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be filtered through our personal symbol dictionary. For example, one individual dreaming of a wizened white-haired and bearded figure will feel blessed and awe-inspired by the image because it would represent his cultural/religious symbol of the benevolent patriarchal God. Conversely, a second dreamer, the victim of parental child abuse, may wake up screaming in terror at the image of an oppressive and abusive father figure dominating his dream.

      The Power of Believing

      The most important consideration determining how a person responds to any particular symbol is the amount of mental energy (focus) that person invests into that particular symbol, that is, how strongly he believes in that symbol.

      The symbol of Uncle Sam (another stern white-bearded father figure, by the way) declaring “I want you!” is enough for some impressionable young people to pack up their ol’ kit bags and head for the front. For others, the symbol of Uncle Sam does not evoke feelings of patriotism, pride, and unquestioning obedience. For these, hostile foreign nationals for example, the symbol of Uncle Sam may incite hatred and fear.

      Belief is the most powerful of mental filters, determining whether information we reassemble inside our minds is reality, or merely a reflection of the way we’d like things to be.

      It is both the actual and perceived power pumped into a symbol by a culture, clan, or by a traumatized individual himself that observant and opportunistic mind-slayers evoke and manipulate through use of that symbol.

      Remember: It is belief that gives symbols their power. In other words, symbols are effective only when they stimulate a belief response in the subconscious.

      Why do symbols work? Why are they such effective tools in the mind-slayer’s bag of tricks?

      One theory behind why symbols work so well, affecting us both mentally and physically, is that symbols bypass the critical and logical conscious part of our minds and talk directly to the nonjudgmental subconscious level of our minds.

      It is at this subconscious level that the most adroit of mind-slayers ply their craft.

      To recap:

      The brain is not a camera. What the brain sees through the five senses is an all-too-often imperfect reconstruction.

      Filters placed between an object (or information) perceived by the senses and the brain’s reconstruction of that information influence and interfere with the brain’s accurate reconstruction of that information.

      These filters include such things as personal beliefs, strong emotion, past trauma, and cultural and religious prejudices.

      By deliberately imposing such filters between the information perceived by the senses and its reconstruction in the brain, an accomplished mind-slayer can control how another person’s mind sees.

      MASTERING THE MIND (HARAGAGEI)

      “Faced with a threatening challenge or confronted by overwhelming odds, the untrained body panics. It is left to the mind to realistically assess the situation and decide the proper course of action: flight or fight, resistance or surrender, life or death . . . A trained mind is an asset, a tool for survival.”

      —Dirk Skinner, Street Ninja

      It is often said we humans use only 10 percent of our brains.

      The truth is that we only consciously use a small percentage of our mental potential and, of the 10 percent or so we do consciously use, most of us don’t use it effectively or efficiently.

      Ninja students learned early on that survival and ultimate victory begin in the mind.

      Medieval shinobi-ninja faced great physical and mental challenges, not the least of which was the stress of being under the constant threat of capture, torture, and death from overwhelming numbers of samurai invaders. Yet the shinobi-ninja overcame these challenges through the use of seishinshugi, literally mind over matter.

      Medieval ninja students began by learning the basic traditional and technical aspects of their chosen craft in order to survive. But, in order to master their craft, the ninja student had to pass beyond mere regurgitation of lessons, beyond mere repetition of technical physical skills.

      Their first step was wiping their minds clear of psychological hindrances and mind filters (doubts, phobias, unresolved trauma, and prejudices), thus unleashing the endless potential and natural flow of the unclouded mind.

      Likewise, we today need to discover our own filters, those mental programming glitches that prevent us from seeing the world clearly.

      For survival, we must find these potentially fatal faults and mental fissures in our minds before our enemies do.

      Seishinshugi: Mind over Matter

      “All things are ready, if our minds be so.”

      —Shakespeare, King Henry V

      Physical circumstances all too often overpower the mind. In the face of overwhelming force or impossible odds, confusion, doubts, and fear creep in and we falter. Doubt is the beginning of defeat.

      Such doubts and fears amount to stains on the mirror of our minds, a mirror that should perfectly reflect the world around us but which, instead, reflects imperfectly because of these stains on its surface. Adroit mind-slayers deliberately insert confusion, doubt and fear into the minds of their foes, purposely staining the foe’s mind-mirror in order to make that foe “see” an imperfect reflection of the world.

      An imperfect reflection of the world around them causes people to act on incorrect information. Calculated on incorrect intelligence, an enterprise cannot but fail.

      In order to remain in a constant state of readiness to do battle, be it physical battle or a no-less-lethal mental challenge, ninja cultivated makoto, the stainless mind. Makoto is a balanced state of mind allowing us to remain calm even in the most trying of circumstance.

      The development of makoto consists of the active cultivation and practice of two skills: haragei (awareness), and rinkioken (adaptability).

      Awareness

      Medieval ninja practiced purposeful awareness of all five known senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch) as their first line of defense, as well as their first choice of offensive weapons when aggression was called for.

      As children, we used all our senses to explore the world around us. As we grew older, however, our senses began to dull. For most adults, the use of the senses is not balanced—that is, we tend to favor one or more of our senses, while neglecting the others.

      Unlike the average person, mind-slayers practice the full use of all five senses to the point that they notice every shift in weight; hear each slight hesitation of doubt in a person’s voice; feel that slight tremble in another when shaking hands or brushing against him. The most accomplished of these mind-slayers can literally “smell” doubt and fear in another person. Used to their fullest, in concert with one another, the five known senses become greater than the sum of their parts, merging to create a sixth, extrasensory sense of awareness.

      The effect of using their five trained senses together gave the impression to indolent and uninitiated outsiders that ninja mind-slayers possessed magic powers. Like modern mind manipulators, medieval ninja did nothing to discourage this belief.

      When you practice being more attuned to the subtlety and nuance of your environment, and to the subconscious clues given off by others, it will appear to others that you possess magical extrasensory abilities though, in actuality, all you are doing is using to the fullest the same five senses we all possess but all too often take for granted.

      And, if human beings do possess a long dormant and denied ESP—a sixth sense—what better way to develop it than by disciplining and making full use of our first five?

      Adaptability

      “Develop intuitive judgement and

      understanding for everything . . .

      Perceive those things which cannot be seen . . .

      Pay attention

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