Tom Evans | Tag Archives: gut

Streams of Thought

Posted on Jun 2, 2016 by Tom Evans Posted in Illuminating 3 Comments

Albert Einstein was renowned for his thought experiments. The whole Theory of Relativity came from him musing whimsically about what it would be like to ride on a beam of light.

Now neuroscientists are not totally sure where our thoughts actually come from, or where our memories really hang out. Cosmologists and physicists are spending billions of dollars trying to find out why 96% of the Universe is basically ‘dark’.

Now it’s just a thought and a whimsy but wouldn’t it be kind of amusing if it was thought itself that formed the basis for all that dark energy, and that memories turned out to be a form of dark matter.

So just imagine for a moment if all the thoughts you have had since you became self-aware, including dreams and unconscious thoughts, were lined up as a ‘thought stream’, plotted against the timeline of your life. Then imagine that your life, and the lives of everything else that is living, is formed of what you experience as you ride down this stream of thought. Note that most of these ‘thoughts’ are just feelings and sensations and not the inner dialogue we think of as thought.

The Mind of God?

Together then, all life forms ride on thought streams that collectively form the fabric of the Universe. Single celled life may only be capable of tuning into thought forms that fuel the essential life processes. Complex animals such as all dolphins, and some humans, have neurological centres that can tune into ‘higher level’ thoughts like compassion, curiosity, creativity and love. All are aspects of course of the thought streams that emanate from the mind that some call God, which is why it it proclaimed God is omnipresent and in all of us. This could give us an agnostic model of God that all could embrace irrespective of creed, dogma and scientific leaning.

In passing, it is worth noting that not all what we think of as life, or conscious, may incarnate in the material plane. Furthermore, what we consider to be inanimate like the seas, the air and rocks and even scaling up to whole planets, moons and stars could also be ‘borne’ on discarnate thought forms.

The Fusion of Thought

In the same way that elementary particles can smash together and coalesce or shatter, thoughts can meet too and merge to form new thoughts. Thoughts also possess a wave-particle dualism. They can merely pass through as ethereal whispers on the wind or coalesce, densify and interact with the physical plane. Ask any alchemist.

Some share their journey together; others bounce off each other and go their separate ways; some annihilate each other in a puff of energy.

The Free Will Paradox

So as our thought streams merge with those of others, they can take off in different directions that give us a multifarious and seemingly random set of life experiences. This may solve the paradox that all is preordained yet we live in an illusion we call reality where it appears we have the free will to change anything.

Perhaps what we perceive as free will is merely our natural reaction to incoming, seemingly random thought streams.

Perhaps also, if you are not totally happy with your life’s direction and pace, you could jump off your current thought stream and start riding another one?

This blog is such an example and is only ‘just a thought’. Please add you thoughts to this meme by way of comment below.

Perceptions of Time

Posted on Nov 25, 2015 by Tom Evans Posted in Timing Leave a comment

Quarter 2 : Five Temporal Takeaways

This is the second of four sneak previews of what’s inside my forthcoming book, Managing Time Mindfully, being published on the 11th December

Perceptions of Time Infographic

Temporal Takeaway #1:
The idea that the left brain is logical and the right brain is creative has become an urban myth. A better approximation is that the left brain sits inside space and time and the right brain site everywhere and ‘everywhen’ else. This is still a gross simplification and approximation.

Temporal Takeaway #2:
The Ancient Greeks had a god named Kronos who looked after matters on the Earth plane. Their god called Kairos concerned himself with managing the heavens. This is perhaps a more accurate model for how the left and right brain operate, whilst being more metaphorical.

Temporal Takeaway #3:
Our gut, or enteric, mind has more neurons that a cat’s brain. It operates around 5 to 10 seconds ahead of our conscious mind and is always, always right.

Temporal Takeaway #4:
Most people are intrinsically around 33% efficient. As the normal human mind can only hold one thought at a time, if we mull over the past or worry about the future, we lose focus on what we are doing right now..

Temporal Takeaway #5:
Every minute spent in meditation comes back to us many times over. We get the time back in spades. Our creativity, luck, productivity and longevity all benefit. Regular meditation can even allow us to live weller longer.

p.s. this blog was posted live exactly on the 25th November, timed with the Full Moon

These themes and more are explored in the second quarter of my new book, Managing Time Mindfully, which is published on the 11th December — the exact date of the next New Moon.

