MY DEEP Training: An Uncommon Guide Towards Spiritual Growth and General Well Being

MY DEEP Training

An Uncommon Guide Towards Spiritual Growth and General Well Being

By: Daniel Ponce

Copyright 2012, Smashwords edition

License notes: All rights reserved. No part of this manuscript may be reproduced or paraphrased without the written permission of this author. For queries please contact Daniel Ponce at mydeept.com.

Disclaimer

The purpose of this manual is to both assist the reader to become aware of their latent potential as well as to inspire. This book is not a replacement for any medical advice. If you feel that you are in need of some form of medical care for any medical condition prior to starting any of these techniques, please see your Allopathic physician (MD), Osteopathic physician (DO), Naturopathic Doctor (ND), Doctor of Oriental Medicine (DOM), Doctor of Chiropractor (D.C.), Nurse practitioner (NP), Therapist, Counselor, or any other type of medically trained practitioner readily available to you, according to your medical needs. It is highly recommended that you consult with these trained professionals prior to beginning any of these physical activities. Also specially trained individuals such as Yoga instructors, Dieticians, etc., within the field you are interested in pursuing should also be consulted prior to beginning on your own regimen of training. These trained individuals can also guide you in beginning your practice.

Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank the following people for their assistance. I would like to thank my father for teaching me how to reflect deeply and with intention. His passed teachings I will not forget. I would like to thank my mother for her devoted love which I found to be the best environment for growth in many levels of my development. I would also like to thank my children who continue to still teach me about the profoundness of parenting and the great rewards it offers. I would like to also thank Elida Y. Torres for giving me wonderful children and a love and devotion I did not deserve. I would like to acknowledge Dorothy Alberti for loving me without limitations and supporting me unwaveringly. To Loraine Payton for reading the rough draft and making some great suggestions about how the reader can use the book as a reference based on their growth needs and the reader should also be journaling as they read the book. Thanks also to Mr. Paul Romo, who recommended that I give an explanatory paragraph at the beginning of some chapters to state the nature of the chapter. Thanks to Kerri Mathews for editing chapters one and two. Thanks to Catherine Woods for editing chapter six. Thanks also to Webeditors.com for editing the remainder of the chapters, including chapter 6 but excluding chapter 20. Lastly, I thank you, the reader, for picking up this book for you have reached out to move forward in your quest towards enlightenment and growth!

BOOK COVER IMAGE: Image by: ESA/Hubble (C.R. O'Dell (Vanderbilt University) and M. Meixner, P. McCullough, and G. Bacon (Space Telescope Science Institute)), with the lateral dark sides of the image cropped by Daniel Ponce.

Foreword

This book is intended for those of us who have a deep need and desire to connect with something greater than ourselves. There is a deep calling within us to become more than what we are. For within us lies unimagined capacity to become what we are destined to be. A sleeping giant lies within us, slumbering, waiting to be awakened. This inner potential is hidden from our senses, our mind, and our emotional states of awareness. This great capacity must be awakened so that it may begin to come to life. It must be stirred up into our consciousness. Then, and only then, if we dare to fully embrace the awakening potential within us, can these abilities be provoked to stand on their own accord and begin to release themselves from the confinements of whom we presently are. Who will dare to embrace such inner capacity and partake of this newly appointed self-imposed journey of self-realization? In this awaiting journey you must have courage, perseverance, inner strength, and an unyielding yearning for the truth of who you really are. You must also have a clear vision of what you can become. I for myself intrepid forward to that inner vision of what I can see myself becoming as well as that being I know I truly am. To strive forward into that great unknown of self-actualization is true freedom. I know not myself as that person that I presently know, rather as that person who is guided by the great winds of universal currents set in motion by that great force guiding everything on a unimaginable destiny. I embrace not who I am within the universe but rather what potential I have of becoming as the universe itself is also becoming. There is room in the expanding cosmos for all to grow as the universe itself grows. So ask yourself; what role do I play with the people, events, and forces around me? Then ask yourself; in what capacity will I play as the universe's potential continually unfolds itself? Lastly, ask yourself who can I dare to become in this vastly tremendous process? It was suggested to me by a colleague that the reader should begin journaling to write down impression, ideas, and interests that the reader may want to carry out as they are reading this book. This is a great idea and an opportunity for you, the reader to reflect and process your mental thoughts and ideas during the reading of this material for there is much content and condensed thought-provoking ideas within this book as well as being heavily burdened with scientific principles and ideas. So please, consider journaling as you go through the chapters within the book. This exercise will later demonstrate your growth in working with the material in this book.

