If you intend to awaken your greatest state of mastery so you can live a masterful life, it is wise to ask quality questions. You have the power to awaken your mastery and take command of your perceptions, decisions, and actions. As such, you can learn to govern your life, your perceptions, decisions, and actions from the inside instead of reacting (and over-reacting) to the world on the outside.
From the brilliant mind of Dr John Demartini and his polymathic knowledge of the world and human psychology, these words are taken from his teachings on the mind, the brain, our perceptions, human behaviour and how it all relates to awakening our mastery of ourselves and our life. In this article you will understand how to waken a state of mastery by asking quality questions that can help you to move from a life of ungoverned reflexes, emotions and reactions to a life of governed reflection and action.
Read on for some powerful information that can make a profound difference in your life.
A “knee-jerk reflex reaction" is a reflex response, which we have little if any control over, and originates in the most primitive part of the brain (the amygdala) and happens instinctively as a reaction to external stimuli. This stimulus response is unlearned, rapid, involuntary, predictable, and primitive and operates as a survival mechanism – one of seeking and avoidance.
These instinctive (avoiding) and impulsive (seeking) survival responses are highly effective when a fight or flight response can mean the difference between life and death - so we don’t get eaten as prey or die of starvation as a predator.
However, the majority of our lives don’t warrant living in a constant state of fight or flight. We know the physiological and mental costs to this. It is wise to understand this if we would love to awaken our mastery and govern our life.
When we are functioning from those lower parts of the brain, we are most likely to have limited potential with few options and little freedom. It’s also where we tend to have very little control over our perceptions and actions because we mostly react without thinking, without making objective and balanced decisions. We are likely to become a victim of our circumstances and environment, and a victim of our history.
However, as we go up into the very front of the brain (into our prefrontal cortex or “executive centre”), there are massive amounts of interneurons and their associations. Because of this, we will be more likely to reflect on how we want to act instead of reflexively, impulsively, or instinctively reacting. With reflection we stop, process, think about it, decide what we are going to do with it, and then control our responses. We have governance when we are in the more advanced part of the brain because we are able to take command of what we see or sense and decide what to do with it.
As a consequence of operating from our prefrontal cortex, we activate our leadership, genius, creativity, objectivity, strategic planning, and mind-mastery. When we let our executive centre take command, we become a master of our destiny.
We can choose to be a follower and be run externally by the world (reacting from our primitive amygdala) or a leader and run intrinsically from within (acting from our executive centre). If we want to awaken our mastery and take command of our perceptions decisions and actions (and therefore our lives), we want to go up into the higher areas of our brain where we have governance.
So what determines whether we operate from the amygdala of from the executive centre? It is the ratios of our perceptions which determine what areas of the brain are firing. The more polarized our perception, the more likely we are going to have a primitive survival response and activate our more emotionally and impulsive amygdala.
What do we mean by ratios of perception? For example, suppose you meet someone and become completely infatuated with them - you are likely more conscious of their upsides and less conscious of their downsides.
Your ratio of perception would tend to more positive and less negative -you may be able to list 10 positive things about them and perhaps only 1 negative thing; a 10:1 ratio of perception in the positive. You will label them as good and want to seek them (and inject their values into your life….but that is a story for another time).
If you meet someone and they are challenging your values your will resent them and want to avoid them - you are likely more conscious of their downsides and less conscious of their upsides.
Your ratio of perception would tend to more negative and less positive -you may be able to list 10 negative things about them and perhaps only 1 positive thing; a 10:1 ratio of perception towards the negative. You will label them as bad and want to avoid them (and project your values onto them ….but again, that is a story for another time).
The skewed ratios of perception is great in the wild; predators that respond impulsively towards prey; or prey that respond instinctively away from predators for basic survival reactions would have a high ratios of perception. An antelope would see 10 negative things about a lion and perhaps 1 positive thing - maybe if it had a lush good-looking, soft and bouncy mane . This 10:1 ratio in the antelope activates it’s instinct for avoidance so it runs away.
In other words, when we have a highly subjectively biased interpretation of our reality it will trigger a dramatic survival response where we are reactive instead of proactive.
Suppose our ratios of perception were more balanced. In that case, we would likely activate the prefrontal cortex where we could think logically, objectively, neutrally, and less emotionally. As such, we would tend to strategically act instead of reacting.
Anytime we are in a highly polarized perceptual state, our primitive system tends to come online.
Anytime we become synthesized and balanced in our perception, the more advanced part of our brain comes online.
We have complete control over our perceptions. As William James said, the greatest discovery of his generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their perceptions and attitudes of mind.
One of the wisest ways to synthesize our perceptions is to ask quality questions that help make unconscious information conscious; we can take any polarized perspective (an unequal ratio of perception; either more positives than negatives or more negatives than positives) and balance it, thereby becoming fully conscious.
It is this premise which is the foundation of the Demartini Method ™ with which I facilitate and coach.
