As a physician, challenged to make contributions to the health and well being of people everywhere, I am fortunate to recognize and attempt to describe principles that govern the way our human mind works. To me these principles are simple, elegant, genius, and recognizable by a majority of those who take the time to understand them. As I have claimed, these principles are actually intended to impress us so that we will freely choose a wiser way. The world needs each of us now more than ever.
In keeping with these principles, I will begin this summary of ideas by reminding the reader that any discussion of this topic triggers a tug of war inside the heart, mind, body, soul and spirit of the participants. So with freedom to choose as the foundation of all the other principles I will be discussing, there is immediately observable an opposition that is using the same human organs of mind and heart to confuse and confound our efforts, slaves to emotional reflexes.
My theory is based upon what I claim to be reproducible observation. To begin with, I am claiming there is an emotional anatomy that is as real and observable as physical anatomy and likewise similar and unique. However, where physical anatomy is observable via visible and tangible attributes, emotional anatomy requires visualization, conceptualization, imagination, intellectualization and familiarity to understand. This would prove to be impossible if it were not governed by simple, elegant, principles. These principles I believe to be part of an intelligently designed guidance system intended to inspire personal freedom to choose. And through freedom to demonstrate a consistent genius within its structures, it is most rewarding to choose wisely.
Gratitude reboots the machine and offers freedom to choose again, more wisely, more rewarded.
Using four separate identifiers, I claim there is a region within human emotional anatomy that can be found by anyone willing and motivated to examine and discover freedom to choose. Again I claim this region within the human emotional anatomy is part of an intelligently designed guidance system built into the structure of the human mental apparatus.
Through the acceptance of personal responsibility for our own choices, each of us ought to be capable of confirming this observation if it is a reproducible truth. This freedom cannot be forced, it must be personally chosen. (For example: Consider the slow and systematic collapse of the USA social political economic system. Here we see the tug of war between stories in the macrocosm. However, this collapse of social architecture does not change the intelligent design of freedom to choose within each individual–Thus the legacy of freedom can be understood as our personal responsibility, another form of ‘occupy’.)
Your willingness to continue reading is a free choice.
I intend for this description of “Single Breath Relaxation” to offer a simple technique that will show you personally how to coordinate your precise focus of attention and identify a specific location within your own emotional anatomy. Through familiarity with this location within your own mind body soul spirit Emotional Anatomy, you will discover there, freedom to choose. “Gratitude reboots the machine.”
The first of four specific identifiers I use to verify this hypothesis is your memory function. Within your mind’s eye memories, have you ever had an experience that was totally peaceful, totally calm, totally relaxing, and made memorable by these unique features? Can you name it? Can you use word identifiers to label this place as it will be helpful toward recognizing a unique location within your emotional anatomy. Some will say “no”, there are none. Some will find one or two. Others will have many, similarly rewarding memories stimulated immediately, as these are memories stored in this region of the anatomy and are identifiable and located by similar emotion. “When the mood changes, the movie changes.”
The second of four specific identifiers I use to verify this hypothesis is found in physical release. The most easily accessible physical locator for this function are the bodily feelings of relaxation felt upon exhale. More specifically, take a deep breath through your nose and exhale rapidly through your mouth. The physical feeling of relaxing diaphragm and chest wall is usually recognizable. Other more dramatic forms of physical release are found upon emptying an urgently full bladder, also during bowel movement and orgasm, and more subtly when entering the shower, bath or bed. There is, of course, overlap with the memory function except in the immediacy of exhale.
The third of four specific identifiers I use to verify this hypothesis is found through the use of your intellect. We are using and developing a vocabulary in this effort to describe and grow familiar with your human emotional anatomy. The intellect is well developed and participates simply and effectively in identifying this anatomy of gratitude. For example, what do you say when you get a gift, “thank you.”
The fourth of four specific identifiers I use to verify this hypothesis is found within the emotions. Again overlapping with the memory functions, can you identify the feeling of gratitude. Where and when in your life were you truly grateful? Can you feel it?
Can you, through practice, coordinate all four functions simultaneously? Visualize memories, feel gratitude, release the breath and say “thank you”. I call it “single breath relaxation”. This momentary, laser beam like, focus of attention, when accurate, I claim is designed to be an essential part of a guidance system built into the DNA transmitted architecture of the human being. Gratitude reboots the machine and offers a momentary window of opportunity for freedom to choose.
A guided missile is on target only 1% of the time. We breath approximately 1,000 times per hour. 1% of 1000 is 10. That means that if we return to this location within our emotional anatomy once every 6 minutes, we are returning to the intelligently designed location within each of us which offers freedom to choose.
Here is where your personal responsibility comes in. It is an unusual approach to the challenge of thinking that asks of you to return to an identifiable location within the “Emotional Anatomy” repeatedly so that freedom to think can become your habit and desire.
Remember this habit of thinking depends upon your free choice.
What fascinates me is that it seems only through gratitude are we offered this opportunity. I have been unable to identify any other emotion that consistently liberates my mind from other more complicated tangles and much less easily identifiable gnarly knots of emotional anatomy. To check it out for yourself requires a revisiting of the very gratitude that allows you to recognize this emotional anatomy in the first place.
I am claiming this to be evidence of an intelligent design for which “thank you” is the only logical intellectual response. If it were any more complicated than this, we would be doomed to endless arguments about the source of our freedom to choose. Instead we are offered gratitude for intelligent design without which we would have no reason to be grateful for such simple, elegant, genius. Each of us would have different ideas about how to attain freedom and how we are to return to it.
Freedom to choose. A personal responsibility. One person at a time.
Here in lies your personal responsibility in the tug of war between stories. Within your own heart mind body soul spirit there is a battle for control over your being. Which will you choose, freedom or slavery?
No matter how deeply wounded and scarred your emotional anatomy, your freedom to choose allows you to identify the pathway to freedom and begin making new choices beginning with “thank you”.
Gratitude reboots the machine. Which will you choose? Freedom or Slavery? Intelligent Design.
