Author Archives: DrKeith

Is Disgust A True Emotion?

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If an emotion is a feeling or “vibe” that dictates behavior, then disgust is one of our most powerful emotions!

A growing body of research, has revealed the profound power of disgust, showing that this emotion is a much more potent trigger for our behavior and choices than we ever thought. The results play out in all sorts of unexpected areas, such as politics, the judicial system and our spending habits.

The triggers also affect some people far more than others, and often without their knowledge. Disgust, once dubbed “the forgotten emotion of psychiatry”, is being looked at with interest.

Disgust, you may know, is among the so-called ‘basic emotions’ which are recognizable by facial expressions in all races and all societies, even the least advanced. They are the fundamental building blocks of our emotional constitution.

Ekman & Friesen (1982) put forward a list of seven basic emotions commonly judged from still photographs of posed facial behavior, namely:

  1. surprise
  2. interest
  3. anger
  4. disgust/contempt
  5. happiness
  6. sadness
  7. fear.

They qualified this list by pointing out that it is not supposed to represent all emotions, merely the ones that can be discerned from facial appearances, minus any other expressions. One may question the inclusion of surprise as an emotion. Certainly it is a facial appearance but it can appear at many levels on this scale, including surprise happiness and surprise fear (shock), which are wide apart. Continue reading →

The Delusion Of Being You!

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My attention was grabbed by an article in New Scientist, which revealed that experiments were being done in which a robot was controlled by thought alone. The human subject in a laboratory was wired to a functional MRI (fMRI) scanner, which read his intentions according to which parts of the brain cortex were lit up (in stimulation). This notional action was then relayed as instructions to a robot, thousands of kilometres away, which made the movement that the lab experimenter was thinking about.

Shades of the Avatar movie!

We all know we are on the brink of the era in which we can control computers by means of our thoughts; I even wrote about it in my 1999 best-selling book Virtual Medicine. Well, that day is come…

Moreover, we may soon reach a time when we can use a computer-controlled surrogate body to trek across the Sahara, shoot the rapids in the Grand Canyon, have dinner in Paris with a friend and even go to the moon.

This beats “virtual reality” to Hell and back!

True Embodiment

Tele-operated robots, those that can be remotely controlled by a human, have been around for decades.

This new approach goes way beyond that. What was truly remarkable about this experiment was that the human subject began to feel he actually WAS the robot. He felt it was part of himself. We call that embodiment.

Let’s learn more: Continue reading →

Red-Yellow-and-Blue, What Does It Do To You?

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There’s a corny old British patriotic song with the words, “Red, white and blue, what does it mean to you?… (Union Jack colors)

If you are like me, you grew up with the “everybody knows” information that red light is challenging, keeps you energized and makes people aggressive; whereas green light is soothing and calming. Remember?

But it’s not true.

It’s like the flat Earth or the belief that heavier-than-air machines could not possibly fly. Wrong!

Recent scientific study has shown that red light is essential for healthy circadian rhythms. Blue light is the problem.

Here’s what Nature does:

  1. In the mornings, we awake to yellow light (that delicious golden glow of sunrise!)
  2. At mid-day, when we are at our most active, blue light is dominant.
  3. In the evening, mellowed reddish colors calm and prepare us for sleep.

Red light encourages the release of melatonin, our “sleep hormone”. Blue light suppresses this vital, healthy rest hormone.

Artificial Light

The trouble is, in our modern world, we are drenched in blue light, 24/7. Fluorescent “white” light is predominantly blue-green. The newer LEDs emit   “white” light that is predominantly blue.

All this has a bad effect on our sleep cycles. It’s dangerous. Continue reading →

Join Me In A Time Capsule Experiment!

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Somebody suggested this series was good enough to go into a time capsule and be left for future generations to “re-discover”. Watch this video and see what you think!

In order to enroll and get your copies of ALL the teleclasses, PLUS the follow up sessions, PLUS the transcripts, PLUS the bonus eBooks, PLUS the bonus audios, PLUS my magical “Gratitude Process”, you need to go here and take action… Frontiers Of The Possible Welcome Page

Plausible Distractions

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I came up with this phrase today but it’s an old, old concept, once you know what to look for.

It comes down to this:

Often we fail by doing what is most important!

Huh? That’s right. We engage in something which is so easy to sell to ourselves as vital, significant and part of the way forward. But it isn’t. In fact it’s a distraction form what we should be doing.

I’m a writer, so this applies especially to me: so long as I am writing, progress is good, right?

Nope.

There are things we all have to do in life. One particular anchor is the next step in our master life plan. That must take priority over all other activity. So, if we let something get in the way of ding it, we are letting ourselves be distracted.

Here’s today’s example. I was talking with a colleague and proudly boasted I wrote 11,000 words yesterday. That’s impossible, of course. I wrote about 4,000 new words and edited/rewrote another 7,000.

Rewriting and editing is still very demanding and, I would guess, about 65% of the effort of fresh, creative writing. So yesterday was a very formidable output indeed. I doubt even 0.5% of writers who have ever lived could equal that (nobody before the age of word processors).

But actually, I hurt myself. Because I didn’t do something even more important…. Continue reading →

Our Life’s Assignment

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Emmet Fox (1886-1851) was an Irish émigré with the gift of the gab, as they say. A wonderful, spiritual man and a fine preacher, he regularly addressed audiences of over 5,000 in New York.

I often quote some of his beautiful, healing words about love from Sermon On The Mount.

In one of Fox’s books (Make Your Life Worthwhile, 1942) I found a grand little piece entitled Our Life’s Assignment and I have adapted it here, for my forthcoming book BOOM!

There are certain key tasks in which we may attain at least some degree of mastery in this life, says Fox. Otherwise, we are wasting our precious time on Earth. They are:

  1. A duty to know and understand our conscious nature and expand our Being and awareness (finding God as he put it).
  2. Healing and regenerating our own bodies—demonstrating health.
  3. Getting control of ourselves and finding our True Place.
  4. Learning to handle other people both wisely and justly.
  5. Perfecting a technique for getting direct personal inspiration for a general or a specific purpose.
  6. Letting go of the past completely.
  7. Planning the future definitely and intelligently.

To Fox, if we attained even a working ability in these 7 zones, we were successful. It didn’t take mastery on each, just effective action. Moreover, we don’t need to be brilliant on all of them but we must act on each and every assignment. To do less was to be unbalanced. Continue reading →