NEXT time you have a difficult problem to solve, and concentrating on it just isn't getting you anywhere, consider this: Maybe you're thinking too hard.
"Walk over to a window and think about the people or cars going by for a few minutes, until you get bored," suggests Josh Davis, research director at the New York Neuro-Leadership Institute.
"Let your mind wander."
How will that help? "Always being 'on' blocks the brain processes that occur when we daydream," says Davis.
The idea is certainly not new. The Ancient Priests of Antinous knew that zoning out for a few minutes allows your brain to tackle tasks it can't handle when you're busy.
They called it the medium for Antinous to work miracles in your life.
In ancient times, Antinous was known as a miracle worker. His worshipers prayed to him for miracles, oracles, visions and answers to problems in their daily lives.
The Egyptian hieroglyphs on the OBELISK OF ANTINOUS state clearly that Antinous answers the prayers of all who call upon him through dreams and visions, for example.
The hieroglyphs also make cryptic references to his ability to work magic through his heart. This is a reference to the Ancient Egyptian concept of the "Intelligence of the Heart."
The Egyptians knew that the brain is the center of motor activity and sensory perception.
But they believed the heart is the center of a form of intelligence which has baffled most mainstream Egyptologists ... who assume the Egyptians believed the heart was where cognitive thinking occurs.
But the Egyptians had a very different view of the universe from our rational, scientific view of the universe.
We dissect facts and analyze them. But while the Egyptians were very good at analyzing facts, they also retained the Zen-like ability to see the whole ... which leads to contemplation ... not analysis.
The Egyptians understood that if you want to find an intelligent solution to a problem, your brain can do the work. You have all the necessary intelligence inside the bone in your skull.
However, most people use their brains the same way they use their muscles. You can strain your head just as if it were a muscle, and work very hard trying to arrive at an answer, but it doesn't really work that way.
When you really want to find an answer to something, what you need to do is contemplate the problem. Visualize your question as well as you can, and then simply wait.
If you don't, and if you instead try to find the solution through brute mental strength, you may be disappointed, because any solution that comes in that way is likely to be wrong.
But when you have waited for a while, the solution will come of itself. That is what the Egyptians called the Intelligence of the Heart ... using your heart instead of your head.
It will work for you in the same way your stomach will digest your food for you without your having to supervise it consciously. Our attempts to supervise everything consciously have all led to consequences that aren't too good for our stomach, and the reason for that is quite simple.
Conscious attention, which employs words, cannot think of very much. We are forced, therefore, to ignore almost everything while we are thinking. We think along a single track, but the world doesn't proceed along a single track.
The world is everything happening altogether everywhere, and you just can't take all that into consideration because there isn't time.
However, the Intelligence of the Heart can take it all into consideration because it is capable of handling innumerable variables at once, even though your conscious attention cannot...
The hieroglyphs on the Obelisk of Antinous promise that Antinous the Gay God enables us to discover the Intelligence of the Heart ... the Intelligence of HIM ... he opens his heart to you ....