Last week I read a book which helped me bring all the pieces of my self together, and it’s not just the book, it was a sort of final completion of finding my real self, getting to grips with who I am and how I can finally get more control over my existence and my music..
Maybe I’ll explain…
I do believe we develop in our lives, and it’s inevitable. A life is a test giving us a chance to evolve by making us face difficulties of life. It is down to us whether we take the fight and move forward or lose and stand where we started…
I have long been searching for a way to overcome my pain of inability to find inner peace in life. Also lately, I have successfully overcome my long-life apathy that had often made it impossible for me to practice, make music, sometimes felt hard to get up from bed at all…
I also learned orthodox medicine does not often lead to health because it is concentrated on curing the symptoms of disease instead of the real causes. All our bodies deteriorate within time. Taking medicine to cure one thing breaks down another, for which there is another cure produced, which again leads to further side-effects, which can be cured by another medicine which… and so on and so forth. I learned the best way to keep healthy for me is to work on my inner harmony and inner peace, which does not mean that you should not be full of energy. Actually both should combine – piece inside, energy outside. It is also connected with something I believe many Eastern-Europeans still need to learn – control over our emotions and thinking habits…
We often clean up the house and have a shower every day. If we get dirty physically, is it possible that we need to ‘clean our heads’ too on a regular basis? If so, why doesn’t anyone teach us that in schools?
In a book by Victor Suvorov “The Aquarium” (based on his years of service in Russian intelligence) the author says that no spy gets sick ever – That’s because your body conforms to your will… And that people complain to succumb to their weakness and believe or pretend they are helpless… Well, if my will is so powerful it is high time to change my thought habits which in most are nothing more than reactions to what happens both around and within me… and being usually negative, simply disrupt my natural flow of creativity…
There are some techniques I learned at Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft Course – www.guitarcraft.com – (guitarist and leader of the group King Crimson) how to ‘keep fit’ in a professional life of a musician. Actually the level 3 of the course I attended was more about how to SURVIVE being a professional musician and there was a lot of emphasis on health, with professionals who coordinated the music group classes, teaching techniques that help stay healthier and more balanced in arduous circumstances (physically, mentally and emotionally). Basically I deduced big show-biz stars take drugs often because they have to find energy to be able to survive the tension of their professional life. The course was much about how to stay in the biz without resorting to taking substances, at least that was how I found it to an extent… The only way to gather energy for everyday routine was by proper techniques with your body exercises and mental activity (I know it may sound like pseudo-science but I hadn’t believed myself the techniques before I learned them and they worked! I use a lot of that in my life not only to keep up with the professional level but also it led me to finding my own way to keep inner strength, harmony, peace (even in stressful situations), control (of my emotions and habitual reactions to strong negative situations) etc.
If you feel your mind would do with a bit of revitalizing, like mine, I selected some Bibliography on the topic that I found interesting, all written in plain language, easy to read yet very informative and inspiring:
1. “Keep Your Brain Alive” by Lawrence C. Katz, Ph.D. and Manning Rubin
The book is based on recent neuroscientific discoveries showing that the brain does not age with time! It is the routine of the adult life that kills this precious muscle. The connections between neurons build up and get stronger each time we learn something new to us. It is not the neurons themselves but the connections between them that disappear when unused. Your brain ‘keeps fit’ only when it has to learn to do something new or do the same thing but in a new way. The book gives many interesting examples on how to keep your brain alive until your old age, by slightly changing even the most basic of your everyday life activities…
2. “Science of the Gods” by David Ash and Peter Hewitt;
“Conversations with God” by Neale Donald Walsch – those two books, although not really scientific (sometimes even closer to fantasy), give a nice new outlook on how our reality can be perceived differently, explaining the continuity of life and energy beyond birth and death (probably James Cameron touched on it a bit in his ‘Avatar’). Very easy read, still breaking our standard thinking on ourselves, our lives and the whole Universe. These are NOT religious books! You might need some gut to digest some of the ideas…
3. “Systems Thinking” – humans and the whole reality are difficult to predict as everything is a mixture of interconnected systems. An approach to problem solving based on that theory. Usually for managers, still might be interesting to musicians as these days we often need to be our own managers
4. “The Power of Your Subconscious Mind” by Joseph Murphy. You probably heard about this one. I call it a ‘handbook of happiness’. Worth reading if you want to change your thinking habits from negative to positive. The spiritual, almost magical mood in the book gives an impression of being used to work in a similar way to hypnosis. You might find this one a bit soppy if you’re a very down-to-earth person, yet many of my friends (and me) found it helpful, seems to be working more on the subconscious and imagination…
5. “Neuro Linguistic Programming” (NLP) – a wide variety of books on how you can learn and practice to become more successful in any area of your professional or private life. Exercises to change your thinking habits. NLP is used extensively in the global market, especially advertising, with its power of manipulation. A more practical and specific approach
6. I would also like to recommend two great Polish science-fiction/fantasy writers:
– Stanislaw Lem (“Solaris” – intelligent sci-fi, with the movie starring George Clooney only touching the surface of the book). A great visionary of science-fiction. His other novel, “The Cyberiad“, inspired Will Wright to write the game SimCity. Philip K. Dick (author of e.g. ‘The Minority Report’) recognized Lem’s great talent by writing in his letter to the FBI in 1974: “…Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles (…) – to gain monopoly positions of power from which they can control opinion through criticism and pedagogic essays is a threat to our whole field of science fiction and its free exchange of views and ideas…”
– Andrzej Sapkowski (“The Witcher”) – with computer game based on it). Great fantasy writing, great dialogues in the original, probably difficult to translate though… Published by The British Gollancz, The Masters Of Polish Fantasy.
Thanks,
Slawek Przytula
“Is Changing Our Thought Habits Important?”
By Slawek Przytula of Hoboud
Olsztyn, Poland
http://www.myspace.com/hoboud
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