Have you ever been fooled by someone you believed in? I mean really fooled like, in your blind spot, didn’t see that one coming at all! Maybe a friend or a lover took you by surprise and betrayed you, damaged your trust and left you doubting YOURSELF, more than anyone else, for being unable to see clearly. Or maybe a teacher led you down a wrong path. Or a politician you put your hopes in suddenly did a 180 and left your mind reeling over whether there was any hope for goodness to win. You thought someone had your best interests at heart, only to find they were fulfilling their own agenda. Living consciously requires courage and authenticity and a commitment to a blame-free monitoring of oneself.

What happened? What did you miss? And more important, WHY did you miss something you feel you should have seen happening?

There are several possible answers to these questions. Some are about your personal psychological makeup, choices and blind spots in life. But also, there exist some very basic universal human responses to people who know how to play on your emotions, your weaknesses and desires.

We all know about the old snake oil salesman or the used car salesman who lies to us to sell a miracle product that falls short of the quality we hope for and leaves us disappointed, angry or feeling foolish for falling for the scam. We have many examples these days of the online scams to get your money with huge promises and nothing to back them up. Charities who tug at our heart strings and pocket our money never to be seen and used for the intended recipients. Politicians who promise us the moon and the stars, a good job and a good living in a safe community, and then do a complete about face and destroy, dishearten and disintegrate our trust.

Is it a lack of trusting our own instincts that leads us astray? Is it just an evil reality of life on planet earth? Is there something else we are missing that is at the bottom of our tendency to be so easily taken in and believe something that is less than honest at best. How do we tell the good opportunities, the good salespeople, the good politicians from the manipulators who have only their own interests at heart?

What if it were only a simple need for genuine knowledge about the workings of our own brain? What if it was something in each of us that just needed a simple awareness to change? If we could easily look into a situation and size it up and know for a fact what was about to happen and then put a stop to it!

I personally believe there is an answer and a way you and I can do exactly that. A way we can see it coming and change the outcome before we lose ground.

There is a way to learn the techniques, gain the knowledge, and walk away from what doesn’t serve you and only uses up your resources.

It is called the human brain. Not to sound sardonic here but it is almost amusing that we have this incredible tool and so few of us actually learn to use all of its incredible modules and bonuses! Critical thinking, intuition, sixth sense and beyond the six, memory, and basic knowledge of how we process and respond to information. Our birthright! It was a packaged deal at birth and yet we turn our backs on it when we need it most! We are so easily led and programmed that we are like the frog in the pan on the stove who gets so used to the slowly increasing heat that he doesn’t notice until it is too late and he is cooked before he has the awareness and strength to save himself by jumping out.

That is the human brain and response, or lack thereof, when we are faced with highly savvy manipulators that lead us to believe we will be safe in that frying pan. That is how any of us can become “brainwashed” and in the grips of something similar to the Stockholm Syndrome where we fall in love and completely trust our captor (or manipulator or crooked salesman). Not the exact use and definition of that syndrome of course, but certainly a close cousin of the phenomenon! We believe so completely in the savvy manipulation that we fall in love with the lie and destroy ourselves defending it.

Our despair along with our weaknesses taken advantage of by an oppressor will lead us into a state where it is next to impossible to suddenly become aware and free ourselves without a well-practiced access to another deeper part of ourselves that we too often like to pretend does not exist.

It is a complex and most critical part of ourselves that makes us whole and that if we were in touch with on an almost automatic regular basis would guide, instruct, warn, adjust, modify, change, heal or at least forestall until we can gain the composure and the critical thinking to override the attacker or manipulator and make decisions for the true betterment of our own lives.

Access to this part of ourselves would allow us to feel the meaning of our whole life. We would cherish our freedom as humans with access to higher learning, intellect, emotional capacity and ability to make choices toward our own evolution. We would get it, fully and completely that the meaning of our life is to LIVE it, to protect it, to improve it and deepen it. This is fulfillment. This is taking your life to the next level. This is the single most practical purpose to having access to this critical life saving part of ourselves that we are not taught in schools and when faced with the knowledge of its existence, we ignore or deny or mock it as silliness, superstition or fantasy.

No, it is something based in scientific fact, studied by many for centuries, documented often in the current one. I am talking about the senses beyond the common known big five. Loosely termed by some as “The Twenty Senses” there are actually somewhere between 17 and 38 known in some scientific circles. It is the development of at least some of these extra senses and the practice of them that is the key to your shield of yourself from the toxicity, the false prophets out there, the fakers and the dangerous among us. It is also the key to YOU… the depth of who you are, your talents, strengths, purpose. It is where your life becomes art!

It is with the access to this that we develop our excellence, our uniqueness, are genius, and our happiness. This is how we go beyond the surface, how we leave the shallow and become comfortable in the deep end!

There is no one incapable of learning and using this. Many too afraid. Perhaps some blocks with some mental illnesses. But it is do-able. This is the very replacement of the fight/flight obsolete internal system that we need to rise above unhappiness, hatred, war and the many things that have plagued mankind since we discovered the limits of fight/flight.

Are you comfortable in distress and lack? Isn’t it time you looked deeper and learned how to swim in the deep end and navigate life’s currents? Isn’t it time you dive in and learn what’s next? Or do you prefer confusion and mediocrity?