If you're infatuated, you're conscious of the upsides and unconscious of the downsides; conscious of the positives and unconscious of the negatives.
If you're resentful, you're conscious of the downsides and unconscious of the upsides; conscious of the negatives and unconscious of the positives.
When you're in a state of true (unconditional) love, you embrace both sides synchronously. True love is not an emotion of polarity, although most people tend to confuse infatuation (that is polarized) with love (that is balanced). Love is a synthesized feeling integrating both sides at once.
By asking the right questions to make ourselves conscious of any unconscious parts, we balance our perceptions, activate our executive centre and take command of our life. This is the path of mastery and results in more gratitude, certainty, inspiration, enthusiasm and presence in our lives. Meaning is revealed and we have fulfilment in life. Yes please!
Balancing our emotions (by revealing the previously unacknowledged unconscious awareness) frees us to become present, poised, purposeful, patient, prioritized, productive, and empowered instead of emotionally reactive and instinctively defensive (or impulsively offensive), being run by an instinct for avoidance (or impulse to seek). We give ourself permission to take command of our life with a more balanced state of mind.
If left uncleared, our subconscious mind will tend to keep bringing in people or events into our life that push our buttons. Our buttons are actually our imbalanced perceptions that are stored as reverberating circuits in the brain that likely result in us reacting like an animal in a state of basic survival where we have little control and instinctively react without thinking.
While we may perceive that this particular individual or event pushes our buttons and that they are the root cause of our reactive behaviour, it is wiser to take command of our life by asking quality questions, balancing our perceptions, and changing our reactions. Every event is neutral until we judge it as either supporting or challenging our values. We are the cause of our own effect.
Wisdom of the ancients as well as modern science has revealed the universal principle of pairs of opposites in life and for existence. Can you see it is futile to constantly try to avoid some behaviour in life or seek its equal and opposite? Both will be present in any moment and it is wise to be able to balance your perceptions around both, the negative and the positive, and to realise they are different sides of the same coin, synchronously occurring to show that nothing is missing and there is only love. It is our judgements that create the polarities, and when we balance out our judgements, we bring polarity back to unity and find the order in the apparent chaos. In this moment of bringing the negative and positive into balance we create a photon of light -enlightenment, an aha moment where we are aware of what actually is, rather a belief formulated around our limited, one-sided perceptions filtered through our value system and emotional charges.
The Buddha is believed to have said that the desire for that which is unobtainable, and the desire to avoid that which is unavoidable, is the source of human suffering. The desire for a one-sided world, of an individual to be one-sided, an idea we are able to avoid the negative and only seek the positive is futile, and seeking this fantasy sets us up for suffering. We compare our reality to a fantasy that is unobtainable and beat ourselves up, getting frustrated or angry, or getting depressed and living in despair about the state of the world, others or ourselves.
Our emotions are a feedback mechanism to reveal to us aspects of ourselves that we haven’t loved and integrated, to transcend this duality, and liberate us to become more integrated, authentic and whole. If we are seeking a fantasy, we will attract in the nightmare to break our attachment to seeking a one-sided experience. The resentments, despair, frustrations we have are all feedback to reveal to us we are having an unrealistic expectation on others, or the world around us to be one-sided.
We see the world as we are, and our buttons and triggers are the subconscious storage of our lopsided, polarised perceptions we have from an incomplete awareness. By asking the questions to bring us into full awareness, to be mindful, integrates the subconscious and conscious, the negative and positive polarities, we have a moment of transcendence and enlightenment. Once integrated, we have transcended the previously held lopsided perception, know the love and wisdom of full awareness, store this love and wisdom in the superconscious and liberate space and time in our mind. Baggage released!!! We have neuroplastically laid down new neural pathways of understanding. Old perceptions and beliefs are now transcended with a greater awareness and integration of a greater truth. And did I mention, we also release the weight of stored emotional baggage? The stuff that dictates to us our perceptions, decisions and actions? And we think we have free will …… (the intelligence of the universe is chortling here) When we integrate our subconscious and conscious mind, we move from our judgement based amygdala into our forebrain where our will matches divine will (our higher minded inspiration), we are more objective, magnetic, our genius is awoken, we have adaptability and resilience and see things as on the way and not in the way and have a greater appreciation for life and ourselves. That is closer to free will. And we have liberated our minds in space and time to be filled with inspired vision instead of running old stories that are limiting and disempowering.
All the potential survival-based emotions that are stored in your subconscious mind that are causing impulse and instincts, and causing you to react from the external world, are all dissolvable.
If you intend to awaken your greatest state of mastery so you can live a masterful life, it is wise to ask quality questions. You have the power to awaken your mastery and take command of your perceptions, decisions, and actions. As such, you can learn to govern your life, your perceptions, decisions, and actions from the inside instead of reacting (and over-reacting) to the world on the outside.
Have a great life..
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