one of the mentalcomponents listed earlier. Yet we know they exist because we canexperience the results of someone's beliefs or thoughts as they are expressedoutwardly in the physical environment through their behavior.
Now, for those of you who are asking yourself how do these mentalcomponents exist if they aren't tangible and no one has ever directly
78experienced them? The answer is, they exist as a form of energy (andenergy doesn't have mass). For example, light will pass through physicalobjects or reflect off them, but light will not displace anything, andelectricity will pass through objects, not displace them. Entities made up ofatoms and molecules will displace one another as they move into eachother's space.
For a long time the scientific community believed that the atom was thesmallest, most fundamental building block of existence, only to discoverlater that within an atom is energy. What scientists haven't figured out yetis how does something that exists without mass (the energy within theatom) become something that does have mass—the atom. In other words,how does energy go from being non-physical to physical. Albert Einsteinwas once asked to give his definition of matter and he said "Matter ismerely energy in a form that we can perceive by our senses." Even at theatomic level the book you are now reading and the chair you are sitting onto read it appear to your senses as if they are solid. However, that is not thecase at all. Our senses cannot perceive things as they exist at the atomiclevel where everything is spinning and there is space between the atoms.However, the point I am making is that all matter exists as energy at the verydeepest level of existence (within the atom), but not all energy exists asmatter, as with light and electricity.
In very general terms, mental energy, as it exists in its various, intangibleforms as beliefs, feelings, emotions, and so on has the potential to act as aforce on our behavior and consequently as a force on the outside physicalenvironment corresponding to the way in which this energy is expressed.For example, mental energy in the form of a belief or memory of anexperience can motivate a person to walk across a room to change thechannel on his television set because he believes a program on anotherchannel is more worthwhile or pleasurable, bid the price of a stock higherthan the last price because he believes it serves his best interests, or motivatemasses of people to go fo war to defend or promote whatever they believeneeds to be defended or promoted. These actions and their effects on theenvironment are the result of this mental energy expressed outwardly.
WHAT IS EXPERIENCE?
We experience the world with our five physical senses. This is commonknowledge. But, when you get down to the very basics, what actuallyhappens to our experiences of the environment as they go from the outer(physical) to the inner (mental) environment? What we see, hear, touch,taste, and smell at a physical level is transformed into electrical impulses ofenergy and is sent to the brain via the nervous system. That is, at the mostbasic level, tangible experience of the outside world is transformed intointangible electrical energy, meaning that the tangible medium where weexperience our lives (the physical environment) does not have the same
79characteristics and properties of the medium that represents and stores theseexperiences on the inside of us (the mental environment). We will examinethese differences on a more practical level in a moment.
If, at first, it seems preposterous to think that our experiences(environmental information) are transformed into electrical energy, thenconsider that we have been using an analogous form of technologymechanically for years in the form of telephones and computers.Computers store information, sounds, and images in a number of differentenergy media. Telephones transport sounds and images in the form ofelectricity, light, or microwaves. As common-place as all this is, there is stillsomething fascinating about a living process that transforms sensoryinformation (tangible experience) into electricity and stores it that way.Everything that we have learned (as individuals) about the nature of ourexistence is stored in our mental environment at an intangible level, in anonphysical reality (energy is real, yet it is nonphysical because it doesn'tconsist of atoms and molecules, thus it can be said that energy exists in anonphysical reality).
Earlier, I did not include the brain as part of the mental environmentbecause it exists at the tangible level of atoms and molecules (physicalreality), whereas the mental environment (energy in the form of beliefs,memories, emotions, and so on, about the nature of physical environmentresulting from our experiences) does not exist at this tangible level. To helpyou understand this distinction between the brain and the mentalenvironment, consider that the brain exclusive of the mental environmentis no different from a computer that is not plugged into some electricalpower source. In this analogy, the mental environment would correspond tothe electrical energy that makes the computer run as well as store and carrythe various forms of information the computer is designed to handle and thecomputer hardware (physical, mechanical, atoms, and molecules) wouldcorrespond to the brain.
This is the reason why I stated in the beginning of the chapter thatthere are vast differences between the mental and physical environments.All the mental components I listed exist at the intangible level of energyand, more important, function with the same properties and characteristicsof energy. To understand the nature of the mental environment, you needto understand the characteristics of energy. Thus, what I intend to do nextis examine the properties and characteristics of typical energy forms likelight and electricity and then compare them to the characteristics of themental environment to establish a correspondence between the two.
