All we have is the present moment. Too often, we let our thoughts steal the present by thinking about the past or future:

As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.

-Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

Reflect on the most enjoyable moment of your life. Did this moment involve thinking, or were you completely focused on an activity? Chances are, you were completely focused on an activity. When you become intensely conscious of the present moment, you create a gap in thinking, in which you are highly alert and aware. Those who have meditated have experienced this enjoyable state of consciousness.

There is no off switch for your mind

Our minds are always running automatically, and we are addicted to thinking. So how can we experience this more enjoyable state of consciousness more often, in which we are truly living in the moment? To do this, we must give our normal daily activities the fullest attention, so that they become an end in themselves.

For example, yesterday I was shining my shoes, which is typically a mundane activity for me. But this time, I purposefully focused my attention completely on the activity, ensuring I didn’t miss a single spot and applying the right amount of shoe shine. To my surprise, the activity became highly enjoyable. It had become an end in itself, while in the past, it had been a means to an end.

Stopping your thoughts from stealing the present moment

Your past and future have no reality- your only reality is the present. As you focus on the past or future, your present moment becomes stolen. The more you focus in the present, the more alive and conscious you become.

When you are walking through your house or place of work, notice every step you make, every movement, and your breathing. Focus completely on the activity without thinking. Do this for all of your daily activities. You will begin to feel a level of inner peace that you had never felt before.

Negative emotions come from thinking too much about the past or future

Fear, stress and worry come from too much focus on the future. Guilt, sadness and regret come from too much focus on the past. When your focus is on the present, you free yourself from these negative emotions.

Three tips for living in the present

1)      Focus on your daily activities as an end in themselves, without thinking about the past or future

2)       Do not judge yourself when you drift between living in the present and the past or future. Do become aware of the times when you are not focused on the present

3)       Continue practicing and choosing to focus your consciousness in the present. You will become better at this, until focus on the present moment becomes your predominate state

photo credit: stop.down

The song played that is easiest to remember will be a hit. The politician that promises the most gets elected. The Youtube video which creates the strongest reaction in the least amount of time will become popular. What am I talking about? Memes.

Meme: Any idea or behavior that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, gestures, practices, fashions, habits, songs, and dances.

Memes spread through human culture similar to a contagious virus. As the meme is repeated and re-encoded in the minds of other individuals, it evolves. Memes that do the job with the least amount of energy will survive.

Meme evolution is not necessarily to our benefit

Memes have a life of their own, and the means by which they evolve is not necessarily in our best interest- the successful meme is copied and spread whether or not it’s in the interest of the meme creator. A good example of a successful meme is the evolution of projectile weapons, which started with arrows, then bolts, catapulted stones, cannonballs, explosive bombs, and nuclear bombs. The amount of destructive power has increased exponentially over time, but there is no evidence that a new weapon actually enhances the survival of the people who created it.

Memes can **** you up and infect your mind if you let them

Technology is helping memes evolve and spread at a more rapid pace than ever before. Successful memes are more easily copied, while unsuccessful memes are not copied. Due to technology, the modern day man is more vulnerable to being infected by memes. Here are 3 ways this happens:

1) Internet Memes

Dancing baby. The hamster dance. LOLcat. These are all examples of Internet memes. Are they a fun part of Internet culture, or a parasitical waste of your time? To answer this question, you must first ask yourself how much you value your time.

As your time is limited, it is important that you are using it to get what you want out of life, versus letting memes use your time to propagate themselves. If you could look back at your life, how memorable would your time spent on Youtube, Wikipedia, Twitter, or this blog post be? When you follow Internet memes for hours, how much of that time is contributing to your well-being, versus parasitically draining your energy?

