There are a lot of meditative techniques, but in this book, my wish is to
help you produce the most desirable benefit of meditation—being able to
access and enter the operating system of the subconscious mind so that you
move away from simply being yourself and your thoughts, beliefs, actions,
and emotions, to observing those things ... and then once you’re there, to
subconsciously reprogramming your brain and body to a new mind. When
you move from unconsciously producing thoughts, beliefs, actions, and
emotions and take control of them through the conscious application of
your will, you can unlock the chains of being your old self to become a new
self. How you get to the point at which you are able to access that operating
system and bring the unconscious into your consciousness is the subject
we’ll cover through the rest of this book.
One Definition of Meditation:
Becoming Familiar with Self
In the Tibetan language, to meditate means “to become familiar with.”
Accordingly, I use the term meditation as a synonym for self-observation as
well as self-development. After all, to become familiar with anything, we
have to spend some time observing it. Again, the key moment in making
any change is going from being it to observing it.
Another way to think of this transition is when you go from being a doer
to a doer/watcher. An easy analogy I can use is that when athletes or
performers—golfers, skiers, swimmers, dancers, singers, or actors—want to
change something about their technique, most coaches have them watch
videotape of themselves. How can you change from an old mode of
operation to a new one unless you can see what old and new look like?
It’s the same with your old and your new self. How can you stop doing
things one way without knowing what that way looks like? I frequently use
the term unlearning to describe this phase of changing.
This process of becoming familiar with the self works both ways—you
need to “see” the old and the new self. You have to observe yourself so
precisely and vigilantly, as I’ve described, that you won’t allow any
unconscious thought, emotion, or behavior to go unnoticed. Since you have
the equipment to do this because of the size of your frontal lobe, you can