Archives: IQTuneUps

Try to score has highly as possible in this “game”. Here is the one rule:

If you have two distinct emotions before you finish reading this sentence, and if one of those emotions has at least three times the intensity of the other emotion, give yourself ten points, but only give yourself half these points if half the intensity of the stronger emotion is twice the intensity of the emotion you had just a few seconds before you began to read this sentence, but if you have more than two distinct emotions then divide the total intensity of all the emotions by the intensity of the least intense emotion, and give yourself seven and three quarters points if that amount of intensity is half or less of the intensity of the most intense emotion.

Ask yourself,How many points did I just score?

How did I just now feel? What is my typical reaction to impossible requests?

Why would I possibly ever care about such a seemingly worthless fact or put forth the effort needed to acquire it? How much of life is like this for me? How much is my life affected by me hitting similar walls of boggling complexity and quitting any analytical processes?

How much minutia do I personally need to know about a person to be “comfortable” in a relationship? How much do I really have to know about someone’s history and typical behaviors before I feel I can “compute” that person’s value or meaning to me?

How intimate do I have to be with a person’s emotional experiences, before I feel I am relating to that person? Can I ever really be confident that I know how another person really feels at any given moment?

Why am I so unscientific about just about everything that matters most to me?

Am I unscientific? Or, do I somehow know “stuff” about others that cannot be indicated by qualities that might be incredibly hard to measure or analyze? How much time, effort, and thinking do I avoid by trusting my intuition?

Am I a fool? Or am I a “trusting soul?” Or, am I a sharp eyed, intuitive psychic who rarely sizes up anyone wrongly?

In all this immensity, this universe, this fabulousitudiosity, how much do my facts add up to? Are my life’s total points only available in a sub-note within a mind-busting, science killing, eternity swallowing intellectual analysis that will never be concluded?

When last I fell in love, what value did the minute flecks of color in my love’s eyes have for me? Why was I so sure of the total?

While gazing into my eyes, what DOES God do with all that is seen?

Take a deep breath and hold it.

Have the thought that you will never stop holding your breath.

Be really determined to hold your breath forever. Really get into it. This is it, finally, you’re going to show your body who’s boss.

Be really determined to explore the extent to which you can take this.

Watch as finally, no matter what you are thinking, no matter how much you struggle with your intent to control your breathing, “someone else”-the one who really controls your breathing-steps in and puts a stop to the silliness.

Watch and take notes as your resolve is, within seconds, quickly eroded.

Watch as, even though no actual physical pain is felt, you arrive at a point where it is as if you are being tortured.

Watch as an emotion, desperation, is manufactured from “somewhere” to change your intent.

Ask yourself,Who stopped holding my breath? Why do I think it is “me” when “I” wanted to stop my breathing?

What is the nature of “will power” and its conscious use? Why can a physical need so effortlessly contact, change, manipulate, erase or do whatever it needs to do to change my intents? Why can’t “I” reach that “deeply” into my will?

Why do I insist that “I” am the one who makes the decision to begin to breathe again?

What would the payoff be if I could control my breathing so much that I could actually go unconscious by holding my breath? What part of my life would benefit from such “will power?”

What is this hold that life has on me? Why do I cling to it so? What does this exercise reveal to me about my “actual beliefs” when compared to my “philosophical beliefs?” Why am I afraid to die?

Do I need to strengthen my beliefs, or do I need to find certainty about whether or not there is an immortal aspect of what I call me? Which would be a better achievement?

When it comes to spirituality what is better: believing or knowing?

Imagine a button which if pushed would immediately rid you of a negative psychological pattern-instantly.

You get to choose which habit, drive, need, obsession, immorality, weakness, fear, or attachment would be removed by pushing the button.

You get only one push of the button-one negativity removed. After that, no more pushes. So think carefully, and make a choice.

Ask yourself,Is my choice the “worst” part of me?

Would I have the courage to push the button? Really?

What would happen in my life if I suddenly quantum-leaped forward towards greater psychological health? What effects would it have on my friends? My career? My happiness? Are any of these predictions “holding me back” from making big changes in my life?

What are the chances that one or more of my remaining patterns would intensify or increase to fill the “void” left by the removal? Would I end up with the same amount of “personal negativity” as before?

Why do I feel wise enough to make this choice when I was unwise enough to fall into the undesirable pattern?

Why does this exercise’s basic premise seem so alluring? What is it about instant transformation that seems so possible? Do I have a core belief in my personal power to change myself?

What prevents me from changing myself when my intellect is so certain it would be a good change? What would life be like if my intellect was always in harmony with my heart? Would I always be doing good things from that point on?

Have someone tell you a joke.

Give the joke a one word title.

Write the title down on a slip of paper. Put the paper somewhere “out of the way,” but where you WILL see it tomorrow or a few days from now.

When you see it again, tell the joke to someone else.

