The Path To The Stars

By Dougal Mac Gregor

This booklet is a compilation of thoughts, reflections, and advices. This booklet is meant to help you understand the world around you better, arrive at better decisions, enhance the quality of your life, and ultimately find and complete your dreams. Please read each thought carefully, and take the time to mentally digest and understand it. Read them as many times as necessary for you to comprehend the message behind them. But most importantly; question everything, including that which is written here, and that which you take for granted or fact. You must never accept any one idea as the ultimate truth or fact; you may arrive at being 99.99% sure about an idea, but never accept it as 100% fact.

11. Objective or Subjective?

Something is subjective when it is based on personal interpretation, in other words, an opinion. Opinions are often things that cannot yet be measured.

Something is objective if it is not dependent on people’s perception, in other words, a fact. Facts are usually measurable in one way or another, and they are always perceived by everyone.

An example of a subjective thing is “cuteness”, because something can be attractive to person A but not to person B. This may change if we develop a means of categorizing and measuring things by how attractive they are based on some kind of rule or condition.

An example of an objective thing is “weight”, because weight is the same regardless of how it is perceived by each person. Additionally, weight can be measured and categorized regardless of people’s perception.

Advice: It may be difficult, but always remember the difference between objectiveness and subjectivity, and consider whether something is subjective or objective.

Taken from Dougal Mac Gregor’s “The Path To The Stars”.

The Path To The Stars

By Dougal Mac Gregor

This booklet is a compilation of thoughts, reflections, and advices. This booklet is meant to help you understand the world around you better, arrive at better decisions, enhance the quality of your life, and ultimately find and complete your dreams. Please read each thought carefully, and take the time to mentally digest and understand it. Read them as many times as necessary for you to comprehend the message behind them. But most importantly; question everything, including that which is written here, and that which you take for granted or fact. You must never accept any one idea as the ultimate truth or fact; you may arrive at being 99.99% sure about an idea, but never accept it as 100% fact.

10. Illusion; Perception Makes Reality.

An illusion is something one or more people believe to be true, when in fact it is likely to be false or deceiving. To understand illusions better, we can make reference to the analogy of the realities in topic 9;

You are inside your house in your living room which has a window with a view of huge grasslands and mountains far away. Your neighbor is also inside his house in his living room which also has a window looking in the same direction. The view that you have of the outside may be very similar to the one your neighbor has, but it can never be identical. Say for example, that you are watching a large beautiful tree, which your neighbor can also see but from a slightly different angle. The tree happens to cover from your sight an ugly windmill that stand further behind. Your neighbor can see the windmill because the tree does not cover it from him as it does for you. This means that your neighbor is aware of the existence of the ugly windmill, while you are oblivious to it because you can’t see it, because the tree is on the way from your perspective.

Here the illusion is the tree blocking your view of the windmill. Although usually an illusion represents something that is real in your head but is not real in the external world, in this case the illusion is based on the tree which is a real object. For you, there is no ugly windmill because you cannot see it; therefore you have the illusion that there is only a beautiful panorama. However, your neighbor can see the windmill, so he is aware that the panorama is not as beautiful as you perceive it. The tree represents an illusion to you, but not to your neighbor, and because you cannot see the windmill, even if your neighbor tells you about it, you are unlikely to believe him it is there.

People often think that if something is not perceived by anyone it means it does not exist. Much like the question of “If a tree in a forest falls but no one is close by to hear it, does this mean that the sound of the collapsing tree does not exist? ” This is flawed thinking; and it goes hand in hand with the topic of Illusions. We perceive the external world with our senses, but people mistakenly think it works the other way around and assume that the only things that exist are the ones he can perceive through his senses. It is much more accurate to say that things exist whether we perceive them or not, the external world is independent to our perception, while our perception is totally dependent on the external world.

However, today’s human society is so unaware of this structure that people live in mirror worlds rather than the real one, and you can be easily judged insane by people who do not perceive something that you may be perceiving. For this reason, even if your senses are more developed, or if you can somehow perceive things that others cannot, it is safer for you to pretend that something that you perceive but others don’t does not exist. Especially since it is now widely known that our brains can malfunction and our minds can trick us by creating things in our minds that are not really there in the external world (like schizophrenia), and for this reason people automatically think your brain is malfunctioning if you perceive something they don’t and they call you insane, even if that is not the case.