As I began to write this book I found that the contents of the book were condensed, with an academic textbook type of setting in the beginning few chapters. I tried to simplify where I could and give examples to solidify the ideas presented to the reader so as to give the material a more approachable perspective. As I continued with the book I found myself wanting to clarify more and more of what can be considered to be scientific/metaphysical/abstract ideas. I would hope that through my writing, I have accomplished this goal of simplifying the ideas discussed and at times lightly touched upon them. Although each person’s spiritual path is unique, these ideas are general guidelines towards the development of one’s spiritual potential. Please practice in your need to grow to promote your own unique healthy needs be they spiritual, mental, emotional, or physical in origin. The ideas shared and emphasized in the chapters to come are meant to educate you, the reader, and develop latent abilities as well as inspire you. The book emphasizes certain ideas in the beginning chapters so that the reader continues to build a stronger foundation for the ideas discussed in later chapters in the book. Forgive me if some of the topics discussed were too elaborate or too much in depth, but I felt it essential that some of these ideas and topics needed more clarification to better grasp the ideas presented.

It is my sincere hope that this book will open your consciousness, stir you up from your present state of being, and give you clear direction of how to begin awakening your inner potential. Again, it is my sincere hope.

Table of Contents

The Physical Senses of Human Experience and More

DNA: Being More than our Inherited Lineage

The Four Pillars: Establishment of More than the Human Experience

Destiny: The Merging of Wills

Mastering the Virtues: The A B C’s of Life

Finding Your Niche: Identifying Your Calling

The Other IRA Account

The Human Body: A More Intimate Look at the Mechanical Wonders of Nature

The Emotional Body: It’s Intricacies and Self-Mastery

The Mental Faculty: From Brains to Mental Brawn

The Spirit: Being Transiently Human

My Deep T: An Acronym for Dynamic Living

Meditation: The Inner Universe and Journey

Yoga: Beyond Positioning, Breathing and Focusing

Diet: Developing the Habit of Healthy Eating

Exercising: Maximizing the Adaptive Ability Within

Education: The Endless Drive of Curiosity

Prayer: The Gateway

Tai Chi: The Body’s Internal Energy Charger

Bringing It All Together: Enlightenment

Endnotes

The Physical Senses of Human Experience and More

This first chapter is written to educate you in the dynamics of how the senses of the human body work. This chapter then challenges you to the idea of not being so dependent on your physical senses to fully explain your reality. This chapter will also bring to the reader an increasing awareness of the non-physical components to the human experience such as the emotional, mental, and even a spiritual component.

The great embryological event that begins with conception and ends with birth is just beginning to be more fully understood. The various levels of complex genetic and biochemical processes that take place within the mothers’ womb (uterus) combine to develop the human body and brain that become masterpieces of nature’s biological engineering. The zygote or fertilized egg is directed by genetic information, contained within it, to evolve into a complex biological machine through a process of both cell division (one cell splitting into two cells and those two cells make four, and four cells make eight, etc.) and cell specialization (the development of different types of tissue in the body such as muscles tissue or skin tissue or blood). The development of the human body and mind is so well directed that more often than not a healthy human baby is born, ready to feed the ever so curious mental activities of the mind as well as a growing consciousness hungering for information. Through the process of human development a powerful new life enters the world with a complete dependency of this baby needing his mother to feed and care for him. Yet he is not helpless in another sense—the five senses are ready to feed the hungry demands of his brain to sharpen his surviving skills for the years to come. Let us elaborate on how the five senses work in the body and how they allow the mind to explore the world you know so well.