Ask yourself,How is it that, though I did not rehearse or write down the joke, and though I have not retold it “word for word,” yet I have effortlessly been able to recall it and communicate it?

What is my full power to remember a series of statements when they are connected “story like?”

Is there a way that I can use this “memory trick” to retain other sets of information as effortlessly?

This effortlessness, how much of it do I see in my daily life? How often do I spend large amounts of time just doing what I know has to be done without ever having actually done that very exact thing before? How much of my life do I have to be present for in order to get something done? Is most of my time spent “retelling?”

Is there a way in which I can see my life as a story “I already know” that I am telling to the world?

Am I, my life, something the universe “made a note” about? Am I being told right now?

Who’s listening, and will the listener get the joke?

The next time you get angry, immediately find that part of you that is assigning blame.

Stop the blaming for at least ten seconds. Just ten seconds.

For just a tiny amount of time, refuse to entertain any thoughts about what or who is responsible for this anger. Just don’t do it.

Accept the feelings, but any words that come into mind about the cause of the feelings, just pay attention to something else. Handle yourself. Force yourself. Control yourself.

Just do it. Prove it can be done at least once.

Ask yourself,Can I prevent being manipulated by my environment for just a few seconds?

How much control do I have, and how much can I reduce the severity of a negative emotion’s production of negative thoughts?

What is the difference between being a victim and indulging in self-pity?

What part do I play in creating anger?

What use is having this negative emotion to me? In what ways do I encourage it?

What is the inner nature of the experiencer of the emotion? Am I really angry too, or am I merely seeing the anger without being angry? Am I my emotions, or do I experience them only?

If, from now on, I simply and always refused and just “walk away” from negative thoughts during emotional “bouts,” how much time and aggravation would that save me from wasting and experiencing?

If my nervous system were viewed as a faithful, fantastic, but also foolish servant who was constantly bringing experiences to me, what lesson would I be teaching this servant if I absolutely dived into everything that was set before me?

Just how much have I let this servant get away with?

Where can one find good help these days?

The next time you are about to eat a delicious meal, resolve to eat the first mouthful in utter slow motion.

Slowly, put your fork into the food and then wait one full minute as you look at the food and think about how it is going to taste.

Then raise the forkful to your lips, and stop again, and merely smell the wonderful aroma for ten full seconds.

Then take the mouthful, but do not start chewing for ten seconds while you experience the taste of the food as its flavor travels out to the various parts of your mouth.

Then chew slowly-one chew per three seconds. Each time you swallow a small portion of this mouthful, try to “track” your food downwards as you feel the bodily sensations of swallowing.

Ask yourself,What would life be like if I enjoyed all of life to such exquisite detail.

What urges me to chew faster when I experiment like this?

What would slower chewing do to the amount of food I consumed?

When I closely attend like this, what is it that I am “turning on” to accomplish this?

Am I, in fact, already turned on like this, but simply am jumping from one kind of experience to another in such rapid succession that I do not notice the magnitude of my attention-because I am not repetitively focusing on one type of experience?

Am I a set of experiences?

Who am I-if I am not my tasting experience? Who is this experiencer to whom the tasting experience is being delivered?

What is the difference between my thoughts and me?

When I am experiencing dreamless, deep sleep, who is this non-experiencing experiencer?

Do I have good taste?

Consider some group of persons who believe in something that you feel is terribly harmful to themselves.

Try to see from their viewpoint, and see them as captured within a mental pattern. Try to understand how they explain themselves when they look into a mirror.

Try to discover their “blind spots” and inability to see the negative aspects of their beliefs. See how they have been “trapped” into their ways of thinking and do not even know it.

>From this angle, see if, at least to some measurable degree, compassion arises within you.

Ask yourself,Does the degree to which compassion arises within me indicate my own ability to drop the patterns within which I am trapped?

Should I practice this technique for my own entrapments?

What is the payoff for me when I forgive someone or look upon them with compassion?

What is the spiritual difference between compassion and pity?

If I have done, or am presently doing, unforgivable things which I cannot fully reconcile myself with, what are my chances of reconciling with others?

What must I do to me before I can do unto others? How would I feel after I did it? What would I pay for that feeling right now?

Would it be all right for me to feel this way about myself now, and I’ll “do the work later?”

Consider a person whom you dislike very much.

Try to discover what is that person’s very best emotional quality and which is strongly apparent-an aspect of the person that you would admire if it were in someone else’s personality.

Now, take another aspect of the person that you admire and consider it.

Do this until you are coming up with aspects, which, though positive, are rather ordinary and shared by pretty much everyone else. Then you can stop and ask the questions below.

Ask yourself,What part of me resists doing this exercise?

Am I attached to negative summations?

Do I review my opinions from time to time to see if I still agree with them intellectually or emotionally?

Has this person become a bit less two dimensional and more likely to be seen by me as a complex individual with many parts?

How does this process serve my psychological health?

Is there a payoff to using this process on a daily basis?