80Finally, in the next five chapters I will tie all this material together to giveyou some very practical techniques to improve your ability to tradeeffectively.
HOW DOES THE MENTAL ENVIRONMENTCORRESPOND TO THE CHARACTERISTICSAND PROPERTIES OF ENERGY?
Energy Is Nondimensional
As we already know, energy doesn't take up space in the physicalenvironment because it doesn't displace anything that does take up space.This "no space" characteristic of energy gives it a nondimensional quality.In other words, anything that doesn't take up space also won't have anytangible dimensions of height, length, width, or circumference, at least notin the ways in which we would normally think of these properties. Thisnondimensional quality is probably the hardest concept to grasp about thenature of energy, because even though energy is nondimensional, it cantake some form that is visible to our eyes. And anything that is visibleshould have dimensions that we can measure. It may seem like an obviouscontradiction to say that energy can take a visible form and yet still not havedimension, but it is not.
The best example to illustrate this is with holograms or holographicphotography. With a holographic process you can create a_ three-dimensional image in light projected into space that can be seen with theeyes, and it will appear to have length, width, and circumference. Youcould even measure the length or width of the image; however, your handswould pass right through the image if you tried, because there really isn'tanything there, at least not in a physical sense. Images in light have nophysical substance, so from a physical perspective, they also don't have anydimension. (Relative to physical objects, energy doesn't have dimension.)
Memories or mental images (anything that we can see with our innereye, like visualizations, daydreams, or night dreams) could operate verymuch like a hologram of laser light—an image of light that has no physicalsubstance—where space as it relates to distance or dimension is not aconsideration. The total area available inside of our skulls is quite small,especially in relationship to what will fit from a mental perspective. We cancreate mental images of any size or proportion, with none of thedimensional limitations that exist in the physical environment because theseimages, as an energy form, have no physical substance and thus exist in astate of form without dimension, taking up "no space."
You can easily demonstrate this concept with a simple mental exercise.Close your eyes and picture the last place where you went on a vacation.Where did you stay? What side trips did you take? When you imagined
81where you went, did you get up and move from your present location inthe physical environment. Did you imagine yourself getting up out of yourchair to make all the preparations that would be necessary for such a trip?Did you get in your car and mentally drive each mile to your destination, asyou would if you were actually going? Probably not; the image of your lastvacation most likely just popped into your consciousness. It is as if youwere instantaneously transported to these locations, without regard to thespace or distance that you would need to travel to get there in the physicalenvironment. There was "no space" between your present location and theimage of the vacation spot you hold in your memories.
The nature of our dreams also illustrates this nondimensionalcharacteristic. First, there is no known limit to the type of dreamlandscape we could find ourselves in. Dreams can be as varied and diverse,if not more so, as the physical environment and all much larger than thespace available inside of our skull cavity. Furthermore, in our dreams wecan instantaneously change locations without actually traveling anydistance. For example, you could dream that you are in the basement ofyour house and then in the next instant be in your living room, withoutactually having walked up your basement stairs or through other rooms toget to there.
Speed
The second characteristic the mental environment shares with energy isspeed. Energy travels at an incredibly high rate of speed. Light, forexample, travels at a rate of 186,000 miles per second, fast enough totravel around the Earth approximately eight times in | second. This is sofast that to our physical senses, it appears instantaneous or simultaneous.What I mean is, it moves so fast that our physical senses cannot detect themotion. Obviously, we can see the light, but we cannot actually see it movingfrom any given source to some distant point. For example, when you turn on alight in a dark room, does the room become illuminated in stages as the lighttravels from its source to the walls? No, to our eyes the room fills with lightinstantaneously, seeming to be everywhere at once, in a flash. Our eyes are notconstructed in a manner where we can make any distinctions in movement, soit seems as if it doesn't move at all.
This instantaneous characteristic of light relates quite well to the mentalenvironment. As I pointed out earlier, dream travel can be and usually isinstantaneous. While you're having a dream, in one instant you could be in ahouse and the next you could be on the other side of the world. There really isn'tany travel time between these dream locations. Whatever, mental mechanismprompts the change, it creates a simultaneous transfer, probably taking as muchphysical (clock) time as it does for light to fill up a dark room.
However, there is another mental characteristic (actually more of aphenomenon) that best illustrates the speed at which the mental environment
82operates. This is something that is not experienced by very many people, butnevertheless reported by enough people in completely separate, unrelatedincidents to confirm its validity. What I am referring to is the phenomenon ofhaving one's life flash before one's consciousness in the form of a continuousmental image, from birth to the present. Something like this usually onlyhappens in extreme life-threatening situations where the person believes that heis only moments from death. In those few moments before the expected death, thesights, sounds, tastes, smells, feelings, and emotions of one's entire life arereexperienced.
