“Take a look around you tell me what you can see. I guess it all depends on exactly what you want it to be”

And while you’re thinking about that, here is a story that I just received from Steve Chandler:

A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud man, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with his hair fashionably combed and shaved perfectly, even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today. His wife of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready. As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of his tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on his window.

“I love it,” he stated with enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.

“Mr. Jones, you haven’t seen the room; just wait.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” he replied. “Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged, it’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it.”

And here’s a segment from one of my favorite shows, “The Point” showing Oblio’s and Arrow’s encounter with the Rock Man in the pointless forest:

Here are the seven levels:

7-Mastery
6-Experience
5-Discipline
4-Individual
3-Aspiration
2-Mass
1-Animal

Starting at the lowest level of awareness to the highest, here are brief descriptions of each level:

1-Animal: This level of awareness is the stimulus-response level, also known as the reactionary or the fight, flight or freeze level. There is very little, if any, thought at this level.

2-Mass: At this level, an individual is concerned about what others think about them. And it’s not what others actually think, it is what they think others think. Comments like, “what will the neighbors think”, “what will my parents think” are common questions asked at this level. This is the conforming level of awareness, or the “following the crowd” level. It is where the majority of people live their lives.

3-Aspiration: I like to call this level the “caterpillar” level. Imagine a caterpillar walking along a branch towards a leaf for a little dinner. While the caterpillar is eating the leaf, he says to himself, “I think I’m meant for more than this.” As a person starts to read quality information or listen to others with quality information, like Wallace D. Wattles, Jack Canfield, Michael Beckwith, Bob Proctor, Napoleon Hill and others, that person starts to realize that there is something more that they’re capable of.

4-Individual: After aspiring to something better, this person begins to acknowledge that he is a worthwhile, amazing individual that is capable of amazing things. But this level, by itself, won’t cut it. The individual level is intimately tied to the fifth level.

5-Discipline: This level is absolutely critical to the person who has aspired to break away from the Mass level of awareness. Without disciplining oneself to take action, there will be insufficient force to make that break from the Mass. It’s similar to the gravitational force of a planet, such as earth. Earth has a very large mass and therefore has a very strong gravitational force that keeps things on its surface. In order to break away from the gravitational force of the earth, a rocket has to have tremendous thrust. That thrust is similar to the discipline required for an individual to break away and actually do the things they have aspired to.

6-Experience: As the individual applies the discipline and does those things that will elevate him to new levels, the experience gained will reinforce that person’s awareness of his own abilities. This reinforces the individual and discipline levels of awareness and leads to greater and greater accomplishments. “That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do. Not that the nature of the thing has changed, but that our ability to do has increased.”

7-Mastery: At this level of awareness, there is a higher level of thought. This is where a person will respond instead of react. A person will stop and think; think and act. At this level of awareness, there is a higher level of humor, creativity, enthusiasm, excitement, love and gratitude.

But how many of us have heard of the six faculties of the mind?

Here are the six faculties in order of vibrational frequency:

1. Will
2. Memory
3. Perception
4. Reason
5. Intuition
6. Imagination

The will is the first of these faculties and is at the lowest vibrational frequency. It is first for a very important and significant reason; the will is our ability to choose. It is our ability to focus, to concentrate, to commit to something or someone. Courage, loyalty, discipline and perseverance are all a part of the will. If we didn’t have the will as the first of our mental faculties, we would probably just sit around like a vegetable and do nothing. We use our will to set our direction and determination to do things.

Memory. As human beings, we all have perfect memories! Everything that has ever happened to us, around us or by us is permanently fixed in our memories. We haven’t forgotten anything! We may not have developed the ability to recall all of those memories, but they are there! And we can develop the ability to recall things better, quicker and more reliably by developing our memories. If you haven’t already read it, I recommend “The Memory Book” by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas.

Perception. I mentioned the five senses and stated that it is through our senses that we interact with and communicate with our environment. But do we really see with our eyes? Or do we hear with our ears? The answer is, “no, we don’t”. We see through our eyes and we hear through our ears, but we see with our mind and we hear with our mind. It is our mind that perceives what is seen, heard, felt, tasted or smelled. Two people can be in a room, experiencing the same sensory inputs and describe completely different perceptions of what is going on. And perception uses memory to help it in the very process of perceiving. It has been stated that if we will allow ourselves to add someone else’s perception to our own, we will actually increase our own intelligence. This doesn’t mean that we necessarily agree with the other person’s perception, but that we can see it from their point of view.

Reason. This is the first of our mental faculties that involves the mental activity that we call intelligence. Our ability to reason, to use both inductive and deductive logic, is a very important mental faculty. This is where we “connect the dots” and figure things out. It’s an important aspect of our mental faculties, but it is still on a lower vibrational frequency than the last two of the six mental faculties.

Intuition. This faculty could be described as being very much like the “action at a distance” that is studied in physics. Albert Einstein called action at a distance, “spooky”, where two or more things influence and affect each other at speeds faster than light. Intuition, just like action at a distance, is the interaction of two objects which are separated in space with no known mediator of the interaction. Intuition has to do with pure energy and the perception of that pure energy. The fascinating thing about pure energy is that it never lies; it just is. As we develop our intuitive faculty, we can come closer and closer to the answers we seek. We ALL have an intuitive faculty. And we can ALL develop and increase our ability to use it.

Imagination. Napolean Hill called imagination, “the most marvelous, miraculous, inconceivably powerful force that the world has ever known.”. And Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” We have the ability to think independent of circumstance. At any moment, we can imagine ourselves somewhere else, doing something else.  Creativity and vision are both aspects of the imagination.

Each of these six mental faculties is important. No one of them is better than or more important than any of the others. And like all physical faculties, they can be neglected, forgotten and allowed to waste away. Whatever we don’t use, we lose. But the other side of that coin says that each of these mental faculties can be developed, strengthened and improved. Whatever we use, we strengthen. By being aware of these faculties, and by exercising the first one, the will, to get us started, we can raise each of these faculties to higher and higher levels.

Coupling these mental faculties with the physical faculties we possess, we can DO great things in this world!