The Dart theory and Mind control

I am pasting below an excerpt from a very good article by Mr Nate Klemp. You can find in this link

http://lifebeyondlogic.com/experiment/the-yoga-of-neuroscience-%E2%80%93-how-to-change-your-brain/

"When things are good, the waves are calm, peaceful, and uplifting. When things get crazy, the waves become scary and chaotic. We cannot change these thought waves. On this view, the best we can do is learn to surrender to them – to shift from resistance to acceptance.

This is the way I’ve usually thought about the mind.  But after reading Rick Hanson’s Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, & Wisdom, I’ve becoming intrigued by a slightly different view.

Here’s the basic idea.  Using the metaphor of “darts” borrowed from the Buddha, Hanson talks about two kinds of thoughts.  Some thoughts come and go without any conscious control.  They are what he calls “first darts.”

Imagine that you’re walking past the corner where a girlfriend or boyfriend from your past dumped you.  All of a sudden you feel a quick wave of sadness and anger moving through you.  That’s a first dart.

Then there are “second darts.”  These are our reactions to first darts.  These are the thoughts that send us into a feedback loop of negative thinking.  Thoughts like, “I can’t believe she left me” or “If only she could see me now.”

Here’s Hanson’s big insight – You can’t control first darts, but, if you interrupt the assembly of neurons and synapses that habitually get activated by them, you can shift the second darts.

You can do this by consciously shifting out of negative thought loops and into more positive ones.  As he says, “Every time you do this – every time you sift positive feelings and views into painful, limiting states of mind – you build a little bit of neural structure.  Over time, the accumulating impact of this positive material will literally, synapse by synapse, change your brain.”

So for this week’s experiment, let’s explore experiencing this shift first hand.  Let’s see if it’s possible to shift from negative second darts to more positive ones."