One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor’s brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one.. Amazed to find herself alive, Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk.. Her [...]

The image is from the book Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge, by B. Alan Wallace, founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. The book notes “There are certainly kinds of neuronal activity that causally contribute to the emergence of specific states of consciousness and mental activity.”
Bill Harris, Director of [...]

“There’s nothing wrong with doing new things, pursuing activities, exploring new countries, meeting new people, acquiring knowledge and expertise, developing your physical or mental abilities, and creating whatever you’re called upon to create in this world…
“Now the question is, Are you looking for yourself in what you do? Are you attempting to add more to [...]

“Both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I labored in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering.”
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson, is one of many [...]

Formal operational thinking — the ability to think about the thinking process — allows a person to investigate a problem in a systematic manner. …
The formal operational person will imagine the possibilities before they begin. They have the cognitive ability to imagine them all, hold them in awareness, and compare them. …
But you can probably [...]

“Mindful Awareness is the moment-by-moment process of actively and openly observing one’s physical, mental and emotional experiences. Mindful Awareness has scientific support as a means to reduce stress, improve attention, boost the immune system, reduce emotional reactivity, and promote a general sense of health and well-being.”
That statement is from the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) [...]

“Mindfulness includes minding your emotions. If you know it will rile you to re-read that curt email from that literary agent, delete it. What are you saving it for? Become someone who is able to mind her emotions…
“You get angry, you get envious, you get depressed. You are not a stone, nor do you want [...]

The idea of a mental ‘blind spot’ may imply some kind of deficiency of cognitive ability, but psychologist Madeleine L. Van Hecke argues in her book Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things that even people who are very astute and intellectually capable can suffer lapses in reasonable behavior based on awareness.
She argues that [...]

In her article The Price Isn’t Right, Arianna Huffington comments about how destructive and self-limiting our inner critic can be:
“If we can’t completely stop playing the comparison game, we can at least start changing whom we compare ourselves to… When we do this, we are sure to tap into our reserves of empathy and gratitude [...]

In her article The Secret Behind The Secret, Susan Fuller reminds us that more than conscious thinking impacts our lives and success:
“As The Secret streaks across the planet with dizzying speed, this seems like a good time to revisit this thing called ‘The Law of Attraction’.
“Every book on achieving your goals and attracting what you [...]