My ramble based on just having gone to the toilet.

Still not sure this is the right forum but as i've rambled i've moved it three times already

It just struck me now (nooo not that) we are the only species, that i am aware of anyway, that has taken conscious control of our bladder and bowel movements.

Fairly obvious why we have and usually by age 3, with boys usually slightly slower than girls.

So it got me to thinking what other subconscious natural functions could we learn to control.

Which made me think of controlling the heartbeat - and I remembered that top athletes, yogi's and probably others do this.

Now my brain is thinking about this more and more and it dawns on me maybe it is the fact we have conscious control of part of our brain which is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. (sorry this is becoming a mind dump will try and tidy later)

So how about my liver,kidney, lungs....

I smoke so am going to 'tell' my lungs to get cleaning (I used to do this and interestingly had the best lung function / capacity at my old place of work -we were all routinely tested. We had young guys who did physical labour all day and a small office staff of which i was usually a part. I would have been early 40's then and have smoked since i was mid teens - up till my mid 20's i did a lot of sport but not since so i had expected my lung function to be crap) So maybe i did manage to keep them cleaner or maybe I am just lucky with lung function.

Then i remembered I have self cured athletes foot, a verucca and a wart or two in the past through telling my body to 'sort them'. The athletes foot i couldn't cure last time though and eventually bought some cream Will try again next time as I'm sure it'll come back again sometime.
Not sure if warts/verucca's would have cleared up by themselves so if they do then possibly just coincidence

So back to the brain (and sorry again for the rambling nature of this) how much conscious control can I/we have?

The list of abilities people have attested to over time seem myriad and many of the alphabet agencies around the world have spent a lot of money on them. It is however generally agreed governments are very good at wasting money so the fact they have spent so much proves little.

BUT people have been recording 'magical' feats since written tradition so I tend to lean towards there is probably more we can do with our brain or mind than we are generally led to believe.

I have in true western fashion spent a few hours trying things -oobes/telekinesis/seeing through things/telepathy/remote viewing/meditation..with no results i remember anyway. (Although I once had a weird dream a friend i hadn't seen in a while was in hospital and when i phoned him the next day he had been admitted the night before)

As i covered in a thread ages ago i think my main problem with most 'mind power' stuff is that they all require you to picture things in your mind something I am unable to do consciously - I can remember dreams just as i awake but unless i write them down then i forget them unless they were especially powerful and even then its the the emotions i remember not the pictures.

Actually now that i write this i remember at age 8ish i used to kept awake by numbers, marching as it were, through my mind getting louder and louder and seemed foreboding somehow - so much so my mum took me to the doctor (just the gp) and he said was probably stress from school or something i ate - even at that age i remember thinking what a load of crap just admit you have no idea. So i vaguely remember blocking the numbers out somehow, so i wonder if i somehow partitioned the part of my mind that visualises. In counterbalance to this as i got older i often used to double numbers in my mind to help me go to sleep similar to counting to sheep i suppose.

The upside to not visualising is i have no disturbing mental images in my head either - you know when people say oh thanks for the mental image i won't get that out of my head - i have never had that happen I imagine it keeps my worries down too I can't picture my sons and other loved ones with horrific injuries or whatever (sorry for any mental images conjured there)

The mind is a fascinating thing and is so little understood - what is it capable of and how/when will we find out?

The older traditions and cultures unaffected by the abrahamic religions seem to be far more more in touch with themselves but even there it does not seem to be that common an occurrence.

Does everybody have the capacity to do any of the 'magical ' things or do we each have our own set of abilities from the many?

How could/would we go about finding out which abilities each of us has (if we all do and if we all don't what is the reason?)?

Are there mental exercises that can be done to strengthen them?

Plants and their uses but that would probably take us against T&C's

Well my mind has got lost now and I have mislaid my original intention for this thread but it reads like it may get some interesting replies so any thoughts? (apart from you trolls - ah nvm trolls need feeding too)

Dogs consciously control their bowel movements. Let's them live in houses instead of in yards/woods/dumpsters.

Sex. I still get random stiffies in my 30s and am not out yoinking the next woman into a bathroom stall everytime it happens.

Well, I do think we have some degree of influence on otherwise autonomic functions, but am not sure to what degree it has to do with focusing in on the specific thing, rather being in a state of mind that is more calming and perhaps has a regenerative state to it in general.

ATS just gets stranger and stranger

a reply to: Aleister

good point cats too

to pl3bscheese

lol

but is that one of things that makes us human? the fact we can focus in on a specific thing.


to imod02

thanks

originally posted by: johnb
a reply to: Aleister

good point cats too

to pl3bscheese

lol

but is that one of things that makes us human? the fact we can focus in on a specific thing.

to imod02

thanks

You obviously have not watched a dog with a bone…Talk about focus….

well both my cats (rest in peace) had the litter-tray thing down pat after 1 or 2 attempts. thereafter they always consciously made a point of doing their ablutions there.

There is one thing and one thing only that truly separates us from every other species on the planet. No other species has anything to compare to it.

Cupcakes.

originally posted by: Aleister
Dogs consciously control their bowel movements. Let's them live in houses instead of in yards/woods/dumpsters.

Yes indeed, My dog doesn't poop until I lay the old newspaper in the yard and then she poops in the paper.

Of course, she would turn around and jump at me until so, telling me to hurry up!! When she wants to pee, she will stand at the door and look at me and look at the door repeatedly and then she pees outside when I open the door. Eventually, she figured out how to open the door herself.

I don't think I trained her in a normal fashion as you would a dog.... I simply told her a few times not to pee in the garage and always poop in the paper, eventually, she figured it out.

She stays inside the house of course. Unbelievably behaved dog despite having no "dog training". She would also stare at the sky/clouds for hours, loves to play in the rain and water puddles, loves to watch me fix things.

We are certainly NOT the only self-aware/sentient beings on Earth, it would be quite arrogant to think so.