Personally whenever I've read of or heard someone's recounting of such anexperience, it baffled me. I didn't understand how a person's whole life couldscroll before his consciousness in a matter of moments, when it took years toexperience. However, after a great deal of contemplation, it occurred to me thatthe energy in which our experiences are stored moves at speeds that are soincredibly fast that it would make our lives seem quite short in comparison, thusmaking it possible for all our experiences to scroll by in moments, regardless ofhow long it took actually to have the experiences.
All this might be a little easier to understand if you imagine, as I did,experiences stored in a stream of light very much like what you would seewhen you look at a distant star. There is a very good correlation here. Forexample, scientists tell us that many of the closest stars to the Earth, otherthan our sun, are so far away, that even at the incredible speed of 186,000miles per second, it still takes the light emanating from these stars hundredsof years to reach the Earth. This distance between the stars and Earth is sovast that it creates a steady beam of light, billions of trillions of miles long.So, when we look at any star other than our sun, what we are actuallyseeing is the light that left it hundreds or even thousands of years ago, thuswhat we are seeing is light from the star's distant past. Now, if we could travelalong this beam of light back to its source, what we would be seeing is lightfrom the star's more recent past (or future from the perspective of travelingtoward the star) the closer that we got to it, until we arrived at the star'spresent. Light from the past, future (depending on one's perspective), andpresent would exist simultaneously within that beam.
Now, imagine the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, feelings, and emotions ofour experiences stored in energy as a stream of memories that we can travelalong very much like this beam of light, where we can use ourconsciousness to roam between the distant past to the more recent past upto the present moment or project these memories out into the future. If theenergy in which our experiences are stored can move at speeds that areequal to or approach the speed of light, then it would offer a credibleexplanation as to how it is possible for one's whole life to scroll before one'sconsciousness in a matter of moments. To illustrate this for yourself further,imagine all your experiences stretched out like a beam of light that youcould travel along at the speed of light. At that speed, at even a couple ofseconds of travel time, you could get through a great deal of information. For
83example, if we just arbitrarily decided that it took 10,000 miles of mentalenergy stretched out to hold | year's worth of experience, then, at the speedof light, you could get through almost 19 years of memories in | second.
Recognition of this phenomenon helps us to grasp one of the mostdifficult concepts about the nature of the mental environment—that itexists outside of time, as we know it. That is, our physical senses lock usinto perceiving an environment bounded by the limitations of time andthree-dimensional space. We have to experience each moment in a linearsequence. We can't go backward and experience the past as it existed in thephysical environment; once it passes, it's gone forever. Nor can we moveahead into the future. The past doesn't exist anymore, and the futuredoesn't exist yet. What does exist are these seemingly endless sequences of"now moments" in which we experience our lives. However, the mentalenergy our inner components consist of operates outside of our normalconcept of time and space as it is experienced in the physical environment.In the mental environment there are no spatial boundaries or timeconstraints; we can think in any direction we please: past, present, orfuture. And, theoretically, there would be no limits or boundaries as to howmuch information could be stored.
Simply stated, time is a function of our perception of movement overdistance or three-dimensional space. In other words, to perceive time, youneed two key components: space that has dimensions, and movement. Boththese properties obviously exist in the physical environment. It hascharacteristics of three-dimensional space consisting of length, height,width or thickness, and circumference. Also the physical environment is inconstant motion. The sun, other stars, the planets, and their moons are allin motion. And even though we can't directly perceive it, everythingphysical is in motion at the atomic and molecular level. Everything isspinning around something larger from the tiniest atoms and molecules tothe largest stars and solar systems, including the atoms and molecules in ourown bodies.
This spinning motion of the Earth and its orbit around the sun acts as aforce on the environment, changing day to night and night to day, creatingthe weather and the seasons as well as an endless number of otherenvironmental cycles. All these cycles of environmental changes (includingour own bodily cycles of growth, age, respiration, digestion, and so on,resulting from the movement of the atoms and molecules of our cells) actas a force on our physical senses, causing us to experience a constantlychanging environment, one cycle after another, in straight linear fashion,thus giving us our perception of time that is always moving forward. If wecouldn't perceive motion or some sort of movement over three-dimensionalspace to act as reference points to measure this movement, then wewouldn't be able to perceive the passing of time. For example, if we wereconscious but somehow fixed in a state of suspended animation where wehad no sensory input, no perception of movement of any kind, not even a
84heartbeat, it would be impossible to tell the difference between a fewseconds or a few days. To measure time, you need a point to start from anda point to get to; these points can be measured off in distance or time, butyou need three-dimensional space to get your points.