Order your copy today and get free access to the Your Perfect Day pack of meditations, to help you get more done in less time.

Get your copy of Manage Your Time Mindfully here

Publishing in Tune with the Moon
Quarter 1 : First Tickings
Quarter 3 : Managing Time
Quarter 4 : Temporal Alchemy
November Moon Phases

Seven Time Management Hacks

Posted on Sep 28, 2013 by Tom Evans Posted in Timing 2 Comments

Most time management systems quite rightly focus on goal setting, intelligent prioritisation and improved interruption management. When we see time as a finite resource, with a forward arrow, this is a pretty good strategy. It is however a left-brained, orthogonal approach.

Time however is both malleable and stretchable and when we see it as something that can be manipulated to our advantage, there is a whole gamut of techniques we can use to get more done in less time. Our perception of time is a function of our consciousness and modulated by the speed of our breath.

Quite simply, when we change our mind, we change our time.

Hack One : Ending Procrastination

It is amazing how creative we can be at not getting on with the task in hand. When it comes to doing what we really should be doing, or what we would love to do, we invent excuses galore to not-do-it. In all cases, this sort of behaviour is a symptom of a deeper malaise. When we procrastinate creatively, we are masking and hiding an underlying fear. It might be a fear of failure or even a fear of success. It could be fear of the unknown or a fear of being ridiculed. Often, it has roots back to an earlier event where the wheels came off our bus.

Remove the fear and the creative spark gets redirected where it is needed.

Hack Two : Getting in Sync

Our man-made calendar and the 9 to 5 working week, when combined with 24×7 electric lighting, has resulted in us losing connection with natural cycles. Morning people just can’t produce as well in the afternoons. Each month, the Moon orbits our planet and has a massive impact on the creative cycle. Spring-time is the perfect time to leap into action and autumn is the perfect time to harvest.

When we go with the temporal flow, we stop pushing time uphill.

Hack Three : Kronos and Kairos

The Greeks knew this but only recently neuroscientists have re-discovered that we have two minds of time. For most people, the left brain sits inside space and time; simultaneously the right brain lives everywhere and ’everywhen’ else. Energise both hemispheres by going for a good walk, or cross crawling, or give them a task they work on together and time takes on an ethereal quality.

It is just like magic because all magic tricks are only magic until we know how the trick is done.

Hack Four : It’s Madness not to Meditate

It is thought that every minute spent in the deep meditative state extends our longevity by an equal amount of time, or more. Not only that but our well-being and vitality improves so we lose less time being ill, or just under the weather and under-performing. What’s more, when we take 10-20 minutes of “me-time” out every day, we get it back in spades with the serendipities and chance encounters we experience by being more tuned in.

Perfect opportunities come in when we least expect them too – and always just-in-time.

Hack Five : The Intention Field

Thoughts don’t become things, they are things. Every thought we have generates an intention field around it that sends ripples out through the collective mind that bounce back at us. Simply by engaging both hemispheres on a task, we send out a signal that we are busy. You will find the phone doesn’t ring when you are really zoned on a task in this manner.

The intention field gets generated automatically and requires no energy but a particular kind of breath – and we all have to breathe anyway.

Hack Six : Whole Mind Thinking

Our consciousness is sited all over our body and only concentrated around major nerve ganglia. As we have billions of neurons in our brains, for most people upon awakening, our inner dialogue naturally shouts the loudest. As a result, we assume our head is where all the ‘action’ is when it comes to matters of consciousness and awareness. This has the tendency of masking signals from other important nerve centres, specifically those in our heart and our gut. From an evolutionary perspective, these mind centres are older and in some ways wiser. They also operate a few seconds ahead of our conscious awareness and they are always, always right.

When we get our head, heart and gut in alignment, we become unstoppable.

Hack Seven : Letting Stuff Arrive

Rather than thinking we have to turn up, when you apply the six hacks above all together, all we have to do is to allow things to arrive. Life stops being a chore and we begin to enjoy a charmed existence.