Musician and Internet sensation Tay Zonday (creator of Internet meme Chocolate Rain) sings about the time we spend on the Internet:

So every day I swear
I’m gonna go to bed at like eleven.
And all of a sudden its 4AM . . .
And I was just watching Youtube and
reading Wikipedia for five hours.
It’s like MAN . . . you ask me the
next day. I can’t even remember
what I was doin. Crazy.
-Tay Zonday

2) Television Memes

Sensationalism. Sitcoms. Soap operas. With television, memes can be transmitted almost instantaneously to people throughout the world. Generally, television makes viewers feel very relaxed, but also significantly less active, alert, mentally focused, satisfied, or creative compared with other ways of spending time.

Like a drug, television initially provides a positive experience, but research suggests that the longer one watches it in one setting, the worse one’s mood progressively gets. 90’s hip-hop group Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy sing about this in “Television the Drug of the Nation”:

How do you feel after watching television? Was your time spent doing something rewarding, or wasted? Do you use television to get what you want out of it, or do television memes use you to propagate themselves?

3) Materialism Memes

Houses. Cars. Clothes. As man looks on his material possessions, he becomes deluded into thinking he’s a big deal- the objects become symbols for expansion of the self. It is easy for man to spend his whole life accumulating property without end just to feed his ego.

Each of us has needs for shelter, food, and clothing. But this doesn’t explain the houses of today, which represent more of the evolution of memes than to our personal well-being. Similarly, expensive clothing and restaurants are used to make an impression on the minds of other people, versus the simple needs of keeping us warm and replenishing our energy.

A powerful example of a materialism meme is the automobile. After first buying a car, you have positive feelings, such as freedom, power, and pride of ownership. The car becomes a symbol for the expansion of the self. Then the car ownership begins to drain your energy- you worry about payments, upkeep, insurance, accidents, and so on. But still, the meme continues to evolve and replicate, with new car models coming out each year for future owners.

A scene from the movie Fight Club discussing how “the things you own end up owning you”:

Do you use memes to get what you want, or do memes infect your mind and replicate themselves?

Do you use memes to get what you want and meet your personal goals? Or do you become a meme replicator, with hours of your time being wasted as the outcome? Internet, television, and materialism memes are really just the tip of the iceberg- memes can drain our energy in all areas of life. After capturing our attention, memes will continue reproducing themselves whether it is good for us or not. If we are to take control of our lives, we must get out of autopilot mode and use memes for our own ends, versus letting them parasitically drain our energy.

photo credit: cjbnc

What does it benefit to man if he gains the entire world, but loses himself?

-Jesus Christ

Social programming is the set of instructions each of us learned to fit in with society. Our family members, school teachers, and peer groups were all part of the socialization process. The long-term affect of this socialization is that we seek external approval and external goals in our lives. If we are to take control of our consciousness and pursue our own goals, we must learn to break free from social programming:

Caught in a treadmill of social controls, that person keeps reaching for a prize that always dissolves in his hands. In a complex society, many powerful groups are involved in socializing, sometimes to seemingly contradictory goals . . . Schools, churches, and banks try to turn us into responsible citizens willing to work hard and save . . . merchants, manufacturers, and advertisers to spend our earnings on products that will produce the most profits for them . . . gamblers, pimps, and drug dealers . . . promise rewards for easy dissipation- provided we pay. The messages are very different, but their outcome is essentially the same: they make us dependent on a social system that exploits our energies for its own purposes.

-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow

Society tries bribing us at every opportunity. People who submit completely to social programming, and mistakenly believe that their happiness is obtained only by achieving external goals, are “rat racers” who never enjoy the present moments of life.

Do you constantly delay gratification to the future? Are you always looking to others for approval, and setting external goals? If so, your social programming is being used against you:

Ways Your Social Programming Can Be Used Against You

Money- “I want to be rich”

• Falsely believing that you will be happy when you make more money
• Becoming a workaholic to make more money

Status- “I want to be popular”

• Falsely believing that “once I obtain status, people will like and respect me”
• Trying to “keep up with the Joneses”
• Becoming popular with lots of people, but not building close relationships with individuals

Approval- “I want to be liked”

• Working at a job you hate to pay for your family’s high consumption
• Pursuing a career path that Mom or Dad told you to go after
• Not speaking up at work when you have a good idea, for fear of getting shot down