We think in an environment that is more like a stream where ourconsciousness can roam freely between the past, present, and future withoutregard to time or space. Furthermore, the actual sequences of moments thatexist in the physical environment have no effect on the energy our memoriesare stored in. Sequences of time only have an effect on the mentalenvironment relative to the impact the environment is having on our sensesin energy terms. You can easily demonstrate this to yourself by trying toreconstruct from your memory the last 24 hours, moment for moment.Difficult, isn't it. Now try to do it for a week ago today. The only things weremember are the significant events, the experiences that had the mostimpact on our senses, the ones with the most energy connected with them.That's because experiences are not recorded in our memories as momentsof time; they are stored as charges of energy. And as such they have norelationship to the passing of physical clock time.
Remember, energy doesn't exist as atoms and molecules and thereforerelative to our perception of the passing of time, it is not subjected to thisnonstop spinning of everything that is physical. Energy can remain static orbe active. For example, someone or something could remind you of anexperience that happened 20 years ago, an experience that you haven'tthought of since it happened. When you tap into the energy of thosememories, you will reexperience the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and mostimportant, the emotions of that time, as if nothing had changed. In yourmind nothing has changed. The energy remained dormant for 20 years. Itbecomes active either when we choose to think or reflect about what isinside of us or when we are inadvertently reminded of what is inside of us.
Significantly positive (pleasurable: happy, joyful, etc.) or negative (painful:terrorizing, angry, hateful) experiences are easily recalled because of theamount or intensity of the energy involved with the event. These types ofexperiences will pop into our conscious recollection, at will. But, try toremember every time in your life that you brushed your teeth, took a drinkof water, opened your refrigerator door, or put your shoes and socks onand it's not so easy. These events are difficult to recall because there isvery little energy connected with each of these types of experiences.
Our memories are like pockets of energy that we may organizechronologically by date and time, as in the stream-of-light example.However, all the uneventful moments between the eventful moments seemto disappear without a trace or get compressed as if they never happened,even though we know that they did. We must have put on our shoes andsocks a month ago today because we probably would remember walkingaround without them; that might be significant enough to remember.
What we read, as an example, is usually quickly forgotten because there is
85very little impact the environment is having on our senses. Printed words ona page have very little visual impact in relationship to activities of a moreexperiential nature. For example, actually participating in a biologyexperiment will have a much greater impact from an energy perspectivethan will reading about one. The energy required to remember somethingthat we read has to be generated from within in the form of concentration.
So, the way in which we experience clock time is in relationship to whatwe are feeling (either physical or emotional impact) in any given moment.If, for example, you were experiencing terror, each second of clock timecould easily seem like an hour or day. Each moment of a terrorizingexperience seems to last forever because the environment is assaulting oursenses. The impact is so painful that we can't wait for the experience toend to be out of that situation. We would therefore focus our attention onhow long the event is lasting, while we were waiting for it to end, thusslowing down our sense of time.
Pleasurable experiences seem to fly by (we have no concept of timepassing) because we are in a state of joy and happiness, and nothing takes usout of these moments to feel something less than the joy. We come out ofthat state of mind when the experience starts to diminish in its degree ofhappiness causing us to focus more on the unpleasantness of what we areexperiencing (some degree less than joy, even if it is boredom) compared tothe happiness we were feeling. When our focus shifts from joy (no conceptof time passing) to "I can't wait for this to end," our sense of time slowsdown in proportion to the unpleasantness of the experience.
In the physical environment, experiences take place in moments of timethat pass one after another, in linear fashion. What we experience inmoments of time (through our physical senses) is transformed intoelectrical energy and stored as a memory relative to the degree of impact ofthe experience. Memories don't have any restrictions imposed on them bytime because energy isn't physical. Time is one directional, whereas in ourmental environment we are free to think about our memories at will or byjust wanting to. We can experience them as a mental image, mentalsounds, mental tastes, and so on. Each of our memories makes up a part ofour identity, and because they exist as an energy form, they have thepotential to act as a force on our behavior. Regardless of whether we areconscious of these specific forces or not they cause us to move through theenvironment in certain ways corresponding to what we have alreadyexperienced to create more experiences and more memories.
