roage.free-forum.net

[curiotrope]

I'm surprised there is not already a "recommended books" post here, so here goes...

My introduction to the right brain/left brain dichotomy was through an this book. Some friends of mine in high school were drawing portraits in art class. Now, portraits can be particularly hard to draw, but their portraits were surprisingly accurate because they were drawing them upside down. The idea came from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

Everybody has their own mental image of what a "typical" eye looks like, or a nose or mouth or ear. The main trouble many people have when drawing portraits is that their left-brain takes over and they start drawing those "typical" features in the same way a child will draw the same type of house over and over again. When you turn your reference photo upside down, everything looks strange and different. Then the left-brain doesn't know what to do and lets the right-brain take over. Then you draw what is actually there instead of what your ego thinks should be there. The rest is hand-eye coordination and dexterity.

Worth a try. Here's some links to the book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
http://drawsketch.about.com/od/suppliesbooks/fr/draw_right_side.htm
http://www.amazon.com/New-Drawing-Right-Side-Brain/dp/0874774195/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312766675&sr=8-1

Another book that has some interesting food for thought is The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. This book theorizes that the corpus collosum, the material connection between the right and left hemispheres of the brain, has evolved in humans over time and that our relationship with Ø has evolved with it. The author explores his theories with examples from science and archeology, and looks at ancient civilizations around the world. There is a chapter on schizophrenia and a chapter on hypnotism.

Here's some links for the The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. However, please keep in mind that this book has been subject to very wide interpretation. If you find this subject matter fascinating, I strongly encourage you to read the book for yourself and draw your own conclusions.
http://www.julianjaynes.org/bicameralmind.php
http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312764948&sr=8-1

[curiotrope]

I was thinking about Illusions: the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah the other day, and then I saw this post about it on another thread, here: http://roage.free-forum.net/reconciliation-with-the-world-vt296.html

It's awesome. It's a fairly short novel, a quick and engaging read. There's a pretty good chance you can find a paperback copy at a local used book store.

Here's some links for Illusions :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusions_%28Bach_novel%29
http://www.amazon.com/Illusions-Adventures-Reluctant-Richard-Bach/dp/0440204887

[thequestforthequest]

http://courseinmiracles.com/

Introduction to A Course In Miracles
This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary.
Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum.
It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time.
The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught.
It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence,
which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear,
but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.
This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.

A Course in Miracles replacing the Bible? Religion? Christianism? Gary Renard

A Course in Miracles - An overview of its philosophy

The Story of A Course In Miracles 1/16

Jewels from A Course in Miracles

[curiotrope]

I want to add a link to the post about A New Earth:
http://roage.free-forum.net/a-new-earth-vt323.html
If you want to really understand your ego, read this book!

[Seamus]

Just a reminder...

no one man will ever be able to express only truth. Well, there were a couple, but that was a long time ago.

never disengage the critical thinking/intuition

[thequestforthequest]

http://www.abdrushin.us/in-the-light-of-truth/

For guidance!

The bandage falls and belief becomes conviction. The mind only feels itself free and at peace when it is convinced. I am only addressing serious seekers. They must be capable and willing to judge from an unbiased standpoint. Religious fanatics and irresponsible enthusiasts may hold aloof, for they are only detrimental to the truth and, as for the malevolent and the prejudiced, they will find their sentence in the Word.

This message will only touch those who have a grain of truth left in them, and who wish to represent a human being as he should be.

To all such it will be a lamp to their feet and a staff in their hand, and will safely lead them out of the chaos and confusion prevalent today.

The following exposition does not promulgate a new religion, it is intended as a guide for all hearers and readers to the way upwards, to the longed-for goal.

Only he who starts of his own accord can advance spiritually. The fool who appropriates and makes use of the ready-made opinions of others, is like one who dismembers his own sturdy legs and walks on crutches.

As soon, however, as he boldly summons his slumbering abilities (they lie waiting to be called to help him), he is putting his talent to account in obedience to the Will of the Almighty and will easily overcome all obstacles that seek to deter him.

Therefore awake! Right faith is conviction and conviction only comes after submitting a question absolutely impartially to the test. See that you are awake and alive in God Almighty's wonderful Creation!
Abdruschin

[curiotrope]

I just came across a passage I copied down when I read The Origin of Conciousness. Now keep in mind that the author is very left brained and academic, but I thought he was very close in these few paragraphs:

What is it then that hypnosis supplies that does this extraordinary enabling, that allows us to do things we cannot ordinarily do except with great difficulty? Or is it 'we' that do them? Indeed, in hypnosis it is as if someone else were doing things through us. And why is this so? And why is this easier? Is it that we have to lose our conscious selves to gain such control, which cannot then be by us?
On another level, why is it that in our daily lives we cannot get up above ourselves to authorize ourselves into being what we really wish to be? If under hypnosis we can be changed in identity and action, why not in and by ourselves so that behavior flows from decision with as absolute a connection, so that whatever in us it is that we refer to as will stands master and captain over action with as sovereign a hand as the operator over a subject?
The answer here is partly in the limitations of our learned consciousness in this present millennium. We need some vestige of the bicameral mind, our former method of control, to help us. With consciousness we have given up those simper more absolute methods of control of behavior which characterized the bicameral mind. We live in a buzzing world of whys and wherefores, the purposes and reasonings of our narratizations, the many-routed adventures of our analog 'I's. And this constant spinning out of possibilities is precisely what is necessary to save us from behavior of too impulsive a sort. The analog 'I' and the metaphor 'me' are always resting at the confluence of many collective cognititve imparatives. We know too much to command ourselves very far.
Those who through what theologians call the "gift of faith" can center and surround their lives in religious belief do indeed have different collective cognitive imperatives. They can indeed change themselves through prayer and its expectancies much as in post-hypnotic suggestion. it is a act that belief, political or religious, or simply belief in oneself though some earlier cognitive imperative, works in wondrous ways. Anyone who has experienced the sufferings of prisons or detention camps knows that both mental and physical survival is often held carefully in such untouchable hands.
But for the rest of us, who must scuttle along on conscious models and skeptical ethics, we have to accept our lessened control. we are learned in self-doubt, scholars of our very failures, geniuses at excuse and tomorrowing our resolves. And so we become practiced in powerless resolution until hope gets undone and dies in the unattempted. At least that happens to some of us. And then to rise above this noise of knowings and really change ourselves, we need an authorization that 'we' do not have.