September 6, 2008 by gus
Here is the Webster’s definition of
Meme (meem)
Pronunciation: \mēm\
1. An idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.
The concept of memes is a really cool one. They are little sentences that we operate our lives by. Most of the ones that I find can be broken down into just a few words. “Brush your teeth.” That’s a meme. That sentence has more in it than what it appears to have.
First, it tells you to do something.
Second, it implies that it’s good for you to do it.
Third, it implies that it’s good for everyone to do it.
Forth, it has no time value. This implies doing it all the time or forever.
Fifth, it can be transmitted easily between person-to-person.
Sixth, it implies that you “should” pass it on to others.
I’ll bet there was a lot more in that sentence than you first realized. Memes are like that. They look OK on the surface but when we get to the bottom of it we have accepted more than we realize. The time value of this meme alone is about 7 MILLION seconds in an average life. If you could get 10 people to do something in your favor that took 10 minutes a day for 40 years by passing a similar meme to them you would gain 87,600,000 seconds of time. That is 1000 days or 2.7 years. Now, if this meme is viral you could actually easily gain an entire lifetime from one meme.
The most powerful meme today that I know of is “money has value”. If you were the one who was printing the money you would be the beneficiary of this meme. Now the brushing the teeth meme probably isn’t going to hurt you. But, during your childhood you were subjected to thousands of these, some of them very harmful and limiting. Most of them are flat out false! Over and over and over again they are repeated to you. Even if you had some resistance they would be beaten into you. You don’t have to physically beat it in. You just have to say it enough times to beat it in.
There is another way that these things sneak into your mind. They are just understood, for example everyone is sad when something “bad” happens. Everybody’s doing it and you just don’t question it. “That’s the way we do things around here.” “It’s just common sense.” “You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t feel bad during (fill in blank).”
Now these memes wouldn’t be so bad, maybe, if we didn’t actually believe that they were true. We take them on it as if they’re part of us. We think “that’s the way it’s done around here.” We think it’s just common sense. We think its “bad”. Not only do we catch the virus, but we become the virus. Now WE are running around selling everybody this stuff because we now actually believe it. We never questioned it. It’s too painful to question this. This would mean we were wrong. We don’t like to be wrong.
I’m going to inject a new word here; Ego. From now on let’s refer to the ego as a software program that is running in your head and it’s convincing you all the time that memes are you. The software program is made up of all the things that everybody told you. Some of these are generally called “values”. These are things that you stand for. Pro-life, health and being nice are things that you stand for. I am going to start referring to these things as opinions. They are more like “de-values”. You actually attempt to define yourself as less than you actually are. The ego attempts to make you stand for them no matter what, it thinks they are life and death. If the ego really has you convinced, you will say “I am” pro-life, pro-health etc. “You” are not pro-whatever, pro-whatever is an idea that you hold in your mind, it is a teensy bit of an effect of who you are. You are more like an idea that can create ideas than any one set of ideas.
CHANGING ANY IDEA DOES NOT CHANGE WHO YOU ACTUALLY ARE IN ANY WAY.
You are the creator of the idea, not just the idea. When an idea is created, rejected, neglected or accepted it has an effect. You are not just the effect. You are the cause of the effect. Here is the action involved in this step. Identify the meme that is connected to the emotion. It’s easiest to start with ones that have a “should” in the statement. Here are some examples. This light should change. She should be nicer to me. I should not be sick. I shouldn’t have quit my job. I should have more money. A major percentage of the memes will have a “should” statement in them. They’re great to start with, because they are really obvious when you do the next couple steps.
Some other words that are commonly found in memes are can’t, must, have to and need. Here are some examples. I can’t do it. I have to do this. I must have this. I need more money. So in this step, all that you do is hold the feeling from the first step in your mind and wait for the words to show up that are associated with the feeling. At first the ego will tell you there’s nothing there but with persistence you will find there is always something there.
Once you have identified the meme that is associated with the feeling and written it down you can move onto the next step.
Go to Step Three