The Olfactory sense or sense of smelling, being one of simplest of the five senses is used to detect chemical and micro-particles in the air. The olfactory organ acquires outside information of the world and sends this information to the brain by first acquiring molecules or micro-particles from the air. The air itself is moved in many directions by the process of Brownian movement (a random vibration movement of the air molecules in the atmosphere). Through the force of Brownian movement food particles, chemical(s), and gases are quickly scattered through the air making the molecules available for the olfactory sense as they are captured through inhalation. Once the molecules are inhaled they bind to specific chemoreceptors (a chemical receptor which binds to a specific molecule analogous to a lock and key) found within the olfactory plate, a small plate found inside the nares and atop the nostrils of the nose. These inhaled molecules, once engaged with their complementary chemical receptors, stimulates neurological electrical impulses that travel to the amygdala. The amygdala is an area of the brain that processes, among other things, the sense of smell. The amygdala is also where the emotional contents of the human brain are stored.[i] The amygdala signals other areas of the brain (among them the area of consciousness for the brain) by which you become aware of what you smell and what is within your proximity. Some of the air particle molecules give off noxious odors, others stimulating odors, and yet others neutral odors. This acquirement of information from the environment informs the brain of important information to better assess its immediate surroundings. At times the information may be trivial, at other times survival can depend on it. The next sense organ is that palatable capacity—taste.

The taste sensation is also a basic sense organ. The ability to taste (gustation) is a sense organ for the human brain that acquires outside information of the world and sends this information to the brain. The taste sensation provides information about what is palatable and acceptable to the gastro-intestinal tract. The taste sensation is carried to the brain by the developed cranial nerves that extend from the lower part of the brainstem. These cranial nerves supply the brain with a mixture of information of the four basic types of taste: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. The contents of foods, liquids, and other non-food items are closely scrutinized by the palate for nutritional value, noxious stimuli, as well as pleasant stimuli. Found throughout the animal kingdom the need to taste is a well-programmed instinctive drive. This instinct is demonstrated well in human infants by the tasting of random objects by infants and toddlers for the simple assessment of gathering information of the object in question which is a form of exploration commonly referred in Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual theory of development as the oral stage.[ii] Of the four basic tastes that are distinguishable, sweetness is a particularly strong sensation. The stimulation of a sweet substance drives the human forward in search of more sweets to satisfy the palate and tongue for it offers the body a quick source of energy. It is also being discovered by researchers that with the first few exposures to the consumption of fatty food item(s) the brain, being notified of a rich energy source, begins to alter its neuro-net pathways to change its activities so as to acquire more of these rich fat food item(s). The brain acts as if it is being exposed to very stimulating agent, similar to a mind stimulating drug, which results in the formation of a priority neuro-net pathway which quickly develops in the human brain.[iii] The sense of tasting sweets and fats are two examples of how our taste sense informs us of the availability of essential body requirements for nourishment as well as for the sheer pleasure of taste. Although our need to taste is important the ability to hear provides more information of the immediate environment.

Our auditory sense of perception stems from several principles of physics (the study of matter and energy). Some initiating force moves an object which contacts another object(s) causing a disruptive vibration of air particles away from the point of origin. This produces oscillations (or waves) similar to a rock moving water in a previously undisturbed pool. These moving waves distribute themselves into a 360 degree three dimensional space projection where the air waves are captured by the physical structures of the outer ear. These captured waves of air are funneled into the ear canal which then contacts the eardrum at the end of the ear canal. The ear drum, designed by nature to be sensitive to these vibratory frequencies as well as the levels of air pressure, create movements of the malleus, incus and stapes which are the bones in the middle ear (the smallest bones of the human body). These three bones then transfer that initial kinetic energy of the eardrum (through the movement of the bones) into the inner ear which then moves fluid within an internal, circular pathway (the cochlea) found deep within the ear. The structure of the cochlea is similar to a winding staircase that closes in on itself. The internal fluid movement produces cochlear pressure which then causes the microscopic hair follicles within the cochlea found standing on end to collapse to one side. By falling to one side these micro-hair follicles creates an electrical impulse which travels to the temporal region of the brain where hearing is processed.[iv] The temporal lobe having a memory file of all the sounds that you have ever heard (your brain has made endless permanent recordings since you were in your mother’s womb), the brain is able to compare the current sound you are hearing to the permanent record of sounds that it has heard and previously processed to identify what you have just heard. Once again the brain gathers information about what it hears, smells, and tastes to perceive with continual accuracy of your surroundings. This happens constantly, even when one is sleeping. With these three senses only a limited amount of information of the world is available to your perception. However, the human body requires a more intimate form of engaging with the world—the ability to touch.