Essentially, what I am stating is that our existence straddles two verydifferent dimensions simultaneously. We live in and perceive three-dimensional space, and, as a result, our physical senses are subject to thelimitations of time, where one moment passes after another in straightlinear fashion, whereas we think in a dimension where time and space as itis perceived in the physical environment doesn't exist. Now, there are somevery important psychological implications within the concept that time
86and space don't exist in the mental environment, implications that have todo with our ability to experience happiness, fulfill our needs, and achieveour goals, which are all basically synonymous. However, before we addressthese implications, you will need to understand how experiences are storedin varying degrees of positively or negatively charged energy, what I call the"quality of energy" our memories are stored in.
87CHAPTER 10
How Memories,Associations, and BeliefsManage EnvironmentalInformation
From the moment we are born into this world, our existence acts as a forceon the physical environment. We take up space that cannot be occupied byanyone or anything else. And, in turn, the physical environment acts as aforce on our physical senses, creating a cause-and-effect relationshipbetween ourselves and the environment. It is important for you to note nowand for the rest of the book that I am defining the physical environment inthe broadest sense possible, as everything outside of ourselves, includingother people. Now, at the most basic level, we create experience forourselves by the mere fact that we exist. To exist implies that our senses arealive and that we are interacting (acting as a force) with the environment,altering its makeup and consistency as we move through it. For example,our movement and behavior set off an endless series of chain reactions thatalter the landscape in some way, shape, or form. And even when we aren'tactively changing or manipulating the environment in some way, we arestill taking up space and thus subjecting ourselves to atmospheric forces, aswell as causing changes in the makeup of the atmosphere from ourbreathing.
MEMORIES ARE STORED ASCHARGED ENERGY
The experiences that result from this constant interaction with theenvironment will be transformed into electrical impulses of energy. As
88electrical impulses of energy, the experiences will carry an electrical charge.The charge will be either positive or negative, depending on the kind ofimpact the environment had on our senses. For example, a crying baby isacting as a force on the environment. More specifically, the baby is creatinga sound that is acting as a force on the eardrums of everyone in hisvicinity. How the environment responds to this force will create experiencefor the child and determine the electrical charge or quality of energy that isrecorded in the baby's memory.
"Quality of energy" is the relative degree of positively or negativelycharged energy in which the experience is recorded. For example, if theenvironment responds to the child with a soothing caress, expressing loveand a sense that his needs will be taken care of, then the experience will berecorded in the child's memory with some degree of positively chargedemotional energy. The degree of positiveness will depend on the intensityof the experience, that is, the degree of impact the environment had on thechild's senses. Pleasant, happy, joyful, and loving experiences will result inthe storage of positively charged energy. If, however, the environmentresponds harshly, in such a way as to have a violent impact on the child'ssenses, by screaming (assaulting his eardrums) or slapping him to producephysical pain, then the experience will be recorded in the child's memorywith negatively charged emotional energy to the same degree as theintensity of the experience.
There are two basic components that make up the quality of energy inwhich our memories are stored. The first is the polarity of the charge, whichcould be positive, neutral, or negative. The second component is theintensity of the charge ranging from extreme positive, which would be anexperience of maximum intensity creating a feeling of elation, to extremenegative, which would be an experience of unbridled terror. Quality ofenergy is an important concept for you to understand because it affects thetype of beliefs we form about the nature of the environment, which in turnaffects how we perceive information and interact with the environment.
The Characteristics of Positively Charged Energy
Positive energy is expansive. It promotes mental growth or learning bycreating a sense of confidence, which in turn results in an openness to exploreand discover the unknown. I am defining the unknown as anything thatexists as a possibility in the physical environment that does not yet reside insome form in one's mental environment. Positive energy perpetuates ournatural, childlike sense of curiosity and wonderment toward theenvironment that we are all born with.
By following the interests of our natural sense of curiosity, we interactwith the environment to create experience and learn something previouslyunknown to ourselves, thus generating a sense of excitement about life, aswell as increasing our ability to operate in the environment more effectively
89because we are continuing to learn more about the way things exist. There isa direct relationship between how much we have allowed ourselves tolearn about the nature of the environment and the degree of negativelycharged energy in our mental environment. I am stating it this way with theemphasis on the negative because learning will take place quite naturally ifthere isn't anything in the inner environment to stop it. In other words, anabsence of fear (negatively charged energy) is a critical factor indetermining whether or not we will make ourselves available to learnanything new and continue to grow mentally.
