From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Sep 01 1999 - 12:50:47 MDT
On Wed, 1 Sep 1999, Bryan Moss wrote:
> Clint O'Dell quoted Robert Bradbury:
>
> > I very much doubt that you have lost any of the programming that was
> > done to you as a child. You may have frosted over the cake or
> > buried the ideas away in the back of your mind, or logically
> > constructed a system more workable for you.
>
> While it is true that the brain is still developing during childhood
> I think the assumption the childhood 'programming' is therefore hard
> to overcome is probably wrong.
I didn't say "hard to overcome", I said "lost". If you can remember
what the programming was, you haven't "lost" it. I believe the
relative difficulty in overcoming it is strongly related to
the strength of the threat to survival that was present when
the formation of the memories or beliefs occured. If your
father said, "If you don't go to church, I'm going to tan
your hide...", then the programming may be pretty strong.
My *suspicion* would be that circulating Adrenalin functions as
a strong amplifier of memory strengths. It has been my direct
observation (personal experience) in multiple situations
that strongly entrenched early memories that are mostly
suppresed (though perhaps acted upon), may be "overcome",
if you can bring the memory to the surface so that the conscious
mind is aware of it. Observing this happen is really quite
amazing. It seems to involve a very interesting rapid
shifting of the neural "weightings" that kept the memories
suppressed.
Its fascinating to me to observe what happens in my mind when
I enter a church. All kinds of old feelings, beliefs, memories
come bubbling up from the basement of my mind. I normally
rarely think about these things, but I have no doubt that
many of my early beliefs (Catholic) are still part of my
programming. As the years go by, probably because I don't
think about them much, the memories do seem to fade.
Robert
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