Books By Frederick Dodson

[Dandelion]

REVIEW:  INTUITION TRAINING by Frederick Dodson

One reservation I have about Frederick Dodson's books is that he tends to create numerical "scales" for things (levels of consciousness, levels of energy) though that's less of a problem in this book.  I don't really like books that do that or ones that try to put everything into artificial and arbitrary categories.  Another reservation is his word choices.  I tend to be very conscious of words, how they're defined and how they're used.  Some (like Seth) resonate with me.  Some like this book seem a little off or even jarring at time.  Maybe it's just a personal thing, but it does make it more difficult for me to relate to the message.

Chapter 1  Living From Intuition

Intuition is defined—that instant knowing that occurs before thinking.  Innate or inner knowing.  "Intuition is spontaneous, playful and ego-less.  It tends to fade away under expectations and mind scrutiny."

Separated from instinct which are impulses from the physical body.  Separated from "projection" which is a reaction based on emotions (fears and desires, etc) and beliefs.

Chapter 2  Intervention From Higher Sources

Has lots of stories about intuition mostly from his life and some from other people.  Differentiates between intuition and psychic data.  Psychic information is often darker in content, felt in the forehead, and may come as "thought flashes" rather than feelings.  Intuition is mostly light and joyful, sometimes felt at top of head or in chest.


Chapter 3  How to Discern Truth

Ironically, there were multiple things in this chapter about discerning truth that I either disagreed with or only partially agreed with.  Of course part of the problem may be the way the material is presented and the limitations imposed by the book format.  The writer can't include everything and can't always delve into the material as deeply as a reader might want.  For example, I partially agreed with some of what he said about simplicity.  One quote:  "When you drop over-thinking and micro-controlling, and just trust that life will figure most things out for you, you become calm and life becomes simple."  Sort of true, as far as it goes, but simplicity is more of an ego goal because the ego (which he usually refers to as "mind") is easily overwhelmed.  The inner self (his word for it is "soul") can accept and understand that which is more complex.  Even though he is implying that by saying don't over-think it, just trust life, he doesn't really take the next step of explaining it.

He lists some "Divination and Truth Testing Methods."  (A two-finger muscular response technique, a second muscle testing technique, the pendulum, dice, "ask and let go," Wikipedia & Google searches, an Attention-Immersion exercise, intuiting truth, and receiving answers.

He talks about the difference between perception and judgment.  He covers 3 levels of distortion in the media (filtering of content, distortion created by the viewpoints of the reporters or the organization, and deliberate fabrication).  Quote about filtering and the media's tendency to focus on the negative versus the positive:  "If the proper balance was kept, the audience would be more involved in healing of darkness, rather than becoming desensitized and apathetic by it."  He discusses paranoia versus intuition.  When trying to sense truth intuitively, he says, "Closing the eyes symbolizes not taking what you see as your first point of reference."

Chapter 4  Intuitive Consciousness

Levels of consciousness:  1) Animal/Survival/Reactive    2)  Intellectual/Mind/Mechanistic    3)  Spiritual/Higher-Self/Intuitive

"Anything you quietly observe without rigid focus, over-expectation, or a hidden agenda, you intuitively understand to its fullest." 

"Fear is not a problem if you don't act upon it.  You let it subside before you act."

Some interesting stuff about meditating:  He stopped meditating because he was not transferring the bliss to daily life, so he went through a process to transfer that state of being mindful and aware to his life, along with having no resistance to "bad states."  There were some useful tips for those who don't meditate like myself for applying meditative principles to situations.  Trick for emptying the mind:  put attention on empty spaces (between objects/events).  While focusing on something specific, expand awareness to include the empty spaces around.  This can be used for multiple situations like reducing or dissolving pain or coping with situations (like feeling socially awkward).  Equilibrium is the balance between tension (focus) and relaxation (awareness).

Other topics in chapter:  short-term versus long-term (in the context of making decisions). Goals versus path.  Your Inner Critic.  Guilt-tripping.

Interesting exercise for discovering your real passion:  Imagine you already have everything you've ever wanted.  From that position ask yourself, "What would I like to do now?"

Quotes about projecting inner issues outward:  "Whatever is present but suppressed in oneself, is projected onto the external world."  "You see the world as you are."

Another way to look at levels of consciousness:  1) Having  2) Doing  3) Being 
(Note:  later he mentions his book "Levels of Consciousness" which further separates it into a thousand levels.)

Chapter 5  The Power of Appreciation

About Forgiveness:  The "benefit" of hate is that it gives the ego power.  "People 'juice themselves up' with hard emotions." Dodson shares 2 similar forgiveness techniques a person can use.

Criticism and pain and suffering:  Criticism from others can help you "peel off layers of victim-mentality and transcend smallness."  Pain is emotion or passing energy; suffering is resistance to pain.

No's (resistance) and Yes's (appreciation) are both ways of focusing attention.  "Savoring things increases your well-being."  "What you put your attention to for extended amounts of time, you become an energetic and vibratory match to."