The ability to touch an object gives the brain a great deal of information of its surroundings. The skin being the largest organ in the human body is designed by nature to contact all physical objects. The skin being made of only a few sets of specialized tissue forms a tactile capacity which is able, through various types of skin nerves, to sense changes in pressure, temperature, the presence of corrosive agents, humidity, and even to some extent radiation exposure. It protects the body from harmful microbes such as bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. The skin even affords the body with the ability to create vitamin D, an essential vitamin for the body. It is also one of the few organs of the body that constantly regenerates itself due to being the organ which is in intimate contact with the physical environment, a process that constantly wears the skin down. This regenerative capacity allows the skin to serve the body for an entire lifetime. The skin provides much more information than this however. The skin informs the brain of both pain and touch stimulation.

Part of the skin’s function is to protect us from threats and allows us to interact with the environment. We have the ability to feel pain and to react to perceived physical threats from the environment. Pain is elicited by excessive pressure, bruises (contusions), scrapes (abrasions), penetration by blunt objects (punctures), or by cuts (incisions) in the epidermis and the dermis. Skin damage stimulates specialized nerves that relays the information from the skin to the spinal cord where it travels at approximately 200 miles per hour to the thalamus (the brain’s intake center of information) to be further processed. From there this type of sensory information is distributed to the region of the brain called the sensory cortex to be further processed and interpreted for relevance in experiencing the simple yet profound sensation of pain.

Touching, or the tactile sense, tells us physically where we are in our three dimensional world. It informs us where we are in space and time, relative to our environment. It confirms what our smelling, tasting, and hearing sensations tell us what is in our near vicinity. It is also informs us whether our visual cues are correct or not. When we see something around us we at times confirm its presence by touching that object. That makes the object more real to us. Touching is also an essential part in being human for we as a species crave the experience of touch. Touch is so utterly important to human development that in order for a newborn to develop into a healthy adult it must be intimately engaged into the experience of touching many times during the day while in its infancy. Being held by our mothers comforts us. Being hugged by our fathers makes us feel safe. The act of being pushed by a stranger informs us that there may be a threatening situation arising. A handshake with a stranger for the first time makes an initial contact on a mental as well as a physical level between the both of you an initial safe engagement. Intimacy, that intense human outlet of physical, emotional, and mental expression for your mate is a continually sought out lifetime human need as well. All of these are but small examples of the essential human need to be touched. As powerful as touching is to our everyday experiences only the ability to visualize exceeds the tactile experience in providing sensory information.

The visual sense is so vital to our experiences with the world that a considerable portion of our brain has been committed for processing and interpreting the light energy input it receives. The occipital lobe is the area of the back of the brain that accomplishes this amazing process. The occipital lobe actually creates a direct outgrowth from itself from the back of the brain to the front of the brain which protrudes through the front of the head—the formation of your eyes. Sensitive to light, the eyes can detect various shades of color (the cones of the retina), different levels of darkness (the rods of the retina), and depth perception using two independent inputs from two different independent references—both eyes. Allow me to explain in a simplistic fashion, how the process of vision works. The capturing of radiation energy (light rays in the form of photons) at the spectrum of 2.o X 10⁶ nanometers band wave of energy, by the retina is where a series of chemical reactions take place. The captured photons and specialized cells (cones and rods) in the retina, once interacting create a chemical reaction. Vitamin A is essential in this process. This is one reason why vitamin A is an essential part of our daily dietary intake. Vitamin A destabilizes the bipolar cells (specialized cells found deeper into the retinal tissue). The destabilized bipolar cells transmit a signal which runs to connected specialized cells. This then creates electrical impulses found deeper within the retina called ganglionic cells. These ganglionic cells send an electrical impulse along a long optic tract to the back of the brain where the occipital lobe awaits the incoming information. This incoming information becomes distributed through various pathways within the lobe.[v] Here, in the occipital lobe, something amazing happens—it is believed that actual, visual, three-dimensional images are produced within the occipital lobe of the brain! Your brain actually creates a continuous three dimensional continuous video from the light your eyes are capturing! The visual system serves a great purpose to the brain for it informs the brain of a constant amount of information of its surroundings. Combined with the sensation of touch, the visual system creates a holographic visual system of sorts, where you are as if in an internal computer generated environment. These two senses alone are a very powerful system of engaging with the world.