For example, playfully throw a child up in the air and catch him and hewill beg you to do it over and over again. This is his way of interacting withthe environment to perpetuate the feelings of a positively chargedexperience. Positive energy is expansive, compelling us to interact with theenvironment to create more experience for ourselves. The more weexperience the more we learn about the nature of the environment. Themore we learn about the nature of the environment, the better able we areto interact with it more effectively to fulfill our needs and achieve our goals.Positively charged memories give us that sense of confidence that allowsto step out to try something new resulting in mental growth.
The Characteristics of Negatively Charged Energy
Now, throw the same child up in the air for the first time, as in the earlierexample, but instead of catching him, accidentally drop him, and not onlywill he not ask you to do again, he will cower in terror at the very suggestion.The difference in his behavior, of course, is the result of the differencesbetween the two experiences. In the first example, the experience waspleasurable, resulting in the storage of positively charged energy. In thesecond example, the experience was painful, resulting in the storage ofnegatively charged energy.
Regardless of whether we were acting as a force on the environment(behavior motivated by our sense of curiosity) and got an unexpected orunintended painful reaction, or the environment, uninitiated by ourselves(other than the fact that we exist), acted as a force on us in a way thatresulted in pain, the experience will result in the formation of a negativelycharged memory. Painful memories will generate fear, causing us toperceive the environment as threatening in its ability to cause more pain insome future moment. The way we will perceive it as threatening willcorrespond to our memories of the experiences that resulted in pain insimilar circumstances or conditions (the things we fear in the environmentare those things we have learned to recognize as threatening).
In contrast to the feelings of confidence and well-being that result frompositively charged experiences, fear acts as a limiting or inhibiting force onboth our behavior and our perception of environmental information. I amsure that everyone reading this book at some point has experienced theeffects that fear can have on one's behavior. It can cause us to run from an
90obviously dangerous situation or completely immobilize us to the pointwhere our body will not respond to any conscious command. Feardrastically limits our choices. It causes us to interact with the environmentin ways that are limited to the structure of our memories, regardless ofwhat the environment may be offering in the way of a new experience, or itcauses us to avoid an experience completely. Interacting with theenvironment results in experience, and experience results in learning. If weexperience the environmental present based on our individual past, orcompletely avoid experience altogether, we aren't learning what is beingoffered or available to be learned about the nature of the environment.
The net result of a painful experience is that it creates a negatively chargedmemory, which in turn creates and perpetuates a cycle of fear. Cycles offear then create cycles of discontent and dissatisfaction because we avoidexperience. When we avoid experience, we cut ourselves off from the joywe feel when we are learning. Just as positive cycles are expansive, negativecycles are degenerative. Our painful memories keep us from learning howto interact with the environment in effective and satisfying ways that wouldresult in happier and more fulfilling lives because we aren't learning whatwe need to know to experience something different.
Fear limits both our range of behavior and our perception ofenvironmental information. The ways in which it limits our behavior areobvious. However, there are many ways in which fear acts on ourperception that aren't so obvious; in fact some of the ways can be verysubtle and difficult to recognize, until one learns what to look for. Astraders, it is essential that you be able to observe the market's behaviorfrom an objective perspective. To observe objectively you will need tolearn how to recognize a variety of subtle fears that will destroy yourability to be objective without really knowing it. This is a subject I willcover in much greater depth a little further on. However, before I can doso you need to understand the nature of associations and how perceptioncreates an energy loop between the inside mental environment and theoutside physical environment.
ASSOCIATIONS
Associations seem to be a natural characteristic of the way in which wethink. That is, our brains are wired in such a way as to link similar formsof environmental information together automatically. We do this inbasically two ways. First, there is a natural propensity to label people andobjects based on some prominent characteristic and then categorize theminto associative groups. After we categorize the groups by sex, hair color,skin color, profession, economic status, educational background, and soon, we then associate whatever experience or knowledge we have about thegroup with everyone and everything that has those same characteristics. Forexample, if we have a painful experience with a person who has a skin91color different from that of our own, we will automatically associate every-one with that skin color with the qualities of that one experience.
The second way we associate is by linking extraneous sensoryinformation with some event. We will automatically associate what we aresmelling, tasting, hearing, or seeing along with the quality of energy of theprimary experience. For example, a child getting spanked will associate all theother environmental information that his senses are inadvertently picking upwith the pain he is feeling from the spanking. What he hears, smells, tastes, and