new impression is compounded into the pre-existing beliefs (or perception). Through that compounding, our belief in the accumulating perception grows proportionately stronger than ever. In this way a person’s subconscious, goal-achieving mind works to manifest perceptions with increasing or lessening enthusiasm over time, depending upon life’s accumulating experiences, factored against the existing weight of the first suggestion on any subject discussed. A first suggestion goes in unrestricted. Immediately a protective barrier forms in its wake. Any approaching thought from this point is stopped. If its implications are familiar to our inner perceptions, it’s accepted. If they are not in harmony, then it’s rejected. Now we see why security is not that which is pleasurable, but that which is familiar. This is the mechanism of the mind that makes familiarity the number one goal of the human mind! And by the way, this is the one piece of the mind that Western medicine refuses to acknowledge, respect or understand. Without respect for this part of the mind there can be little healing.
Now, if this Critical Faculty was hard to identify, I could understand why certain people and professionals would be so resistant. But I’m going to show you your critical faculty in action, and you tell me if you have to be a born-again Freud to see this thing perform. Follow along. This is the actual test! Read the next statement and feel your mind respond.
Now, true or false--not just figuratively, but literally, you felt the thought of square ram into something. There was a quick conversation in your mind that went something like, “No, that’s not a square; it’s a rectangle! Was that some kind of a trick question? What’s your point?” The new suggestion came into your mind and was stopped. lt was then compared against everything you know about geometric figures. The two were not in harmony, and the new suggestion was rejected. You are not all of a sudden willing to discount years of schooling and call that figure a square just because of one new input from me. That’s your critical faculty at work. Let’s feel this part of your mind flex its muscle again. Here’s the statement:
Let yourself feel how unsettling it is to hear or read something so out of line with your inner perceptions. Read the last example again and feel the conflict created when new input is so opposite to what we’ve been taught from so early on. This is what makes habit change such a problem. It’s also the part of the mind that renders psychology, for the most part, ineffective. It’s why Will is powerless over Imagination. It’s why modern medicine doesn’t work. Let me explain by walking us through the human growth cycle. Let’s go back to the mind model.
When I saw this model for the first time, I was offended. I thought, I’m a pretty happy, healthy guy, but there are things inside of me that I want out. There are programs running inside of me that are hurting me. They’re holding me back! Sound familiar? If this critical faculty is here to protect me, where was it the day all this negativity got in here? Asleep at the switch? Out at a fast-food joint for a burger? Where did it go the day it let all that junk into my mind? That’s a pretty good question, don’t you think? Well, the answer to this one should shake the very foundations of society. It could alter the course of education and health care forever!
The answer to my last question lies in the critical faculty’s origin. Where does this critical faculty come from? When does it arrive? When is it most vulnerable? You see, when we are new to this world, there are no perceptions within our subconscious mind. We haven’t experienced anything yet. Our subconscious mind is like a blank computer disc. It has incredible storage capacity, but nothing has been entered into the data bank. Hence, there’s no data to judge against. Well, if there is nothing to judge against, there can be no critical faculty! Hear it again ...
If there is nothing to judge against, there can be no critical faculty. The critical faculty cannot function until it has something to judge new input against. This means that the very first viewpoint received on any specific subject, topic or idea, goes into the subconscious permanent memory unjudged--no questions asked. Instantly, upon this happening, a person now has a perception on that subject. Now there’s something to judge against. And no matter whether it’s right or wrong, good or bad, that first impression goes into the subconscious mind uncensored and (only because it got there first) becomes the perception against which everything is judged for acceptance or rejection.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say two parents come to me and they say, “Steve, we believe in your ability to develop a mind. Here’s our infant son, Billy. We’re giving you the job. Take Billy and develop his mind.” Now, let’s say, for this example, that as much as I know about the specifics of mental development, I’m a little weak when it comes to geometry. Not knowing myself the difference between a square and a rectangle, I teach Billy that this shape is a square.
As wrong as that sounds to you, Billy doesn’t have a perception of shapes, so square goes into his subconscious unrestricted. And guess what? Now he has a perception. And the critical faculty has just formed directly behind the first input on the subject.
Days later, during a subsequent lesson covering geometric shapes, I again identify this shape as a square.
Wow! Billy has only one perception in his subconscious permanent memory on this particular shape, and someone just agreed with it! What just came at him from the outside happened to agree with what’s stored on the inside. That is a very assuring feeling. And this now brings us back to the law of compounding. Remember, every time the mind receives something in harmony with a perception held in the subconscious, the belief in that concept grows stronger than ever.
Back to Billy and the rectangle being labeled a square. Now it turns out that I have been the one to control Billy’s learning environment for the first five years. So along with a wave of more traditional teachings, anything Billy hears on geometric figures confirms in Billy’s mind that this shape is a square. After five years, Billy is pretty convinced this shape is considered to be a square.
At this point, Billy’s parents take him back. In the course of assessing what Billy has learned, they quiz him on shapes and discover he identifies rectangles as squares. When they try to correct him, what happens? He fights to defend his answer. He “feels” that he is correct! Mom, Dad, how hard do kids fight when they get some silly, backwards perception into their heads and you try to get them to change their thinking? In that same way, how hard is Billy going to fight his parents’ new idea? To the end of the earth!
Square got there first and Billy will stand secure on his claim to accurate knowledge when identifying that shape. And by the way, Billy isn’t the only one this kind of thing has happened to. For me, one occasion among thousands occurred when a group of us were remembering the good old days. Someone named a song, and two of us quickly shouted out the name of the group. Only problem--we had named two different groups. I was right, of course, and willing to bet the farm on it. One quick call to 94.9 FM and I collect, right? Wrong! She was right and I was wrong.
“It can’t be,” I continued to mutter. What I was willing to defend as absolute truth was simply not accurate. It is weird to think about this situation when I got caught holding on to a false perception. It is even more scary to ponder the number of false perceptions held that remain unexposed.