Power- “I want to dominate”

• Using others only as a means to achieve your goals
• Trying to one-up others, dominate conversations
• Pinpoint other people’s weaknesses and failures

How to Break Free from Social Programming

The key to breaking free from social programming is not to eliminate all external goals. Instead, it is to create goals that are meaningful to you personally, and then enjoy the day to day process of realizing those goals. Here are some tips for breaking free-

1) Choose your own values, principles, and goals

To assume responsibility for choosing our values, principles, and goals, relying solely upon our own reason and understanding- to honor our internal signals to that extent- is to practice the ultimate form of intellectual independence, the one most difficult for the overwhelming majority of human beings and for which their upbringing has least prepared them.

-Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self

It’s easy to adopt external goals that society gives you- after all, those are the goals you were programmed to adopt. It’s more difficult to create your own set of values- this requires intellectual independence and aloneness from society.

2) Follow your own vision

You follow your own vision by moving forward with your own personally selected goals, and not letting any external circumstances circumvent who you are. Following your own vision can leave you feeling alone in the world, and requires courage. But the more you are able to become independent and think for yourself, the higher your own self-esteem will be.

3) Accept your aloneness

You must accept your aloneness in order to truly be free of social programming:

We can learn from one another, but we cannot share the act of being conscious or of thinking. We can share the results- namely, our thoughts and perceptions- but consciousness, awareness, thinking, reasoning is, ultimately, an individual, solitary process, not a social one. And many people dread independent thought and judgment precisely because of this factor of inescapable aloneness; it makes them aware of their own separateness as living entities; it makes them aware of the responsibility they must bear for their own existence.

-Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self

4) Be honest with yourself

Here is a poem which emphasizes being honest with yourself:

The Guy in the Glass

When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.

For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.

He’s the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear up to the end,
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum,
And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you’ve cheated the guy in the glass.

-Dale Wimbrow

Note: The word pelf in the first line means “wealth.”

Breaking Free is a Life-Long Process

Your genes instruct you on what feels good and bad, and society bribes you on how to expend your energy. To take control of your consciousness, you must be fully aware of social and genetic programming, and make yourself independent of it as much as possible. By taking control of your consciousness, and following your own vision, you will become better at thinking for yourself and more independent of others.

Breaking free is a life-long process, not a one-time effort. But I promise you, based on my own personal experience- the quality of your own life will improve drastically when you begin the process of breaking free.

Part of the Breaking Free Series

photo credit: Arbitrium

Genetic programming is the set of instructions each of us was born with. It gives us instinctual drives such as fight-or-flight that are meant to motivate us toward activities which ensure our survival. In modern day society, if we are to take control of our consciousness and pursue our own goals, we must learn to break free from genetic programming:

Submission to genetic programming can become quite disastrous, because it leaves us helpless. A person who cannot override genetic instructions when necessary is always vulnerable. Instead of deciding how to act in terms of personal goals, he has to surrender to the things that his body has been programmed (or misprogrammed) to do. One must particularly achieve control over instinctual drives to achieve a healthy independence of society, for as long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends.

-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow

People who submit completely to their genetic programming, and mistakenly believe that anything which feels good equates to happiness, live by the maxim “seek pleasure and avoid pain.” They are constantly trying to fill their genetic drives in the present, while ignoring the long-term consequences. They are also easier targets for societal organizations that take advantage of an individual’s instinctual drives.

