Eldon Taylor's Blog, page 15

Anchored by Hope

In this week’s spotlight I would like to address optimism. We have all heard about the power of intention and positive thinking. Optimism is comprised of both but for it to have any real value, it must also maintain a realistic perspective, it must be reasonable. Reasonable optimism is anchored by hope! Hopeless/Helpless The opposite of optimism is of course, pessimism. In the affairs of the mind, pessimism can lead to helpless/hopeless feelings that literally decimate our own self-healing faculties. Indeed, as a number of animal experiments have shown, when it seems that there is no escape, no hope, animals ...

Unrealistic Expectations

In this week’s spotlight I wish to draw your attention to unrealistic expectations. I have enjoyed recent opportunities to visit with some people of the younger generation about a variety of matters, ranging from apparel fashions to personal responsibility. There is one conclusion that I can absolutely forward, and that is: the media largely informs their ideas and attitudes, and that definitely includes their entertainment. Free or Unrealistic There are many unrealistic expectations among most people, not just our younger generation. Some of these expectations may not truly be ‘unrealistic,’ and yet, often they are more utopian than pragmatic in ...

Hard-Wired for Spirituality

In this week’s spotlight I wish to discuss spirituality and the brain. I posted a new study last week on my Facebook page regarding spiritual retreats. The article’s title tells us that spiritual retreats change feel-good chemical systems in the brain. Now that should come as no surprise to those of you who follow my posts or catch our show Provocative Enlightenment. I have shared several conversations that I have enjoyed with researchers covering varying brain changes that occur as a result of meditation and other spiritual practices. Indeed, the author of the article I posted, Dr. Andrew Newberg, and ...

A Treasure of Miracles

In this week’s spotlight I wish to consider a special anomaly, one that many people have experienced, one that challenges the materialistic view of life, and that is the nature of miracles. On Monday of this week I read a CNN story about an eight-year-old boy named J.T.  who claims an angel helped him lift a car from his father’s chest. CNN reported the story this way: It happened last summer while Stephen Parker and his sons, J.T. and 17 year-old Mason, were working on a Toyota Prius at their home in Sugar City, Idaho, according to EastIdahoNews.com. Mason had ...

Vault 7

In this week’s spotlight I would like to discuss trust—specifically in our government. Last week I spent two hours with George Noory on Coast-to-Coast AM discussing the Vault 7 Wikileaks release of some of the things in the CIA’s hacking toolbox. In my book, Gotcha! The Subordination of Free Will, I covered many of the tools available to our intelligence agencies. I also spent thousands of words sharing some of the very many atrocious studies that had been carried out on innocent American citizens in the name of security. There are well known abuses such as the work conducted under ...

Why Gratitude?

This week I wish to draw attention to the notion of gratitude. For years I have taught what has become referred to as the four-corner philosophy for self-fulfillment. Those four corners include forgiveness, gratitude, self-responsibility, and service; but today I wish to focus on gratitude. Specifically, what is the purpose of having a gratitude attitude? Gratitude is something that typically is the topic of pastors and counselors. However, there is a growing body of science that is beginning to show the many benefits available as a result of a gratitude attitude. Emotion Gratitude is an emotion that reduces anxiety and ...

Psychographics and the Engineering of Consent

In this week’s spotlight I wish to discuss psychographics. For a long time sellers of wares and ideas have relied on demographics for their targeted marketing efforts. Demographics reveal the statistical data of a population, especially those showing average age, income, education, and so forth. So if the target audience is female between the ages of 20 and 40, it is demographics that identify where to go with advertising dollars—whether the ad is designed to peddle a product or win a vote. Psychographics Now by way of further identification, we add the science of psychographics. Psychographics uses demographic information to determine ...

Unconsciously Conscious?

In this week’s spotlight I would like to address the notion of group think. I continue to be surprised at how often people repeat lines they have heard spoken by pundits on both sides of the political arena that are false to fact. Then I thought back to a meeting I had with a friend of mine who was visiting from Germany. He loves magic so we decided to take in a magic show while there. I was asked to assist the magician by pretending to have lost my watch, a watch that he would find. I wondered, how many ...

There’s Nothing Free About Free-Will

In this week’s spotlight I want to take a minute to clarify something. I’ve being asked more and more lately about the notion of free-will. We have entertained a number of guests on this show with rock solid credentials, who have insisted that free-will is in the words of Professor Schwaab, “The Grand Illusion. If this is so, many enquire, why aren’t there more people talking about it. Well one reason most certainly has to do with research that shows rather conclusively that people who do not believe in free-will are less happy and more inclined towards accepting acts that ...

Semantic Distortions

In this week’s spotlight I wish to discuss semantic distortions, how word meanings are distorted by our beliefs and emotions. Our world, to use the words of Alfred Korzybski, has now become, perhaps more often than any sane person would like to admit, false to fact and therefore necessarily distorted. It is precisely the mechanism of semantic distortions that underlies thinking processes that are or become neurotic or psychotic. It is also this same mechanism that gives rise to self-sabotaging behavior and self-limiting beliefs. This very same mechanism—and mechanism is a good word because the process becomes so automatic that ...