Vision and touch together provide more information to the human brain than the other three senses combined. It is estimated that 80% of afferent input (information coming into the brain) is supplied by the visual cortex. Moreover, on a more personal non-mechanical view, vision allows us to experience our lives with greater depth and richness. Take into consideration that at birth the focal capacity distance of the eyes of a newborn is estimated to be approximately 2-3 feet. This also happens to be the average distance that a mother holds her newborn while breastfeeding. This ability by the newborn allows the infant to connect with the mother through the sense of vision. During the experience of breastfeeding the newborn will begin to finalize what the brain is hard wired to always identify—a human face. This face is not just any face but the face of the person who will unequivocally love that newborn like no other person on earth. The infant equates both the soothing intake of the warm milk and the face of the mother as being a positive pleasurable experience. Being held warmly and lovingly also amplifies this experience for both the infant and the mother. This allows the bonding, being an essential human need, to set the basis for all future human relationships to occur for the infant. Imagine also trying to describe the visual sensation of sea waves as they roll onto the shores of the beach to someone who cannot see? Also, what about seeing the sparkle in the eyes of the one who loves you as you both look into each other’s eyes? Such wonders are the aesthetics of the sense of vision. Such benefits does the ability to visualize enrich the human experience. So begins the long rewarding career of the eyes to supply the brain and mind with an indispensable form of input that will be able to keep the brain and mind stimulated and informed for a lifetime to come.

I have lightly touched upon the workings of the five senses to demonstrate mechanically how they work. By no means have I been detailed as to the intricate workings of the physiological, anatomical, and neuronal processes involved in the mechanisms of the five senses. Our five senses are a marvel of natures’ design. All the senses activities are created to give the brain an awareness of its surroundings. It helps us shape our perceptions of ourselves, our world, and our universe as we understand it. However, we can become too dependent of our senses.

Our senses help us engage with the world around us so effectively that we can become so completely dependent upon the senses that we can actually compare this dependency to our five senses to the state of being intoxicated. We are intoxicated by our senses in the sense that our brain and mind become so totally engrossed in being constantly stimulated by our senses that if you were to take away one of your senses (i.e. blindfolding yourself for a couple of hours) your brain would be so utterly bored and disgruntled with this experience that it would begin to heighten its other four senses in an attempt to compensate for the loss of that stimulation! Such is the relationship and dependency we have with our senses. From our infancy, we begin to master our senses—how to work them, what to interpret from them, and how they can serve us. We then begin to build a picture of the world—a perception of how things are according to our senses and the method by which our mind processes and categorizes information. These senses create our reality and our brains become hard-wire to these conceived perceptions. All the things that we perceive, being either people, places, or events become processed through these perceptions. Our internalized reality becomes a part of the whole of reality that we perceive. Humans tend to depend upon their senses to such an extent that if they have not seen, heard it, felt it, smelled it, or tasted some aspect of an event then it simply has not occurred! Of course all this cannot be true? Or could it?

Here is an example of you not accepting that something had actually not occurred. You are in your familiar surroundings where you have your family, acquaintances, neighbors whom you engage with occasionally, or a local favorite spot where you at times visit to socialize. Other people also become involved in their own personal engagements where they may travel to neighboring towns and cities where business or pleasure occurs. Fewer still, are those individuals who travel from one country to another. These world travelers become more aware of the vast cultural and ethnic diversity that exists around the globe. For every increasing level of interaction with those things, events, and people around us, the more real and expansive our reality becomes of the world.