Do you respond predictably to what instinctually makes you feels good and bad? Are you constantly seeking pleasure and avoiding pain? If so, your genetic programming is being used against you:

Ways Your Genetic Programming Can Be Used Against You

Fight-or-Flight- “React to perceived threats”

• Getting stuck in “survival mode” due to excessive stress at work
• Having an argument with your spouse, resulting in stress

Food- “It tastes good”

• Overeating
• Using food as a form of self-medication due to being unhappy with your life

Sex- “It feels good”

• Constantly being preoccupied with sex, distracting you from your personal goals
• Using pornography, strip clubs, or prostitution as a form of self-medication due to being unhappy with your life

Drugs and Alcohol- “It feels good”

• Needing alcohol to let loose and have fun at social events
• Using drugs as a form of self-medication due to being unhappy with your life
• Getting your fix by frequenting bars, liquor stores, or drug dealers

How to Break Free from Genetic Programming

If you cannot resist what feels good, tastes good, or control the way you react to perceived threats, you are not free to direct your consciousness towards the path you choose. You are living your life without taking conscious control of it. But there are some easy habits you can adopt to change the way you respond to genetic programming-

1) Use mental rehearsal to practice taking control of your consciousness

Spend 20-30 minutes a day mentally rehearsing situations in which instinctual drive is taking control- this is when you are reacting to things that taste good, feel good, or responding to perceived threats. In your mind’s eye, take conscious control of the situation, and respond in a positive manner.

For example, if you tend to overeat during meals, mentally rehearse yourself at a restaurant, eating a reasonable portion of food, and leaving the rest, or getting a to-go box. But don’t stop there- mentally rehearse every possible situation in which you need to take control. Visualize yourself responding positively to all sorts of possible scenarios, such as friends bringing snacks to work, or going to a buffet restaurant. You are practicing your self control, the same way a sports player would practice before a game.

You may start to think your time is being wasted, but give this a try for at least a week and you will be surprised. This is because you are tricking your mind- you will begin to notice that it will be easier for you to take control of yourself when the actual situation occurs. Your brain cannot actually tell the difference between mental rehearsal and reality. Keep this up for 21 days and you’ll find yourself much closer towards having complete control of your genetic programming.

2) Create a mantra to use whenever you lose control

Repeat a phrase to yourself every time your genetic programming would typically take control. For example, if you normally get stressed out when you have a lot on your plate at work, you can use the mantra “I’ll handle it.” Then, whenever you feel your muscles get tense and feel yourself slipping into survival mode, repeat the mantra to yourself “I’ll handle it.” Like mental rehearsal, this is a way of tricking your mind. On a subconscious level, your mind will believe your mantra, and you will distract yourself from the typical stress response.

3) Stay in control by staying accountable to yourself and close friends/family members

Find a way to track your progress, such as a daily log showing how many times you took conscious control over your genetic programming. After a month of progress, reward yourself in some way. For example, if you made progress by no longer using alcohol to self-medicate for a month, reward yourself with a nice dinner (note: if you are an alcoholic, I recommend you begin attending AA meetings as a support group).

Tell close friends and family members about your goal of taking control. Make sure you only tell those friends and family members which have been supportive of your personal growth in the past. Otherwise, instead of keeping you accountable, they may hold you back. After you’ve told your supportive friends/family members, ask for their help in keeping you accountable.

Breaking Free is a Life-Long Process

Your genes instruct you on what feels good and bad, and society bribes you on how to expend your energy. To take control of your consciousness, you must be fully aware of social and genetic programming, and make yourself independent of it as much as possible. By taking control of your consciousness, and resisting instinctual drives, you will be free to direct your energy towards the path you choose.

Breaking free is a life-long process, not a one-time effort. But I promise you, based on my own personal experience- the quality of your own life will improve drastically when you begin the process of breaking free.

Part of the Breaking Free Series

photo credit: beckita115

You have many preconceived notions about what you want from life. These include survival needs programmed by your genes- food, sex, and fight-or-flight. These also include desires programmed by your society- to be well liked, rich, and attractive. If you embrace these needs and desires, you may be lucky and be the perfect fit for your time and place in history. But what if you aren’t so lucky? And whether or not you are lucky, is embracing these needs and desires the best use of your energy?

You must learn to break free from social and genetic programming in order to truly take control of your consciousness and follow your own vision. This two-part series covers-

Breaking Free from Genetic Programming

Breaking Free from Social Programming

photo credit: johnmuk