Also what turns up is better than our wildest dreams and always perfectly timed.

Create as much time as you need and get more done

Anatomy of a Light Bulb Moment

Posted on Feb 7, 2011 by Tom Evans Posted in Chatting 1 Comment

When we meet people we’ve not seen for a while, we often ask “What’s new?”. If you get confronted with this question when not expecting it, you can get caught of guard, end up scratching your head and might even feel compelled to make something up.

On ‘slow news days’, you can imagine journalists do not have a good time and some have even been known to make up ‘news’. I love it when breakfast TV reports what is ‘new’ in the newspapers. At the same time, morning papers talk about what is ‘new’ on TV. This cycle feeds itself. We all know this is all not really ‘news’ at all, even though it’s on the News and in the News-papers.

You’ve also heard that phrase – “There’s nothing new under the Sun”.

So is it possible that anything is actually new? Now having a dig at journalists is not the point here – they have a job to do and provide a service many people want to consume. The point is for something to be really new, it has to possess some important characteristics.

Firstly, it only has to be new to us. You might know something that’s quite ‘old’ that I don’t and when you share it with me, it’s news to me. I may thank you and pass it on if I think it’s newsworthy.

Secondly, it might be something that has occurred for the first time. This could be some permutation that causes us to take notice. All too often, our news reports focus on ‘bad news’ only offering a token ‘And finally …’ good news snippet at the end. What a breath of fresh air a ‘good news only’ news broadcast would be.

Thirdly is the class of news I personally find the most exciting and fascinating and that’s when something new is discovered or invented. Here we are acting in a generative capacity fabricating something new from existing parts or conditions.

When you are involved with ‘bringing in the new’ in this manner, and on a regular basis, it has an amazing affect on your health and well being. Being in an environment where renewal is the order of the day causes our brains to continually rewire and keeps our mind active. In turn, this active mind renews our body.

What makes generation of this type of news even more attractive to workers of light is that the two practices that encourage this type of ‘newness’ are meditation and respiration.

Meditation sets up the perfect conditions for light bulb moments to occur. A still mind allows ‘the new’ to arrive. In the converse situation, the same thinking delivers the same ‘old’ results. Fresh thinking leads to a fresh mind and a fresh body.

The fuel to encourage the introduction of such fresh thought is specifically delivered during the in-spiration phase of the re-spiration process. The hyphenation is not only intentional but provides some elucidation as to what is occurring.

As neurons do not have internal reserves for oxygen, more neuronal activity requires more oxygen to be delivered rapidly through the blood stream. Conventional wisdom suggests that more neuronal activity creates more connections and the likelihood of a ‘new’ connection being forged increases as a result. So deeper breathing while meditating causes more interconnectivity in the brain.

Now this might well be ‘news’ to you but I had the light bulb moment that it might be fun to use this technique to channel in what really goes on during this process. This was the result.

When you move your diaphragm, your spiritual muscle, it pump primes your pranic tube. This in turn stimulates your main chakra centres and a massive amount of intercommunication ensues. Initially this is mainly between your gut, heart and third eye.

After a few minutes, the pranic force seeps outside your physical body. Via your omega chakra, a few inches below your root chakra point, your prana seeps into Mother Earth and informs her you are ready to receive.

A microsecond later, it rises past your crown to your alpha chakra point just above your head. At this time, you become the pivot point between the superconsciousness and Lady Gaia – your heart being at the very centre.

If at that time, you are internally silent, information transfer occurs. It seems to happen outside time and inside space. Every neuron in your brain lights up and you experience the beginning of a light bulb moment. The process is not yet complete.

The information is passed to Mother Earth who checks it is safe and timely for you to receive it. It then passes into your gut centre for further ‘internal quality assurance’. Your gut then passes it to your heart centre so you can fall in love with the idea.

Finally, it returns to your third eye and is allowed to enter your outer cortex and your consciousness and you get a ‘new idea’. In real time, less than a second has elapsed. Yet, as all your ‘minds’ are in agreement, you know you have to act on this ‘news’ – it just feels right.

Your throat chakra might even get it on the act and shout “Eureka”!

Now I am hoping this mechanism for how we receive light bulb moments is ‘news’ to some of you. It certainly is to me.