In Korea, there is a popular program called “User’s Manual for My Body.” This TV show reports current trends and common misconceptions about health. It looks at scientific research and introduces the healthiest lifestyle habits you can have. The program is useful at this period in history when you can reach 100 years with a lifestyle based on common sense about the body. However, in order to fundamentally change your lifestyle, you mustn’t stop at your body. You need to take it to the next level—your brain.
For the most part, people usually aren’t aware of their brain as they live their lives. However, if you learn how to understand and use your brain, you can have a healthier and happier life, not only physically, but mentally and spiritually as well. Along the lines of the “User’s Manual for My Body,” what you need is a “User’s Manual for the Brain.” So I made one I call BOS, or the
Brain Operating System.
Using your brain effectively is not hard. It’s no different than a shift in thinking. When you think that something is hard, it’s because changing what you think about it isn’t easy. Fear and thoughts such as, “I can’t do it, it won’t work, it’s too hard,” become obstacles to using your brain well.
When they’re having trouble achieving what they intend, people often blame their environment or aptitude, but these problems arise because they’re unaware that they are in control of their brain. If you can just change the way you think, you can get your brain moving and use it for what you want. You take the brain you were given and make it yours.
Even
releasing emotions that often come and settle in your brain, such as fear, sadness, anger, and loneliness, makes it easier for the brain to relax and your thoughts to change. A wonderful way to awaken the senses of your brain and make it flexible is
dancing and singing. You have to dance and sing your heart out with total freedom and without any form or convention, without being conscious of anyone else and being fully focused only on yourself. When that happens, your brain that was closed changes into a brain that’s open. Then you recover self-confidence and feel satisfied with yourself. You come to like yourself, and rather than becoming a star that gets the world’s recognition, you become a star who is recognized by yourself. Love for yourself is akin to a signal that the senses of your brain are awake.
If you play well with your brain this way, the senses by which you can see the world in a multi-dimensional way gradually awaken. Only humans can feel the past, present, and future. We have a special sense that enables us to remember the past, perceive the present, and imagine the future. When you awaken this sense and make it flexible by endlessly refreshing your brain and removing wrong information, achieving the
integration of your brain, then through the power of your imagination, you become able to cut across time and space and see the world with
multi-dimensional awareness. The ultimate reason why
meditation is necessary is so you can break free from habitual one-dimensional thought modes and demonstrate creativity as you engage in multi-dimensional thinking.
There’s a shortcut to expanding your mind this way. It’s having a dream. If the present is a struggle, you tend to think about good times from the past or imagine the future. If you think of a beautiful future, that becomes a
dream. Trying to bring about change in the midst of the layers of systems that currently exist may be difficult and take too long, but it motivates you to know and use your brain. Then you can quickly come upon the changes you want. That’s the difference between a life of using your brain and a life with a narrow, one-dimensional consciousness.
Do you want a life of value, a life that’s fun? The answer is in your brain.