Your Logical Sieve and You: Unleash The Power Within

Author

PREFACE

I take the opportunity to honour you for choosing this book.

Tonnes of external and internal influences tend to take control of our lives. We receive uncountable information and emotions every day on which we take many decisions and wait for the results.

I wrote this book as I developed the idea of creating a living filter within us, which will aim to guide us against the immense amount of received information and emotions. I call the living filter a logical sieve.

I am sure your life will enrich and elevate by the insights shared in the book.

You may develop and use your own logical sieve which will raise your life to the highest level.

I wish you eternal peace and happiness in your wonderful life.

Great things were going to happen in my life, and I had to do my part by preparing myself and being ready.

– Ben Carson

CHAPTER 1

The kid, the tiger

trainer and the

mountain trekker

We all know and understand that fear is a state of mind. It is basically an emotion and we are surrounded by different kinds of fears which restrain us from living our lives fully. Thus, we must be committed to win our fears.

Remember, the fears which you don’t face become your limits.

The basic fear comes from the fear of death. It is not always the death of life. It can be the death of possessions, the death of a relationship, the death of peace of mind, or even the death of a no-pain condition of the mind.

But, when does the emotion of fear arises in the mind?

Fear occurs when you partially know the consequences of any particular incident. The uncertain mind is the ideal home of fear, the same way as a weak body is the ideal home for diseases.

Let’s understand this by a few examples.

A tiger is resting in the woods after having its lunch. It is lying on soft grass; eyes closed, but with alert erected ears. Undoubtedly, it has a majestic appearance. No living thing dares to come close to this powerful animal.

A kid crawls into the wood from nowhere and approaches the tiger. The alert tiger senses the kid and opens its eyes wide. It raises its head and stares at the kid with merciless eyes.

The kid, unperturbed, inches towards the tiger, smiling and giggling.

Well, that was a hypothetical situation. God bless the kid!

Does the kid know that a tiger’s jaw can generate around 1000 PSI power?

No.

Does the kid know that only 10 per cent of the jaw power of a tiger is sufficient to kill its prey?

No.

Does the kid know that it is very dangerous to approach a tiger?

No.

Hence, the kid approaches the tiger with no fear at all.

Therefore, if there is no knowledge about the consequence of a situation, there is no fear.

Let us assume another situation where a tiger trainer comes close to an untrained tiger during a training session. Here, the trainer knows the tricks and techniques and he is well-protected by his equipment, which he uses to tame a tiger.

Does the trainer know how dangerous an untrained tiger can be?

Yes.

Does the trainer know about its jaw power?

Yes.

Does the trainer have enough knowledge about taming a tiger?

Yes.

The tiger trainer approaches the tiger with no fear and performs his training session successfully.

Therefore, if you have full knowledge about the consequence of a situation, there is no fear.

It may be a kid or a man; both are no match to a tiger when it comes to physical power.

Here, the differentiator between the man and the kid is knowledge; the knowledge about the consequence if they approach a tiger.

Zero knowledge or full knowledge about the consequences of any activity results in no fear.

What are the chances that you will approach a tiger deliberately if you are not an innocent little child or a tiger trainer?

None!

Why?

Possibly you have partial knowledge about the consequence if you approach the tiger. Are you to run, or climb a tree? You have no idea about exactly what to do! And here comes fear in the uncertain mind.

Fear is an assumption of mind where you have partial idea about the consequences.

So, the kid approached the tiger because it had no knowledge about the consequences. The tiger trainer approached the tiger because he had full knowledge about the consequences.

Let us elaborate this study for further understanding with a known example.

A mountain trekker decides to climb a nearby hill on a fine Sunday. He calculates that it will take the whole day for this activity, if he starts early morning, he can come down on the plain land just before its dark. He starts climbing early morning and reaches the summit before the scheduled time. He is very happy. He fixes his flag on the summit and decides to take rest for a while.

Soon after, he begins climbing down the hill, but after sometime, he realises that he is behind the scheduled time. He speeds up and uses all his experience to descend. Quickly, it is dark and he still finds himself on the hills trying to make his way to the plains. Unable to see things clearly in the dark, his mind is soon struck by fear.

How could he come down to the plains? What would happen if a wild animal attacked him? What would happen if he tumbled down from the hills because he couldn’t see anything in the dark?

In the dark, he feels a tree growing horizontally from the hill. He decides to hold on to it throughout the whole night.

He feels his stomach turning out of fear; the fear of the partial idea of the consequences of staying on this hill at night.

He was feeling brave while he could see in the day light, but the situation reversed at night as he became blinded by the dark.

The next morning, he could see again. He laughed at himself as he discovered that the plain land was just six feet below from the tree. He jumped from the tree and merrily went home.

If the mountain trekker knew at night that he was just six feet away from the plain land, he would have jumped from the tree, despite the darkness.

Here, fear struck because he couldn’t gauge the distance from the tree to the plain land. He was having partial knowledge about the consequence of jumping in the dark.

