At the posts on Psychology of Intelligence Analysis and the Rex / Sikes NLP Course, I discuss cognitive commitments in detail. The following article discusses cognitive commitments in depth, that is, the origins of our belief systems from childhood.
Have you ever run into people who simply have an immature, narrow perspective on life? I have.
I have run into these full grown adults including medical doctors and scientists who are so absolutely hard headed and unyielding about their beliefs that they call me stupid when I introduce them to alternate science. My mind pattern doesn’t match theirs, therefore I’m stupid. They say I need to go back to school or I need to do more reading or some other canned beration.
On the other hand, these same people couldn’t care less about the education of people who are obedient and agreeable to their ways. No berations there. Have you ever run into these people who simply don’t understand why you don’t think the way they do? Then they throw a tantrum when you don’t think the same way they do… Yes, I’m talking about adults.
These are adults with closed minds. The origin of a closed mind are cognitive commitments. These commitments begin at childhood. Lloyd J. Thomas discusses these origins in depth.
Please have a look at the following article:
UPDATING YOUR CHILDHOOD
By Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D.
In India, they use grown elephants for logging. At night, they tie down each elephant’s leg with a small twine and a small wooden stake. The elephant could easily walk away, but never does. It believes that when there is pressure on his hind leg, that it is impossible to move beyond the limits of that string. A strong animal that has been lifting tons of logs during the day, is held back and limited by a small stake andstring. How did it get that way?…hobbled by such a seemingly small thing?
When the logging elephant was very young, he was chained (with a large, heavy chain) to a large tree. He would struggle against the limits of the chain until he was exhausted. It seems that he finally learned “when my hind leg feels the pressure of the chain, that is as far as I can walk.” So he quits struggling. He makes an immature cognitive conclusion about his limits and his ability to move beyond them, under certain circumstances. As the elephant grows, the chain is replaced by a rope, then the twine.
The tree is replaced by a smaller tree, then a large stake, then a small one. The elephant never updates the conclusion he made as a youngster. By the time he is fully grown, he still does not struggle against the puny twine that keeps him tied down. He never challenges that conclusion made in childhood about what he can and cannot do when his hind leg is shackled.
All of us were born into a rather chaotic world. Children are bombarded by new and meaningless stimulation of every one of their senses. Some of that stimulation is pleasurable, desirable and safe. Other stimuli are painful, repulsive and dangerous.
Gradually our brains and nervous systems develop sufficiently so we can begin organizing the chaos into perceptions and assigning meaning to them. We begin to make immature cognitive conclusions about ourselves, others and the world in which we live.
These conclusions are generally made by the time we are 5 years old. We decide that certain actions will result in what we want, while others are likely to get us into pain. We develop a kind of “working hypothesis” that says, “This is who I am, who the others are, and how the world is.” We conclude that our experience and perceptions are universal and “this is what life is like.” Just like the young elephant concludes he can’t walk beyond the limits of his tether.
Trouble begins when we grow older, gain more experience, and never revise or update our original conclusions. We keep fitting new experience into old familiar perceptual patterns. We paint new events with old color. We massage new relationships into shapes and roles with which we are most familiar, and with which we are most comfortable. We often carry our childhood conclusions about ourselves and our abilities right on into adulthood, without ever challenging them.
In our rapidly changing world, almost all of our immature cognitive conclusions have become obsolete. As grown-ups, we are no longer helpless, dependent, incompetent. We are no longer children. And the childhood conclusions we made have usually become irrelevant.
But we tend to keep them and continue to behave as if they were still accurate, still true and still useful.
To ease the anger, pain, and fear about giving up our childhood beliefs, as well as all the behavior based upon them, we first need to realize that it was precisely those conclusions, now mistaken and inappropriate, which got us through the first 20 years and allowed us to Survive the way we did. We were clever enough, perhaps even brilliant, to have made it through childhood, albeit with a lot of help from parents, teachers and friends. But now, RIGHT NOW, those conclusions may not work. They may now be mistaken.
A grown elephant could easily pull up the stake tied to his leg and simply walk away.
For example, the person who feels angry or threatened about being abandoned as a child, feels very justified as an adult in his anger, jealousy, and controlling behavior. And he gives himself, and others all kinds of examples and details of how unfairly he was treated (or is being treated.) And he is right…he was treated unfairly and was cheated as a child. But now, RIGHT NOW, he is cheating himself!
As long as he continues to spend his energies being angry at the people who left him or deprived him at one time in his childhood, he as precious little energy left to spend on getting for himself what he needs NOW by way of closeness and happiness. His rage isn’t hurting his parents (chain), because they are no longer his parents. They are no longer crippling him. His immature childhood conclusion is. He is crippling himself!
Happiness in life lies not in trying to change your history or your childhood experience.
Happiness lies in challenging all of your childhood conclusions, letting go of those that are no longer relevant, and experimenting with new ones. To update your life, you need to identify childhood guilts, grievances, resentments, pain and fears. By updating your childhood, you can prevent it from limiting you today. You can stop your childhood from robbing you of your entire life. As an adult, you can simply walk away from limiting conclusions, and get on with living now. You can update who you think you are.
You can choose to experiment with new ways of functioning. You can freely say “goodbye” to your childhood and walk into your future as a free and fulfilled adult.
