By Taleb Alrefai
How can I control the way I think? And how can I change the course of my life? Perhaps no two questions have pressed more urgently upon the human soul than these. In the search for answers, a study supervised by Monash University in Australia, conducted by a joint team of neuroscientists and philosophers from Australia, Germany, the United States, and Ireland, arrived at evidence suggesting that the formation of human consciousness begins before birth. The child absorbs its first environment and carries its imprints into every subsequent chapter of life.
From this, it becomes clear that the human being, at his very core, is the product of his earliest moments, shaped by every social, economic and cultural circumstance that surrounded them. One born in a quiet village will not be the same as one who opens his eyes in a city roaring with concrete and crowds. One who grows up in a household that wrestles daily with its bread will see life through different eyes than one raised in the shelter of thought, knowledge, and art. Yet the real question surfaces when a person moves beyond childhood and adolescence, when consciousness steadies itself, and the capacity for reflection matures: does he then possess the power to change his reality? Can he truly remake himself?
Certainly, such a transformation will not come easily. Some believe that a person is hostage to his circumstances, incapable of shedding his old skin. But set against this resignation, certain scientific and intellectual voices push back, among them the Russian writer Vadim Zeland, an engineer of quantum physics turned theorist of the law of attraction and self-development. In his book “Reality Transurfing”, Zeland advances a theory he calls “Transurfing,” built on the premise that we inhabit a multi-dimensional reality and that we are capable of influencing it through various pathways, chief among them: releasing negativity and focusing on what we wish to achieve rather than on what we fear.
This aligns perfectly with countless spiritual teachings that affirm the human mind constructs its own reality to a remarkable degree. A person who leaves his home to confront a problem, carrying within him the expectation of failure and stumbling, will in all likelihood encounter exactly what he predicted. Whereas another person, facing the very same problem, but stepping out with optimism and a bright inner conviction, will more often than not meet the good his mind foretold.
As if the human being, through the very act of thinking, summons what is to come and draws it toward him. And since the mind, in its depths, works to protect its keeper, the pessimist conjures images of calamity early, so as not to be ambushed by it, while the optimist calls forth the idea of good and anticipates it; if it arrives, that is the soul’s desire and its joy, and if it does not, life does not halt at a single stumble.
I have known people, across decades, who have never lost their smile, in hardship and ease alike. And I have known others whose gloom and suspicion never abandoned them, even in their moments of success and prosperity. As if the features of the soul resist all alteration. As if a person is, in the end, the maker of himself.
There is no human being who lives in absolute happiness, free of troubles, especially now, in this breathless age that has slipped into our consciousness, with a diabolical ingenuity, an obsession with chasing the new in every corner of existence. It has planted within us a damaging restlessness that cannot bear stillness, cannot endure a moment that lingers, an idea that takes root, or a companionship that deepens. It is profoundly difficult to live in full ease, and harder still to dwell in an unyielding tightness of spirit. Be optimistic, and you will find what you seek.