"When you are no longer attached to the outcome of things, you become fearless and free."

"In any scenario of daily life, there are millions of things to notice.  If you always notice the same things, it's because you are always being the same attitude."

There are also various exercises for practicing appreciation throughout this chapter.

On the importance of humor:  "The presence or absence of humor is a measuring stick, by which you can tell the consciousness level of any group, activity, seminar, relationship, etc."  "...lack of humor indicates that someone is fixed in narrow personalities and rigid rules/formulas, rather than connected with the spontaneity of reality in the here and now."

Chapter 6  Higher-Self and Your Life Purpose

Always chose the option that shines the brightest.  If several shine, just choose one.  "Your soul cares more about WHO you are BEING than what job, partner, and/or life you specifically choose (as long as it's a job, partner, and/or life that shines.)"

He talks about 2 main ways to access the Akashic Records/Library, as well as other ways to access information from your Higher-Self.  When getting info, he says, "Initial language-based thoughts are not the answers.  Answers are packs of energy received as feelings, translated into thoughts."

There are several topics related to the World-Self (ego):  the three different types of ego energy, the need to be right, the need to impress others, conforming and non-conforming coming from the same source, and narcissism. 

Some exercises focus on contacting your Higher-Self, such as a week of writing down all signs, omens, coincidences, name-and-number synchronicities, meetings between people, hunches, etc.  Others focus on finding your life's unique purpose—the job you would be willing to do for free, a lifelong interest, or what you would be doing if you could not fail.

There is quite a bit near the end about being fearless, including personal anecdotes.

Summary

Dodson is a life coach which is reflected in the book, making it a blend of conventional thinking/new age beliefs/practical application.  If one has done much reading in these areas, there's not a lot of new stuff in it, but it's a good "refresher course" on some key points and offers another perspective if there are specific areas one is interested in.  The clarity of the writing is fine, in spite of multiple editing errors (mentioned for those who are bothered by such things), so the information is accessible to anyone, including those who are new to it.  There is quite of bit of information available on his website at http://www.realitycreation.org/

For myself, it was worth the time spent reading it.  Although it didn't delve into intuition as deeply as I would have liked, I did get a number of ideas and confirmations of thoughts/beliefs that were of value to me.  I also appreciated the things he said about mediation and about humor.  And here is a final quote that I particularly liked from chapter 6:

"Resistance from outside is merely a wake-up call for you to become better.  If you are already getting better, then no wake-up call, no adversity, is required, and life will seem easy to you."

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Review copied from my multiple posts made about it under "Seth and Other Teachers

[transient amnesia]

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[Deb]

!!!DEB???   

I know, it's just a spammer. I've just been tearing my hair out all day over an uncooperative Ouija board web site plugin issue, so haven't done anything about it.

You can always tell the spammers by their inane posts. While most bots or spammers will add a link in their post or their bio, sometimes they don't and I don't understand the point. Most times I will wait and see what happens next, like, who knows, maybe they'll actually read some posts and become interested in Seth, lol. No harm done. I'm actually surprised it doesn't happen more often. The day I launched this forum I had about 260 spam members join. That was fun.

Thanks for noticing! Hopefully tomorrow (of if I'm up again at the magic hour of 3 am) I'll have a little time to clean house here. At the moment I'm still swimming upstream. On a more interesting note, Dewthanawan is in Thailand. And his other post made me realize I needed to update my instruction on how to do partial quotes. Thanks Dewie!

[transient amnesia]

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[Deb]

Anyway, what was your Ouija question?

Hmph. Just got back from driving a friend home from the hospital after a day of unexpected events for her.

Not an Ouija question so much as to how to get a Wordpress Watermark plugin to play nicely with the Gallery plugin. I'm a graphic designer/web developer for my main day job. Since no one else is paying attention to this topic (ouch, sorry), I'll explain. I am redesigning/redeveloping this web site http://tbhs.org to this currently 'under construction' site http://new.tbhs.org. We're almost there. Hopefully we will be able to pull the switch by the end of this week, if I can get all the kinks ironed out. The site has been particularly challenging for this old dog, a huge learning curve. But, I'm grateful for all I've learned because of it.

Thanks for the link, I still don't understand the benefit of posting nonsense, without links, on anything. Maybe I just need to get with the times.

[transient amnesia]

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[Sena]

I am redesigning/redeveloping this web site http://tbhs.org to this currently 'under construction' site http://new.tbhs.org. We're almost there.

The new one is a lot more informative than the old one, and easy on the eye. I use chrome on Windows 10 (laptop).

[Deb]

Thanks for checking Sena, it's always great to get a fresh pair of eyes on things like that. I think we're going live tomorrow, I'm a little nervous but will be so glad when it's done. It's been a long haul, lots of technical issues. BTW tomorrow I'll probably split this topic off starting at Dewthanawan's and move it to Chit Chat or something to preserve Bumblebee's original intent.