by Saleem Rana

The problem of creating problems is a systematic one. The entire system of thinking itself is flawed because it is based on a need to find and resolve problems.

This is not an original idea. David Bohm, an American quantum physicist, had expanded on it fully.

David Bohm, in his book Thought as a System, defined the problem with thinking itself.

"So one begins to wonder what is going to happen to the human race. Technology keeps on advancing with greater and greater power, either for good or for destruction."

"What is the source of all this trouble? I am saying that the source is basically in thought. Many people would think that such a statement is crazy, because thought is the one thing we have with which to solve our problems. That's part of our tradition. Yet it looks as if the thing we use to solve our problems with is the source of our problems. It's like going to the doctor and having him make you ill. In fact, in 20% of medical cases we do apparently have that going on. But in the case of thought, it's far over 20%."

"The general tacit assumption in thought is that it's just telling you the way things are and that it's not doing anything - that 'you' are inside there, deciding what to do with the info. But you don't decide what to do with the info. Thought runs you. Thought, however, gives false info that you are running it, that you are the one who controls thought. Whereas actually thought is the one which controls each one of us."

"Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally. This is another major feature of thought: Thought doesn't know it is doing something and then it struggles against what it is doing. It doesn't want to know that it is doing it. And thought struggles against the results, trying to avoid those unpleasant results while keeping on with that way of thinking. That is what I call 'sustained incoherence.'"

"What I mean by 'thought' is the whole thing - thought, 'felt', the body, the whole society sharing thoughts - it's all one process. It is essential for me not to break that up, because it's all one process; somebody else's thoughts becomes my thoughts, and vice versa. Therefore it would be wrong and misleading to break it up into my thoughts, your thoughts, my feelings, these feelings, those feelings... I would say that thought makes what is often called in modern language a system. A system means a set of connected things or parts. But the way people commonly use the word nowadays it means something all of whose parts are mutually interdependent - not only for their mutual action, but for their meaning and for their existence. A corporation is organized as a system - it has this department, that department, that department. They don't have any meaning separately; they only can function together. And also the body is a system. Society is a system in some sense. And so on.

"Similarly, thought is a system. That system not only includes thoughts, 'felts' and feelings, but it includes the state of the body; it includes the whole of society - as thought is passing back and forth between people in a process by which thought evolved from ancient times. A system is constantly engaged in a process of development, change, evolution and structure changes...although there are certain features of the system which become relatively fixed. We call this the structure....Thought has been constantly evolving and we can't say when that structure began. But with the growth of civilization it has developed a great deal. It was probably very simple thought before civilization, and now it has become very complex and ramified and has much more incoherence than before.

"Now, I say that this system has a fault in it - a 'systematic fault'. It is not a fault here, there or here, but it is a fault that is all throughout the system. Can you picture that? It is everywhere and nowhere. You may say "I see a problem here, so I will bring my thoughts to bear on this problem". But 'my' thought is part of the system. It has the same fault as the fault I am trying to look at, or a similar fault.

"Thought is constantly creating problems that way and then trying to solve them. But as it tries to solve them it makes it worse because it does not notice that it's creating them, and the more it thinks, the more problems it creates. (P. 18-19)"

Thus, the reason we have problems in the first place is because we think of things in a problematic way and manifest the situation. We then get stuck in it. The system of thought itself created the problem. Of course, we like to believe that the problem existed in reality and that we just smacked into it.

But reality does not exist without us, it is, after all, only an interpretation of sensory data. I know that this is not clear either, so let me draw a quick thought-experiment here.

Imagine if one early morning, 10 people were put on a bus and taken to a new town that none of them had ever been before. They were then allowed to roam around it for the whole day. Finally, in the evening, they would return back to their city of origin. Now, each one would be surprised by a separate interview. The physical aspects of the town (an objective reality) would be interpreted by the minds of those ten people based on their own interests, views, habits, predilections, patterns of observation, past history, and so on. Each one would notice different things and filter out different things. In fact because of their differences, they probably would have dispersed and visited completely different places in that town. After the interviewers themselves got together, they would wonder if the visitors had been to the same town or ten different towns.

Reality-creation is an interpretive experience.

So the only way to escape the system of interpretive thought you are in is to follow the five steps that I call Applied Mysticism.

Let us run through a theoretical example to make it clear.

Suppose, you need more money than you can currently receive from your job to pay some bills. Here is how you apply the five steps.

1. Ask for a way to pay the bills.
2. Imagine paying the bills.
3. Trust that the bills are paid.
4. Let it go.
5. The answer will appear.

How will the answer appear? It appears in an unexpected way.

Your mind can only run over what you know. But all this data is mined from the past, because that is where all known variables exist. What you need is an answer from the future. This answer comes in an unexpected way. It can come as an insight, someone just showing up with the answer, or finding the answer in a book that you happen to pick up.

About the Author

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

http://www.content4reprint.com/psychology/applied-mysticism.htm