How would it feel to do this for myself and the opinions I hold about myself? Could I do this honestly? Will I?

What is the deepest form of forgiveness that I practice on a regular basis? The passage of time? Intellectually mulling over the issues? Emotional repatterning? How deep can I go? Will I?

If I had a secret room in my house that had all the walls filled with negative graffiti, how would that affect how I felt while living in the house? How would I feel every time I walked passed the closed door? How would I feel when someone came to visit?

What is in my heart of hearts?

Before you do the following, be prepared to do nothing at all as far as it is possible for you do so.

Intend to do no thinking on purpose. Nothing extra is to be added to this exercise. Just be ready to relax and watch what your mind does without you doing anything to help it.

While you are not doing anything and just relaxing, it will be okay to passively note the effortlessness of your thinking. Are you ready?

Prepare to do nothing.

This process will happen automatically and quickly so be ready to do nothing.

Just watch your mind responding without your help.

Ready? Here goes.

Just read the following and then relax. Do nothing for about ten seconds after you have read the following:

NAME AS MANY RED COLORED FRUITS AS POSSIBLE IN TEN SECONDS FLAT.

Ask yourself,How does my brain know what a question means?

Did my brain first look up the words “red” and “fruit,” etc., and then process the meaning of the sentence and then use that understanding to take actions upon it? Did it do these things separately, all at once, one at a time, what are the details of this process? Why am I so in the dark about it all?

Why did my brain name fruits without my permission? I was intending to do nothing!

What is the power of a question, and do I ask enough questions about myself?

Is this how I have emotions too? Do I “just have them by some automatic process that is mysterious triggered” without hardly an inkling of where they come from?

Can I stop this process? Would I?

If I were a perfect person, would my mind still work like this? Does everyone’s mind work like this-including the minds of those that have been called great thinkers, saints, enlightened, mentally retarded, insane, evil?

Just where is the point where I CAN control my thoughts?

An ancient story. Two student monks were walking in a town, ages ago, far away. They were both handsome young men, but they were serious about becoming absolutely aware of their inner spirits. The monastery in which they lived and took instruction had very strict rules of behavior for its students.

A hot rain had been falling all morning, but at last the sun had come out, and everything was glistening with a coating of pure water. The marketplace was filled with noise and bustle, and the streets were very muddy. Only under the woven thatched awnings of the storefronts of the streets were there any dry paths.

They came upon a lovely lady attired in expensive clothing, holding a delicate hand painted parasol. Everything about this woman was refined and spoke of wealth and knowledge of the world and its many ways.

It was obvious to the monks that she was trying to cross the road without getting her clothes dirty, but it was impossible. She stood there in a perfect moment as the sun echoed in thousands of small puddles from foot and hoof prints. Suddenly, the taller of the monks swept the woman and her beauty up in his arms and carried her safely across the road.

Afterwards, they went back to their monastery rooms to meditate before the evening’s rituals. As they sat down together, the shorter monk finally spoke his mind, saying, “I cannot understand your actions! We are monks! We do not go near females-especially beautiful women who are experienced with the ways of the life that we have put behind us. That was dangerous. Why did you do that?”

The taller monk settled into his meditative pose, and just before he closed his eyes, he looked at his friend, and said, “I left the girl there on the side of the street. Are you still carrying her?”

Ask yourself,What do I hold on to? What do I cling to that obsesses me?

What power does the past have on me? To what errors do I still give my precious attention? What thoughts do I run over and over again?

If I cling to and judge myself by my past, what am I telling others in subtle ways to also do to me? How can I expect them to judge me as I am today-now-if I continue to judge myself by my past? Why would they treat me any differently?

What is now?

If I have thoughts about some action I am doing, are these thoughts about now? Do I know that now I am paying attention to thoughts happening to me-not the actions with which the thoughts are concerned?

When I want to memorize something what do I do?

When I think of something I did years ago, am I doing it again? Am I “burning in” the experience so that my nervous system can more easily remember it?

When a memory happens to me, how much is that a voluntary action? What happens to memories in which I am not that much interested when they occur? Can I treat all memories equally? Must I have different rules for different types of memories? If my memories were individual people, would I be a racist?

If I cross a wide river, hopping from rock to rock and never falling in, what would I say to someone who complains that one of the rocks I used for the crossing was “especially ugly”?

If I had a sudden attack of amnesia, how much time would that save me each day?

What would I rather be: a good and wonderful religious leader whose very last year of life was unfortunately filled with sinning and complete loss of faith, or a wretched person who had spent an entire lifetime making huge mistakes in morality, but finally in the last year of life “got it” and lived a perfect life of harmony and love and finally died with those who knew him crying at their great loss? Or does it matter to me at all?

How much “work” is it for me to make the past real? What would happen if I “sort of got lazy?”

If I met a perfect person, on what would that person’s attention be placed when considering me, and what would I still be carrying in my arms?