Now, consider a small village, in some remote part of the world where its existing group of thriving indigenous people can be found. You have no perception of these people and they have no perception of you. If you do not perceive them then they simply do not exist for you. Sure you can conceptualize some remote image of some primitive people somewhere but for the most part they are not real until you become cognizant of these people through your senses by either seeing them on television or hearing them on the radio or receiving something from them in person. Only then do you become aware of their existence. Prior to that, however, they simply did not exist! Yet they could easily argue that you did not exist as well and the aspect of your life that is commonplace for you also does not exist (i.e. there is no such thing as a television or computer)! A chieftain from some remote Amazon village where he has never traveled from could make an effective argument that this so-called ice or hardened water simply does not exist for ice is not found in that part of the world in the natural surroundings! It’s only real if you experience it. It could be called the Doubting Thomas disposition. Should we give credibility and credence to this perspective of reality?

Depending fully upon our five senses for providing us a picture of our reality provides little room for expanding our awareness that there is more to our world than what is apparently obvious. So, is there more to our reality? Are we cognizant existing creatures, filled with sensory input, mental processes and experiential perspectives? If it is not detected by the senses, does it not, therefore, exist? Although this view of reality is a very comfortable one to take while we engage with the world around us, for it makes our world conveniently real, such an adherent view of reality will surely leave us short-sighted. Are there no other existing levels of our objective reality? Obviously there must be. Another level of our reality is the emotional reality. The internal emotional structuring to our being is something that cannot be experienced through the five senses but is very real to us.

Located deeper, beside the temporal lobe, is found the amygdala, our neuro-sensory center where we have stored the brain’s pre-programmed genetic capacity to access and express our emotional states or should we say our emotional reality. Emotions are essential to our human experience for we have an innate emotional capacity. The brain is hard-wired in the amygdala to experience emotions.[vi] Emotions are an accessory survival tool built into the human brain-framework of perception. Emotions facilitate our drives for survival, reproduction, communication, bonding, protection, and aggression as well as provides for us cohesion between the past, present, and future events as well. Emotions create insights into our reality. Emotions help us express our drives and needs to the world around us with greater urgency, passion, and depth. It would seem as if from infancy to death, we live our lives with great emotional content and awareness. We must for we were designed that way by nature. You can try to imagine what life would be like without emotional content, this however is nearly an impossible task for just thinking of such a thing already evokes an internal emotional response!

We are familiar with the myriad of emotions that we possess. Some emotions are comforting, surprising, frightful, and others are avoided altogether. Generally speaking, we can break emotions down into two major categories—positive and negative. Emotions are positive in the sense that we tend to enjoy them, some of these emotions include joy, happiness, exhilaration, contentment, peace, or love. Negative emotions would include fear, sadness, anger, despair, and grief. One can easily surmise that most people seek their positive emotional states and tend to avoid their negative ones. I would speculate that a person exposed to a positive emotional supportive childhood upbringing will more than likely find in the world, more positive attributes of the world.

Allow me to elaborate on a particular point on emotional states. Many adults who have survived their negative upbringings have become true and tested optimist in the world. A term in psychology called psychological resilience.[vii] Most people wish not only to survive but also to thrive however. I would offer that a child raised in a loving, nurturing childhood appears to be the optimal experience that allows a person to thrive physically, emotionally, and mentally. Mental development can also be drastically affected by negative childhood experiences. An example of this would be a child experiencing a chronically stressful situation such as constant neglect or abuse. These environmental factors cause an excessive amount of release of Cortisol, a human hormone required for dealing with stress. Cortisol is secreted by the anterior pituitary gland of the brain (the main hormone dispenser for the human body). It is known to be released in higher quantitative amounts from the anterior pituitary gland during times of stressful childhood events. This can result in altering of brain structure, learning problems, and emotional sensitivity.[viii] These facts are well known among counselors, psychologist, and therapist alike. It is of interest to note that if you are exposed to intense negative experiences currently or in the past, you can still change your current emotional and mental state with much guidance and self-analysis from a professionally-licensed practitioner trained in psychological or psychiatric methods. I have provided an example of how our ability to be human is also dependent on non-sensual experiences—emotional content.

Our emotional state of being is an example of how the human condition has more resources at its disposal to experience the world than simply the five senses. We are not only physical beings but we are also emotional beings as well. Our senses facilitate our understanding of the world for they are an essential tool used by humanity and we have our emotional awareness and input as another tool to help interpret our reality. Is there another available human non-physical mechanism that may offer some other form of