This is how society works:

If everyone can see, or hear, or smell, or taste, or touch, or feel it, then it is real. If it cannot be perceived by multiple people, then it is not real.

This is how it should really work:

If everyone can sense (see, hear, smell etc.) it, then it is probably real.

If only one person can sense it, then it might not be real, but it could still be.

If no one can perceive it, it might not exist, but it could still exist.

Advice: Be wary, people do not see the world as you see it, and vice versa. If you detect things others do not, you should seek methods of verifying that what you perceive is real in the external world, such as finding other people who can also detect it. Because if you remain the only person able to perceive something; you risk not only being tagged as insane, but being in fact tricked by your mind. By the same reason, always take into consideration what others perceive and not only what you perceive, because they might be able to perceive something you yet can’t (illusion).

Taken from Dougal Mac Gregor’s “The Path To The Stars”.

The Path To The Stars

By Dougal Mac Gregor

This booklet is a compilation of thoughts, reflections, and advices. This booklet is meant to help you understand the world around you better, arrive at better decisions, enhance the quality of your life, and ultimately find and complete your dreams. Please read each thought carefully, and take the time to mentally digest and understand it. Read them as many times as necessary for you to comprehend the message behind them. But most importantly; question everything, including that which is written here, and that which you take for granted or fact. You must never accept any one idea as the ultimate truth or fact; you may arrive at being 99.99% sure about an idea, but never accept it as 100% fact.

9. Realities

For each person, there are at least three kinds of realities; the one in their head, the external one in which we all live, and the one in everyone else’s head. However, most people live their daily lives convinced that there is only one reality, they claim it to be the one we all live in, usually unaware that the reality that they are referring to is in fact the one in their head rather than the external one we all live in. Because people do not put enough thought to the matter, they just go about taking for granted what happens in their head thinking that it is the external world.

To help you understand this very confusing topic, visualize the following:

You are inside your house in your living room which has a window with a view of huge grasslands and mountains far away. Your neighbor is also inside his house in his living room which also has a window looking in the same direction. The view that you have of the outside may be very similar to the one your neighbor has, but it can never be identical. Say for example, that you are watching a large beautiful tree, which your neighbor can also see but from a slightly different angle. The tree happens to cover from your sight an ugly windmill that stand further behind. Your neighbor can see the windmill because the tree does not cover it from him as it does for you. This means that your neighbor is aware of the existence of the ugly windmill, while you are oblivious to it because you can’t see it, because the tree is on the way from your perspective.

In this analogy we have several things happening:

There are three realities going on; the one you see from inside your living room, the one your neighbor sees from his perspective, and the external one outside. In other words; the one in your head, the one in your neighbor’s head, and the external reality which is in no one’s head. It is difficult to judge which reality is more real, because they may all be equally as real. However, it may be safe to assume that since the realities in our head cannot exist without the external one, perhaps we can say that the external reality is “the real one”, because the reality in our head is merely a projection of the external one that we get through our senses.

Another thing to point out in this analogy is that the tree that blocks your view from the windmill can resemble an illusion. See Illusion; Perception Makes Reality.

Subjective matters are usually making reference to the reality in our head, while Objective matters often make reference to the external reality. See Objective or Subjective?.

Advice: It is difficult, but try to always keep in mind that each head, including yours, is a different reality from each other and from the external one. It could be safe to assume that the external world is “the real one”, even though we may never be able to completely know what it is like exactly.

Taken from Dougal Mac Gregor’s “The Path To The Stars”.

The Path To The Stars

By Dougal Mac Gregor

This booklet is a compilation of thoughts, reflections, and advices. This booklet is meant to help you understand the world around you better, arrive at better decisions, enhance the quality of your life, and ultimately find and complete your dreams. Please read each thought carefully, and take the time to mentally digest and understand it. Read them as many times as necessary for you to comprehend the message behind them. But most importantly; question everything, including that which is written here, and that which you take for granted or fact. You must never accept any one idea as the ultimate truth or fact; you may arrive at being 99.99% sure about an idea, but never accept it as 100% fact.

