, you add on more links to the neural network; and the process repeats.
It is Easy. Pause, Observe, Examine, and Thank.
If you experience negative feelings, do the same thing. Pause and Observe, “Huh, how do I do this feeling (sad, mad, hurt, etc.) If you ask, “why am I thinking this” or “what am I thinking about now”, you keep your focus on the problem and reinforce the neural net for the problem.
We already know staying in the problem is not productive so change the question to “HOW do I do this?” This question interrupts the slide into bad feelings. It dissociates you from the emotion. It provides a pause for you to Observe and Examine the emotion with the same questions as before, “What can I learn from this? What was the thought that preceded the emotion?” And, you can ask, “How can I think differently in the future so this will lead me toward what I want?” Once again, do not get stuck in a conscious analysis. Your unconscious mind is much better at making sense of things. It loves to do this! Your mind really enjoys finding relevance, meaning, and lessons. Your unconscious mind is the ultimate problem solver; so let it do its thing!
Lastly, Thank yourself for taking the moment to catch this. And really mean it… be thankful.
Do this and you’ll find yourself pulling out of those little negative slides much faster than before. In addition, you finish the process with a feeling of gratitude, which, interestingly enough is all about you. That makes your unconscious want to do this even more often and faster. So the next time there is a little negativity; you pull out of it with more ease and insight. You build a positive, reparative neural network for lessons, learning, and solutions, instead of the pattern of feeling worse. And that sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?
I imagine you might be reading this and saying, “OK, I get the pregnant women and new car part, but what does this have to do with the Law of Attraction?”
Thanks for asking!
Without getting into the quantum physics of the Law of Attraction (LOA), let us instead consider the neural network and the Reticular Activation System. By following the pattern of POET, I think you can see how you will start to notice meaningful events not as random occurrences but often times as little synchronicities.
I am not suggesting you spend endless hours examining everything that happens in a day looking for meaning. Doing that keeps you stuck in the past – always focusing on what just happened. You will become closed off from enjoying time in the present moment and training your mind because you are too busy using your conscious mind to think about the past emotion. The shift with POET is made at the unconscious level. Pause, Observe, Examine - Ask the questions. Be Thankful and move on. With good or bad feelings, move on.
Trust your mind to work behind the scenes. Just like it did in high school with the problem you could not solve. Just like it does with crossword puzzles or the name of that person you met last week. When we turn our conscious attention to other things, our unconscious goes to work to do what it does best, solve puzzles, look for patterns, find meaning, and relevance. Whether you get a conscious insight that you can put into words or whether you do not is not important. What matters is that you ask the questions, give your unconscious mind the proper direction, leave it alone, and be thankful.
If you are up-to-speed on quantum physics, you will recognize the “higher vibrational energy” of gratitude. That’s what this is about.
Utilizing the POET strategy adds a new dimension to the LOA, let’s call it Awareness. When you focus on those moments of feeling good, you will become more aware of more moments when you feel good. When you run the POET strategy on moments when you feel bad, you will become more aware of how to quickly interrupt that pattern and how to find a positive meaning in the event.
Utilizing the POET strategy, you are simultaneously developing a neural network for positive outcomes and interpretations, enhancing the Reticular Activating System by having these things become known and familiar at the unconscious level, training your mind to become an automatic good-finder, and raising your quantum vibration because you are spending more time in gratitude and positive emotions than before.
That is how it ties together! POET increases awareness. Awareness increases the vibration. The higher vibration attracts more of like energy. Now you are in a positive cycle of unconsciously experiencing the quantum field, your mind, and your neural physiology.
With a little practice you can become one of the very few people on the planet who knows how to consciously direct their unconscious mind to build a neural network to their own specifications!
What fun!
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