Author Profile: Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D. has 30+ years experience as a Life Coach and Licensed Psychologist. He is available for coaching in any area presented in “Practical Psychology.” As your Coach, his only agenda is to assist you in creating the lifestyle you genuinely desire. The initial coaching session is free.
Contact him: (970) 568-0173 or E-mail: DrLloyd@CreatingLeaders.com or LJTDAT@aol.com
That was an excellent analysis by Dr. Thomas. The problem is his solution; it’s akin to the Monty Python skit where they tell people how to play a flute: “Run your fingers up and down the holes and blow on this end…” Those cognitive commitments are deeply rooted within the subconscious; it’s not like cutting off some hair and throwing it away, although I wish it was.
Burt Goldman has an in depth solution to help defeat those cognitive commitments. Click on his name and you will see part 3 in his videos on quantum leaping. Burt does something very interesting: He is tapping as in an EFT exercise, but he’s doing the tapping in rhythm with a concept.
It seems that an undesireable concept in general has a slower tempo and is in discord. For example, use the tips of the fingers of your right hand to tap over your heart. Think of eating raw smelly fish guts as a snack. You are guaranteed to tap very slow and/or in dissonance with your heartbeat.
Now, think of eating a deliciously sweet snack like a fresh coconut macaroon covered in chocolate. You are guaranteed to tap much faster in resonance with your heartbeat. (That is, if you can get that fish gut taste out of your mouth.)
You know what? I believe that this has been the missing component, if any, from EFT. As you may have already observed from EFT videos, there is noone concerned about the tapping rhythm in conjunction with negative and positive ideas. In acupuncture, there are several ways to stimulate the acupuncture points depending on the desired result. EFT should be no different.
When we first tune in the negative aspects during EFT, it makes sense now that we should tap slower and in discord with that negative attribute. It also makes sense that we should tap faster and in resonance when we desire a positive attribute.
In EFT, there is a form of remote influencing that EFT practitioners call “surrogate tapping” and “borrowing benefits.” Remote influencing is where you can actually influence the thoughts and health of others from a distance through assumption, that is, assuming the identity of the person you want to influence, then tap for them.
(Jose Silva has a method of assumption wherein you imagine coming behind the person whose identity you want to assume then you imagine working your way into their skin like putting on a skin suit.)
This method can be performed for a person with a closed mind who has no wish to drop his cognitive commitments. You assume their identity, then tap on the things you know they like with a fast resonant tempo. Then tap using the same tempo, slowly introduce a new idea. You will be amazed. It works for me.
The other solution is to influence the person through remote viewing. The theory is that we can remotely influence the same person who we can remotely view. I know for sure that there are no closed minds reading this, so I feel free to tell you that you can shape your world and the people around you using remote influencing.
Like I said in a previous post, I’m a bit jealous of the work of Gerald O’Donnell because he got there before I did with his Academy of Remote Viewing and Remote Influencing. Of all the remote viewers, Gerald is the only one who educates people on remote influencing your subject. All the other remote viewers are worried about the gloom and doom coming to the planet (especially in 2012).
Gerald is telling us that we don’t have to have gloom and doom. In fact, he has a very ancient, old world perspective on human achievement: WE are completely in control of our circumstances. It’s a matter of learning how to use that control by first learning to control ourselves. This is what Gerald teaches us through his courses on Remote Viewing and Remote Influencing.
There’s nothing that can update your childhood better than learning and practicing how to regain that control that we lost when we were younger. You want to know what’s at the crux, at the bloody root of cognitive commitments? It’s lack of control. It’s a feeling of helplessness. It’s a feeling of powerlessness against our circumstances.
The thing is, you’re better than that. You’re not an elephant trained from infancy on a tether. You’re a sentient being who deserves better than any life negative concepts that have been pushed on you since childhood.
Of course, there are some hard headed people out there who would completely deny this. But give them a chance: When they stonewall you or throw a tantrum because they don’t agree with something, it’s easy to see they have very little if any control.
When their cognitive commitments actually lie to them and tell them that they DO have control, you get control freaks – better known as mainstream doctors, policeman, gov’t officials, politicians, etc.
Isn’t it time for you to take control over these control freaks? They don’t have to know what you’re doing or how you’re doing it, but they’ll be happier for it when you exercise your control, real control.
Thanks for your time, Healing Thoughts,
Randolph, HealingMindN
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P.S.S. I’d like to make special mention of the remote viewing & remote influencing exercises by Gerald O’Donnell in contrast to tapping on acupuncture points. Gerald O’Donnell‘s course is more like Nei Gong, internal qigong exercises.
Do you remember the post on Dynamo Jack at Super Human Morals of a Qigong Master? Dynamo Jack is an expert in medical Nei Gong, but he is able to set fire with his bare hands because of his incredible mental discipline.
The ARVARI Course by Gerald O’Donnell teaches you to extend your psychic senses using Nei Gong exercises. In essence, you are affecting your acupuncture points through breath control and intense visualisation. Traditionally, the acupuncture points are stimulated through physical exercises, but EFT practitioners have proven that we can simply imagine the tapping and it has the same effect as actual tapping.
By the same token, Nei Gong extends the psychic senses when properly trained. The Academy of Remote Viewing and Remote Influencing course by Gerald O’Donnell’s accomplishes exactly that through mental discipline exercises coordinated with the breath.
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