You ever notice how once you decide what kind of car you want to buy, it seems like every other car on the road is the one you want!?!

Why is that? Your reticular activating system (RAS) is activated.

Scientific research has established the fact that the RAS, a group of cells at the base of your brain stem (about the size of a little finger) serves as a little control center--sorting and evaluating incoming data. It's responsible for filtering out the urgent stuff from the unimportant so that you can function properly.

Imagine yourself at a party. You're in a packed room and you can barely hear the person with whom you are engaged in a conversation. Then, someone on the other side of the room says your name and that one word cuts through the noise and your ears immediately perk up. Again, that's the RAS at work.

Now, here’s the deal:

The RAS is going to filter stimuli no matter what—giving us data to support whatever we’ve “told it” is important.

If you’re constantly worried about getting screwed/let down/[insert negative thing here], guess what? Your RAS will help you see all that evidence.

On the other hand, if you’re consciously impressing your consciousness with your dreams and goals and all that goodness, your RAS will hook you up with all the wonderful evidence you need to see you’re on track.

So. Make sure you’re feeding your RAS the right stuff, eh?

This is one of the most powerful topics I have ever received from you, Bri. Where our attention goes, energy flows isn’t just a fancy saying! :) I can say this is the thing i point out the most with people, without even getting into manifestation, or quantum physics, people can see very easily that when they refine their focus just a little bit, their experience will be different. :)

love it. and anyone looking for the feelgoodvibes should go “here”http://feelgoodvibes.com! :)

Thanks for the shout out, Bri! :)

Hi Guys,
I absolutely agree with everything you say and have studied these and similar philosophies for a long time now-but, there are some of us who are truly “blessed” with some kinds of chemical imbalances or who have suffered injuries that make it extremely difficult to do/be/think as we know to be ultimately most beneficial. We must just “be” the best we can.
I used to be really ashamed to say that I fit in that group, and it still makes me pretty darn uncomfortable-but I’ve read biographies of others’ who have faced similar afflictions (Karen Armstrong, author of The Spiral Staricase” and “Muhamed-a Prophet for our Times”, among others, and one of the well-known Buddhist teachers, can’t recall the name right now).
We know these things and it only makes it more difficult not to struggle or feel ashamed or guilty, in this day when “the Law of Attraction” and “the Secret” are all over the place…....though these are not new concepts by any means.
I’ve studied several different alternative healing modalities and practiced them, as well as being a long-time meditator and sometimes the best I can do-and I believe the best that can be, is simply to sit quietly with the pain, acknowledging and feeling it completely without trying to deny its’ existence.
For all those, the majority, that are able to take full advantage of these methods-count your blessings. Just as I count mine though they may not include having such complete control over what I feed my head:>)
I just bring this up in hopes of planting the seed in your mind that even having this knowledge isn’t the solution for everyone and to help any others that may suffer despite their best intentions to know that they are not alone and they are not “to blame”.

thanks for sharing sandimh. send me an email at brian [at] thinkarete [dot] com and I’ll send you some stuff I’m writing I think you’ll dig!

-bri

Great subject. It’s so true… WE ONLY SEE WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR!
“What we see depends mainly on what we’re looking for.” – Sir John Lubbock

The PubMed abstract below indicates how the RAS may work. Our sensory organs (eyes, ears, etc.) take in information. The RAS then pulls information from our higher brain and compares it to incoming information. If there is a match we become aware of the information.

Food for thought for the group – in view of this mechanism being a good citizen might be detrimental to our best functioning. For example, if we worked to help the poor we would fill our brain with information about systemic oppression of the downtrodden. With this information in our brain wouldn’t we become more prone to see the potential for failure in situations we encounter rather than the potential for success?

Support for this idea comes from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24502967/ which points out that conservatives are happier than liberal-leaners. By not caring about the down trodden people the conservatives do not develop the brain mechanisms to be unhappy that liberals do.

Prog Neurobiol. 2001 Aug;64(6):555-73.
N-methyl-D-aspartate channel and consciousness: from signal coincidence detection to quantum computing.
Freitas da Rocha A, Pereira A Jr, Bezerra Coutinho FA.
NEAC-UNICID, LIM 01-HC-FMUSP and RANI, Research on Artificial and Natural Intelligence, Rua Maria Inez 26, 13201-813 Jundiai-SP, Brazil. eina@kyotec.com.br
Research on Blindsight, Neglect/Extinction and Phantom limb syndromes, as well as electrical measurements of mammalian brain activity, have suggested the dependence of vivid perception on both incoming sensory information at primary sensory cortex and reentrant information from associative cortex. Coherence between incoming and reentrant signals seems to be a necessary condition for (conscious) perception. General reticular activating system and local electrical synchronization are some of the tools used by the brain to establish coarse coherence at the sensory cortex, upon which biochemical processes are coordinated. Besides electrical synchrony and chemical modulation at the synapse, a central mechanism supporting such a coherence is the N-methyl-D-aspartate channel, working as a ‘coincidence detector’ for an incoming signal causing the depolarization necessary to remove Mg(2+), and reentrant information releasing the glutamate that finally prompts Ca(2+) entry. We propose that a signal transduction pathway activated by Ca(2+) entry into cortical neurons is in charge of triggering a quantum computational process that accelerates inter-neuronal communication, thus solving systemic conflict and supporting the unity of consciousness.
PMID: 11311462