8. Destiny

We may be able to make decisions and choose our fate (at least based on what we know at the time), but it is also true that we are bound to other external constraints besides our memory. Everything in the environment is interconnected and is constantly reacting to each other (see Cause and Effect), much like a Domino Effect.

People like to think that the universe works like the human mind; based on reason. For the same reason, people like to believe that the universe is “fair”, meaning that if you do harm to others, the universe will harm you, and vice versa. Some people call this theory KARMA (yet others call it God’s will). Whether this is true or not, the ultimate fact that we know for sure is that we have a lot less control over our fate than we like to think we do or wish we did.

Here is an analogy to destiny:
Take control of the wheel, but choose wisely the road you will take.

This analogy makes allusion to the fact that we do not create our fate, but rather choose it. (And even our choice is not entirely under our control, see Free Will).

Advice: You do what you can do best, and KARMA (or the universe, or God, or whatever) will take care of the rest. Play it safe by helping instead of harming, just in case KARMA is true.

Taken from Dougal Mac Gregor’s “The Path To The Stars”.

The Path To The Stars

By Dougal Mac Gregor

This booklet is a compilation of thoughts, reflections, and advices. This booklet is meant to help you understand the world around you better, arrive at better decisions, enhance the quality of your life, and ultimately find and complete your dreams. Please read each thought carefully, and take the time to mentally digest and understand it. Read them as many times as necessary for you to comprehend the message behind them. But most importantly; question everything, including that which is written here, and that which you take for granted or fact. You must never accept any one idea as the ultimate truth or fact; you may arrive at being 99.99% sure about an idea, but never accept it as 100% fact.

6. Programming & Choice

Programming (or configuring an agenda) is essentially the act of making decisions, in other words, choosing. You are who you want to be, and at the same time, who you can be. You do what you choose to do, and at the same time, what you can do. You will achieve what you desire, and at the same time, what you are meant to achieve.

Choosing is deciding for yourself what to do. If you let someone else choose for you, what you are really doing is choosing to have someone else decide for you. Choice and decision are based on our frame of reference, in other words, our knowledge. The more knowledge and experience you have, the better the choices you can make, or at least in theory, because you might know a lot but have a tendency to make poor choices.

For more information on Choice see Free Will and Destiny.

Advice: Choose wisely, using the best of your knowledge and experience, seek advice and opinions from multiple others, but do not let someone decide for you. Expand your knowledge and experience, only then will you be able to make better decisions.

Taken from Dougal Mac Gregor’s “The Path To The Stars”.

The Path To The Stars

By Dougal Mac Gregor

This booklet is a compilation of thoughts, reflections, and advices. This booklet is meant to help you understand the world around you better, arrive at better decisions, enhance the quality of your life, and ultimately find and complete your dreams. Please read each thought carefully, and take the time to mentally digest and understand it. Read them as many times as necessary for you to comprehend the message behind them. But most importantly; question everything, including that which is written here, and that which you take for granted or fact. You must never accept any one idea as the ultimate truth or fact; you may arrive at being 99.99% sure about an idea, but never accept it as 100% fact.

5. Confusion

Confusion is a symptom of misunderstanding. This is why people stop being confused whenever they understand (or believe they understand) whatever was confusing to them.

Advice: If you feel confused, meditate and understand that which is confusing.

Taken from Dougal Mac Gregor’s “The Path To The Stars”.

4. Cause & Effect

Theoretically, there is no such thing as a ‘cause’, because even a cause is the effect or aftermath of yet another previous cause, which in turn is also an effect. In other words, the universe is an infinite chain of effects. An effect that produces another effect can then be considered a cause, but it still is an effect. This is inherently parallel to the physics law that ‘you cannot create energy, only transform it, regardless of its form’. This may seem absolute, but nothing should be accepted as 100% undeniably true, instead it should be taken as 99.99% true.

For each action there is always a reaction, regardless of the type and magnitude. What most people are not aware of is that even thoughts have an outcome. In other words, whatever you think can manifest, so be careful what you ponder on about!

Someone once said: “What you think becomes what you say, what you say becomes what you believe, what you believe becomes what you do, what you do becomes who you are.”

