The Choice Is Up to You “Within you is a vast mental storehouse of past experiences and feelings—both failure and successes. Like inactive recordings on a tape, these experiences and feelings are recorded on the neural engrams of your gray matter. These are recordings of stories with happy endings, and recordings of stories with unhappy endings. One is as true as the other. One is as real as the other. The choice is up to you, as to which you select for playback. Another interesting scientific finding about these engrams is that they can be changed or modified, somewhat as a tape recording may be changed by ‘dubbing in’ additional material, or by replacing an old recording with a new by recording over it. Drs. Eccles and Sherrington tell us that the engrams in the human brain tend to change slightly each time they are ‘played back.’ They take on some of the tone and temper of our present mood, thinking and attitudes toward them. Also, each individual neuron may become part of perhaps one hundred separate and distinct patterns—much as individual tree in an orchard may form a part of a square, a rectangle, a triangle, or any number of larger squares, etc. The neuron in the original engram, of which it was a part, takes on some of the characteristics of subsequent engrams of which it becomes a part, and in so doing, changes somewhat the original engram. This is not only very interesting, but encouraging. It gives us reason to believe that adverse and unhappy childhood experiences, ‘traumas,’ etc. are not as permanent and as fatal as some earlier psychologists would have us believe. We now know that not only does the past influence the present, but that the present clearly influences the past. In other words, we are not doomed nor damned by the past. Because we did have unhappy childhood experiences and traumas which left engrams behind, does not mean we are at the mercy of these engrams, or that our patterns of behavior are ‘set,’ predetermined and unchangeable. Our PRESENT THINKING, our PRESENT MENTAL HABITS, our attitudes towards past experiences, and our attitudes toward the future—all have an influence upon old recorded engrams. The old can be changed, modified, replaced, by our present thinking.” Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics overcome_evil_with_good.jpg Old Recordings Can Be Changed “Another interesting finding is that the more a given engram is activated, or ‘replayed,’ the more potent it becomes. Eccles and Sherrington tell us that the permanence of engrams is derived from synaptic efficacy (the efficiency and ease of connections between the individual neurons that make up the chain) and further, that the synaptic efficiency improves with use and diminishes with disuse. Here again, we have good scientific ground for forgetting and ignoring those unhappy experiences from the past and concentrating upon the happy and pleasant. By so doing we strengthen those engrams having to do with success and happiness and weaken those having to do with failure and unhappiness. These concepts have developed not from wild speculation, a weird mumbo-jumbo about mentally constructed straw men such as the ‘Id,’ ‘Super-Ego,’ and the like, but from sound scientific research into brain physiology. They are based on observable facts and phenomena, not fanciful theories. They go a long way toward restoring the dignity of man as a responsible child of God, able to cope with his past and plan his future, as opposed to the image of man as helpless victim of his past experiences. The new concept does carry a responsibility, however. No longer can you derive sickly comfort from blaming your parents, society, your early experiences, or the injustices of ‘others’ for your present troubles. These things may and should help you understand how you got where you are. Blaming them, or even yourself for the past mistakes, however, will not solve your problem, or improve your present or your future. There is no merit in blaming yourself. The past explains how you got here. But where you go from here is your responsibility. The choice is yours. Like a broke phonograph, you can keep on playing the same old ‘broken record’ of the past; reliving past injustices; pitying yourself for past mistakes; all of which reactivates failure patterns and failure feelings which color your present and your future. Or, if you choose, you can put on a new record, and reactivate success patterns and ‘that winning feeling’ which help you do better in the present and promise a more enjoyable future. When your phonograph is playing music you don’t like, you do not try to force it to do better. You do not use effort or will power. You do not bang the phonograph around. You do not try to change the music itself. You merely change the record being played and the music takes care of itself. Use the same technique on the ‘music’ that comes out of your own internal machine. Don’t pit your will directly against the ‘music.’ As long as the same mental imagery (the cause) occupies your attention, no amount of effort will change the music (the result). Instead, try putting a new record on. Change your mental imagery, and the feelings will take care of themselves.” Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 12:30:49 +0000
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