Saturday, October 22, 2005
Intuitive Engineering
Sensitivity, Openness, Spiritual Awareness, Communion With a Higher Order
There are moments in life when one feels transported to a higher order of being, thinking, and feeling. These ecstatic moments do not occur often without considerable aid from one's own mindset. One must set the stage in one of several ways: go to a top-rated museum and study the paintings there; go to a symphony by one of the B's or Mozart; or try meditation in the quiet of your own room. The latter is the most convenient, of course, and can be done whenever an opportunity presents itself.
The first benefit of meditation is relaxation of your tense body muscles, and calming of your mind, which is a wonderful way to recoup energy and poise for the rest of the day. The second benefit comes from the communion you may achieve after a bit of practice with your subconscious mind, and with what some practitioners have called the “Universal Mind.”
Not to disagree with those people, I believe the thought-stream one reaches though meditation is most likely coming from the subconscious “recorder” in your mind, where everything you have seen, thought about, read, dreamed, or heard is stored away in brain circuits in case of need. It is indeed a powerful memory, but it is definitely not easy to access for most of us.
The third benefit is problem solving. Once you commit the facts of a problem to the subconscious mind, best done before going to bed at night, and ask the mind to solve it, it is amazing how many times you wake up the next morning with a solution ready in your mind. This appears to work for all manner of problems, and whether you have all the facts or not. The solution you receive may be simply the idea of a textbook you must consult, or a key fact you left out.
The fourth benefit is harder to articulate, but it is free association with the mind-stream you discover and letting ideas and and dream-like sequences happen without any direction on your part. What you will come away with is very dependent on how well you practice meditation, and how well you can control your own reactions to what is being presented to you. I cannot defend such communication in any way. I can't vouch for it's authenticity, nor its source, except that it might be your subconscious mind sending you solutions to your unspoken thoughts and problems. Who knows? Not being a psychiatrist or a psychologist, I am not able to treat these phenomena with any exactness.
But, being somewhat of an “operationalist” I believe in using the faculties I have been given, have discovered and then developed far-enough to be reasonably reliable. And then I believe in verifying what I have been “told” by my subconscious in the light of reality. This method works particularly well in the realm of physics and mathematics as applied to engineering problems. Amazingly well, I must say.
It is almost as if one already had a solution in mind and merely had to open some door to reach it mentally. I would saturate my mind with the facts that I knew, read up on the subject for an hour or two, and then ask for a solution in my meditation session. I called this “intuitive engineering,” but never really explained this somewhat specious method to my fellow engineers, or engineering managers, for fear of being laughed out of the building! But they didn't laugh at the solutions I found somehow! I simply said: “It occurred to me that....” and then gave the solution.
Lately, I have found that it works well over a wide range of problems and subjects. But you must feed that inner mind well first, to give it the basis for its efforts. A good reading program is absolutely essential, in my opinion.
Sensitivity, Openness, Spiritual Awareness, Communion With a Higher Order
There are moments in life when one feels transported to a higher order of being, thinking, and feeling. These ecstatic moments do not occur often without considerable aid from one's own mindset. One must set the stage in one of several ways: go to a top-rated museum and study the paintings there; go to a symphony by one of the B's or Mozart; or try meditation in the quiet of your own room. The latter is the most convenient, of course, and can be done whenever an opportunity presents itself.
The first benefit of meditation is relaxation of your tense body muscles, and calming of your mind, which is a wonderful way to recoup energy and poise for the rest of the day. The second benefit comes from the communion you may achieve after a bit of practice with your subconscious mind, and with what some practitioners have called the “Universal Mind.”
Not to disagree with those people, I believe the thought-stream one reaches though meditation is most likely coming from the subconscious “recorder” in your mind, where everything you have seen, thought about, read, dreamed, or heard is stored away in brain circuits in case of need. It is indeed a powerful memory, but it is definitely not easy to access for most of us.
The third benefit is problem solving. Once you commit the facts of a problem to the subconscious mind, best done before going to bed at night, and ask the mind to solve it, it is amazing how many times you wake up the next morning with a solution ready in your mind. This appears to work for all manner of problems, and whether you have all the facts or not. The solution you receive may be simply the idea of a textbook you must consult, or a key fact you left out.
The fourth benefit is harder to articulate, but it is free association with the mind-stream you discover and letting ideas and and dream-like sequences happen without any direction on your part. What you will come away with is very dependent on how well you practice meditation, and how well you can control your own reactions to what is being presented to you. I cannot defend such communication in any way. I can't vouch for it's authenticity, nor its source, except that it might be your subconscious mind sending you solutions to your unspoken thoughts and problems. Who knows? Not being a psychiatrist or a psychologist, I am not able to treat these phenomena with any exactness.
But, being somewhat of an “operationalist” I believe in using the faculties I have been given, have discovered and then developed far-enough to be reasonably reliable. And then I believe in verifying what I have been “told” by my subconscious in the light of reality. This method works particularly well in the realm of physics and mathematics as applied to engineering problems. Amazingly well, I must say.
It is almost as if one already had a solution in mind and merely had to open some door to reach it mentally. I would saturate my mind with the facts that I knew, read up on the subject for an hour or two, and then ask for a solution in my meditation session. I called this “intuitive engineering,” but never really explained this somewhat specious method to my fellow engineers, or engineering managers, for fear of being laughed out of the building! But they didn't laugh at the solutions I found somehow! I simply said: “It occurred to me that....” and then gave the solution.
Lately, I have found that it works well over a wide range of problems and subjects. But you must feed that inner mind well first, to give it the basis for its efforts. A good reading program is absolutely essential, in my opinion.
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