What is the Reticular Activation System? How does it work?
Reticular Activation System
If I tell you that most of the things we are buying, it is because marketing and advertising that companies use for their products, is very sophisticated, ingenious, incredibly clever .... . They activate the Reticular System of our brain, and we, victims of this deception, can no longer escape from this, we want what they sell us, we want so much, that at any price we try to get what is offered.
The Reticular Activation System (RAS) is a neural structure located in the brainstem that acts as a filter, allowing only those stimuli that are important for survival and also those that stimulate pleasure in the individual to pass to the thalamus and then to the cortex.
The RAS is responsible for filtering the information received from all the sense organs: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. This means that we only perceive what is necessary for our survival or what we are interested in at that moment.
So, how does this happen?
When we see something interesting or attractive we pay attention to it and our attention increases until it becomes fixed. So, if we keep seeing things related to what initially attracted us, they will continue to attract our attention until they become fixed in our memory. Once fixed it is difficult not to think about it every time it appears in front of us or when we hear something related to it, in the end we end up being attracted to it mentally and of course physically, that is, we seek to materialize or acquire it. This happens partly consciously, but more work is done by our subconscious.
This system was first discovered by Drs. Robert Heath and John Lilly in 1950, and since then it has been used as a way to treat different mental and psychological pathologies.
The RAS is responsible for keeping us alive. It detects elements in the world around us that are critical for survival (food, shelter, danger) and alerts our consciousness so that we can respond appropriately to it. It's also what makes us want things! See those nice shoes in the store? Those aren't just nice shoes, they are objects that activate our Reticular System. It tells the brain that they are a source of comfort or protection, so they put them in our cart without even thinking about it!
That means that if you want something, YOU can attract it!
Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. We just have to know how to activate the Reticular System of our mind properly.
We already know that this system is activated both for our survival and to satisfy our pleasure needs. Most of the time until now, that RAS was activated in autopilot mode, without us knowing about it, and it brought us to where we are today. But now, knowing what it is, you are going to activate it consciously. How?
Have you ever wondered why babies learn at exorbitant speeds? It's because a baby uses all the senses to discover the world: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. It trains the RAS to filter later in autopilot mode (subconscious) about dangerous and pleasurable things.
We are going to use our imagination in alpha state (meditative since it is the state of maximum perception between conscious and subconscious), now we have to imagine in detail what we want, try, smell, touch, taste, hear and observe in our mind as if we have already achieved it; enjoy it and very much. In this way the RAS is activated and begins to work filtering the necessary from the unnecessary, to give us only what is relevant to the request, enabling us on the way to our goal. The imagination in meditative state can be used as many times as you want, and the more the better, because with that insistence the mind is defeated and passes the information to the filters to start working. Sooner or later we begin to notice how the desired is approaching us, because the routine begins to fill with information and objects related to the request. So FOCUS and ACTION!
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