Categories

Developing categories through which to simplify the world is one of the primary functions of the human mind….but we must also jettison categories when we turn our attention to an individual, or else we risk adding imagined information to the real data we obtain from the person. We will hear what we expect to hear rather than learning about what we don’t know.

Lucid Dreaming without Losing Consciousness

A lucid dream is a dream in which you are aware that you are dreaming, and often have the ability to control the dream’s content to some extent. The really fun part is that it is possible to enter a lucid dream without ever even falling asleep. Here’s how it works: Your brain doesn’t follow [...]

Fork-Bomb Your Brain

If the cognitive Fork Bomb command takes time to to process before coming back, and a repeat request is made in that time, waves of electrical signals could be canceling or amplifying along pathways in your brain. Wave interference is related to all sorts of really cool things, like sonic booms, lasers, and holograms. The idea of anything like that happening because of a simple thought just fills me with wonder…

The Many Arms Meditation: Extreme Multitasking

In 2004, during my first Summer at Fo Guang Shan with the Woodenfish program,my desperation to do anything other than counting my breaths led to any number of new and interesting meditation experiences.  This one was inspired by a combination of traditional Indian religious iconography, Tibetan deity yoga, and the desire to challenge my brain [...]

Exhilarating Coffee Meditation

This is a great meditative experience that anyone should be able to duplicate.  Blurring the boundaries a bit, this isn’t purely a cognitive activity, but also involves the use of chemical substances.  But then again, any cognitive activity is also an electro-chemical process in your brain as well… Obviously, some people may need to alter [...]