Advice: Always remember that your thoughts are the origin of your actions; therefore you must always consider the possible results of your thoughts and actions. By the same reason, remember that every event has a cause and an effect.

Taken from Dougal Mac Gregor’s “The Path To The Stars”.

The Path To The Stars

By Dougal Mac Gregor

This booklet is a compilation of thoughts, reflections, and advices. This booklet is meant to help you understand the world around you better, arrive at better decisions, enhance the quality of your life, and ultimately find and complete your dreams. Please read each thought carefully, and take the time to mentally digest it and understand it. Read them as many times as necessary for you to comprehend the message behind them. But most importantly; question everything, including that which is written here, and that which you take for granted or fact. You must never accept any one idea as the ultimate truth or fact; you may arrive at being 99.99% sure about an idea, but never accept it as 100% fact.

2. Intelligence & Reason

Intelligence is any given particular function the brain can perform, in other words ‘cognitive power’ or ‘cognitive ability’. However, most people mistakenly interpret intelligence as wisdom, in other words “How much do you know?” Knowledge is the amount of information you memorize, including experiences. Wisdom is typically used to describe someone who has a significant amount of knowledge. Note that someone wise is not necessarily “intelligent” (except in memory).

Strictly speaking, there are various different kinds of intelligence; some of which can be memory intelligence, communication intelligence, emotional intelligence, reasoning intelligence, abstract intelligence, creative intelligence, technical intelligence, and mathematical intelligence. Logical intelligence is a confusing term because it can refer to reasoning intelligence, to technical intelligence, to mathematical intelligence, or to a combination of those.

Memory Intelligence is the degree to which someone can store and recall information in his or her brain. Communication Intelligence is the degree to which someone can effectively communicate (language skills). Emotional Intelligence is the degree to which someone is aware of, understands, and controls his or her emotions. Reasoning Intelligence is the degree to which someone can analyze and understand or interpret a given object or event accurately. Abstract Intelligence is the degree to which someone can think abstractly. Creative Intelligence is the degree to which someone can be creative. Technical Intelligence is the degree to which someone can understand and use objects, artifacts, and theories. Mathematical Intelligence is the degree to which someone can effectively perform calculations, usually with numerical values.

Human society in Earth, has placed great importance in Memory Intelligence and Mathematical Intelligence, and given little or no importance to the other types of intelligence. While memory and mathematical intelligence are important, they are not nearly as important as reason, communication, and emotional intelligence.

All the types of intelligence are important, but some more than others.

Advice: Develop your Reason Intelligence by questioning everything, especially those you have not yet questioned. Develop your Emotional Intelligence by understanding your emotions and controlling them. Develop your Communication Intelligence by learning and understanding as many languages as you can (this includes art and music). Develop your Memory Intelligence by doing exercises that enhance your memory. Develop your Technical Intelligence by studying and using different tools. Develop your Creative Intelligence by doing exercises that enhance your creativity, such as art. Develop your Mathematical Intelligence by playing with numerical values. Develop your Abstract Intelligence by attempting to think outside your frame of reference. Become ultimately intelligent.

Excerpt taken from Dougal Mac Gregor’s “The Path To The Stars”.

Those that cling to doubt and suspicion must wake up and realize that a better relationship among nations would help each others economy in which there should be no strings attached. The antiquated system of governments that look inward is fading away. Capitalism does not have to isolate the poor and middle class. There are deficiencies in governments that can be rectified. Globalization can be compared to a long chain, consisting of numerous links, the links being the people in general that constitute each nation. Analogically, the links help maintain the chain. People of every class that are linked to form the chain of globalization should consider themselves indispensable, since globalization must depend on the firmness and strength of the links from which it is formed.

It is time to remove restrictions in trade, and open up avenues of goodwill and trust. Hopefully, when these are realized, peace and understanding would be internationally attained.

It behooves those that remain suspicious about globalization to merge with those that are in favor of getting it off the ground and into the highway of confidence and trust where there would be an acceleration of trade without interruption.

