A billion worlds at your fingertips

In ancient times, only a lucky few could read. You had to be literate, which not everyone was. And you had to have access to books, which not everyone did.

This is why these folk were so keen on memory techniques. Books were expensive, and you’d need a (gasp!) private library to store them. For most people, the easier approach was to borrow books and memorise them.

You can imagine what it was like, knowing that the secrets of the world might be just one town over. How hungry for knowledge would you be if all that knowledge were out of reach? Finding the right book would only be the beginning. Convincing the scholar, nobleman or merchant to loan it would be an adventure in itself.

Some of these people must have spent a lifetime to read a few good books.

When I think about some of my favourite books, I can’t say I blame them.

Each book is a world, a perspective, a new way of thinking.

You, to put it mildly, are not living in the ancient world. You can access billions of them. The printing press, which put books in the hands of the masses, is a primitive relic compared to what you have.

For a pittance, you can browse the biggest libraries that have ever existed… from anywhere on the planet.

Technology creates miracles, then normalises them. Few people of the ancient world would have dreamt that even heaven would hold such wonders.

You have a billion worlds at your fingertips.

Reach out and take them.

Many people don’t realise that, when you need to think new thoughts, you naturally slip into a hypnotic trance. Some problems you can muddle through to the answer, and others require a new insight. Muddling is what the conscious mind does well.

Insights, though? Those are the domain of your unconscious.

Reading – whether fiction or non-fiction – exposes you to new ideas. You can’t fully process these with your conscious mind. So, to bring the words into a place you understand them, you slip into a trance.

Because in a trance you are open to more ideas. This is its purpose and why we evolved this ability. There are times to defer to your usual style of thinking. And there are times to think something new.

Reading forces your brain towards the latter.

That is why reading carries all the classic hypnotic phenomena with it.

It’s easy for the world to disappear as you enter you own private world.

You can lose touch with your body for hours.

Your brain might vividly hallucinate – letting you see what the words describe.

Strong emotional reactions appear somewhere inside you.

And have you ever read a chapter, remembered the gist of it but immediately forgotten the details? That’s classic trance amnesia.

So of all the benefits to reading, you can add this to the list:

It’s fantastic practice for opening your mind and thinking new thoughts.

This of course means that you should read good writing. Something nourishing, full of wisdom, beautiful and practical advice…

In that case, Awakened Thought isn’t for you. Yeah, the monthly newsletter is all these things. It’s not something you simply read. Its real value comes from the hypnotic guided meditations and exercises.

New ones each month, of course…

And if you visit now, you’ll still catch strategies to improve your creative thinking.

But if you dawdle, you’ll have to settle for something better.

(Instead of grabbing both.)

https://guided-thought.com/awakened-thought/