Hence, we can understand that fear is an assumption of mind where you have partial idea about the consequence of any situation.

So, how do you become fearless?

Either you become completely unaware about the consequence of the incident or become fully aware about the same.

But, being unaware of the consequence of the incident means not gaining any knowledge about the incident and consequence of the incident. And no knowledge about the incident means that the incident does not exist for you but you exist very much for the consequence of the incident.

The consequence of the incident may suddenly attack you, giving you no time to react. The incident may be created by you or by someone else or it can be created by the law of nature.

On the other hand, the feeling of the real fearlessness arises in your mind with the power of full awareness about the incident and the consequence of the incident. Full awareness is equivalent to full knowledge. So, if you have complete knowledge about the consequence of the incident, you can achieve complete fearlessness.

But there is a catch.

You cannot achieve complete fearlessness about any incident even after achieving the correct and complete knowledge about the consequence of the incident if you do not shift our paradigm towards it.

So, to achieve fearlessness, you have to gain correct and complete knowledge about the incident and the consequence of the incident, and accordingly shift your paradigm towards it. In the following chapters, you will have a closer understanding about the paradigm.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

CHAPTER 2

Fear – Going to the

zone of unknown

Identify what you want to be in life. Then, identify the things which are holding you back from what you want to be. Are you scared of public speaking or are you facing crisis in your relationships? Are you lacking energy or are you missing a positive attitude? Take an inventory of the things that are holding you back.

If you are sacred of public speaking, then sign up and arrange to deliver 30 public speeches. If you are missing a positive attitude, then fill up your heart with the desire to unlock your potential. This might be the first taste of real freedom which you will experience in years. A man who is not his own master is not free.

Fear is nothing more than a negative flow of consciousness, a mental demon which you have created in your mind. Your fear has no place to live except your mind. Conquering fear is all about going to the unknown zone and doing the things which you are not used to doing.

Now, you already know that fear is an assumption of mind, an assumption where negative mind waves are created and released easily, which prevents you from venturing to the zone of the unknown.

We will discuss why it is easy to create and release negative mind waves and why it is difficult to create positive mind waves.

Let us elaborate this study with a few examples.

Let us assume that you stop cleaning your backyard. What will happen normally after a week?

Your backyard will become dirty.

Let us assume a student stops studying. What will happen normally to the final examination results?

The student will fail.

Let us assume that you are a businessman and you stop taking interest in your business. What will happen to your business?

It will make losses or will shut down.

All these examples show that if you do not influence a given situation, the normal tendency of the situation is to go the other way. It will never turn the way you would like it to run on its own.

Very similarly, if you do not influence your mind and leave it to operate of its own, its normal tendency is to function in the other way you would like it to function. So, with no control of yours on your own mind, it is very easy to create and release negative mind waves which are accomplished with no efforts.

Therefore, you have to put efforts in your mind in order to generate positive mind waves. Without putting any efforts, nothing can be achieved. When you are putting in efforts, you are actually changing your mind to think something different; something positive.

We know if we do not change, we can become extinct.

The same habits will bring you the same results always. So, to achieve a different result, you must do things differently, and to do things differently, you must think differently. You have to overcome the fear of changing your thoughts.

The first thing you need is the desire to change your thoughts. Your old thoughts and beliefs will only change if the dynamic inertia of your desire for a new thought is greater than the static inertia of the existing thoughts.

For example, there are three roads from Robin’s residence to his office, all having the same distance. He goes to office using one particular road between these three from a very long period of time. He has not explored the other two roads and so he has no experience about the advantages or disadvantages about those. Once, a mild thought came to his attention about travelling to office by one of the unknown roads. At the same time, another thought, which is relatively stronger than the first one, came to his awareness – he was doing well in his office for a long period of time by travelling through the particular road which he used to travel. Then why to take a risk and explore the other road? He asked himself. This may have any direct and indirect effect on my good days.

Robin’s mind filled with an unidentified uncomfortable feeling and he immediately dropped the idea of exploring the other unexplored roads.

This unidentified, uncomfortable thought, is a kind of fear where consequences are uncertain.

Robin travelled from his home by any one road among the three roads when he joined his office the first time. After that, for a few days, he had to decide which route to choose among the three after staring from his home in the morning. Everyday Robin chose the same road. He was also doing well in the office. After a month, he didn’t have to think about choosing the roads. Automatically, he drove by the same road he used to drive everyday like a ritual.

Now, after so many years, Robin thought to travel by the other roads, but the static inertia of his everyday’ s choice was more powerful than the dynamic inertia of his new wish, which prevented him to explore the new possibilities.

If Robin had to go through the new route, he had to increase the intensity of his desire of the new thought to such a degree which is more than the existing thought – which has become a habit of going through the same route. And for doing this, he had to put effort in his mind which he was unable to accomplish, resulting in the prevention of new explorations.

When we are born, people say that a child has taken birth.