There isn’t an easy way to approach someone who is negative and try to change their focus. It seems like once people are stuck on that negative train it’s hard to derail them. Those tracks seem to be made of steel, going one direction, and you are what you focus on. It’s hard to ride that train and point out that it could be a good thing that you lost your job, can’t pay the bills or the kids are hungry. The only way to teach someone, or yourself, is to find that one thing, no matter how small, and be thankful for it. Find that one tiny bread crumb of hope that could help to turn on the light. I know when I faced difficult times it was hard to find a good reason for it, I felt so alone and couldn’t show my kids how worried I was. I cried a lot when the kids would go to bed and felt so overwhelmed. Once we had no food and no money. I had a friend who worked at a food bank so I asked her where it was and what I needed to do to get help. She told me that she was getting ready to move and all of her things were going into storage; that she would be in a hotel for a couple of weeks and couldn’t take all her food. She asked me to stop by and she would give me a couple of bags of groceries. So I did. By the time I left her house I had $400 worth of groceries in my car. I couldn’t even fit it all in the cabinets. I remember crying and thanking God for such a blessing, not only for the food but to have a friend who would give so much. If I would’ve never been out of food I may never have realized just how many people I had in my life that cared for us. Sometimes when your at lowest it’s because you need to learn to appreciate what’s in front of you. I know people don’t like being alone but maybe that alone time is just what you need to find you. It’s hard to face obstacles in your life but when it’s over it becomes a memory and that memory will help you get through the next one. Now when I feel like alone and overwhelmed I look back at the time when we had no food and how blessed we were because of it. It’s was a huge turning point in my life, my train had finally been derailed and I found that bread crumb, literally, to find my positive.

Sometimes what we want and what we need are two different things. Sometimes losing your job may even force you to change to a direction that ends up being the best thing that ever happen to you. I can name a few things that happen to me that at the time I was frustrated, depressed and thought it was the worst thing that ever happen to me. Later I realized how strong they made me and that each moment I thought was a failure, wasn’t really a failure at all. It was just simply a stepping stone to the place I needed to be. When I had my kids young I thought it took away all those years in my 20’s that I was suppose to be finding myself and being free. Now that I’m in my 40’s, kids are grown, I realized that being a Mom is what I needed to do first so I could be prepared for the life I would live now. It gave me insight that not a lot of people my age have. Now, living my 20’s in my 40’s, I’m ready to face life with a different perspective than I would have had if I would’ve lived my 20’s in my actual 20’s. When we were down I always told my kids that someday all this stuff we didn’t like, that made us struggle, would all be a memory, we would get through, and we did. So if live is kicking you a bit, remember, someday all of this will be a memory and you will find what you need. The tunnels of darkness your going through now will end, just keep that engine moving forward and the light will appear.

I’m not sure that we could really change the whole worlds view about negative and positive, but if enough of us can start finding the positives in our lives, maybe, just maybe, the positives will start to spread. If we all share our positives with at least one other person and then that person shares, well, eventually everyone will have someone positive in their lives. The world may find a way to at least spend sometime on the positive side of life. Maybe all this congestion of trains in those tunnels will start to let loose and more of us can move forward. It does take a really strong person to stay positive while the person in front of you is trying to pull you down with them. Don’t be a savior, just a friend. As a friend it’s important to stay supportive and not get frustrated. The last thing people need at that moment in their lives is someone turning their back; but be careful, because people who are having these issue can feed off of people who try to help them. They can use more negative to try and pull you in. Point out ways to make positive changes but don’t be judgmental of decisions they’ve already made. Remember, you can’t change even the last second, it’s already happened, move forward. Let them make the choice to step forward, give them hope and reason to. Feed their engines with the positive pieces in their lives and get those wheels turning. Those steel tracks of negative don’t necessarily have to be derailed, they just a new perspective, a new direction and when they’re finally coming out of the tunnel, they will shine. Have faith, remember where you’ve been, remember what you’ve survived already. This will be a memory too.

Thank you for reading my article today. I hope it has shed some positive light, helped you find that positive perspective or at least got you moving to the end of the tunnel. If you would like to share your positive story about how you found your bread crumb, you can comment below or email me at hmweimar@yahoo.com. I answer every message personally. You can also find me on twitter, facebook, myspace and now google + , or join me at Triond.com, share, create and learn.