Your brain is a truly amazing machine. Amongst the many things it does for us, one of the most important is surely to keep us alive. To do this, it has a representation of the world and analyzes data coming in from the senses, as seen in the light of this internal model.
YOU HAVE THE WORLD INSIDE YOU
Are you with me so far? Inside your brain is a model of the world as you know it. This is evident: you can go for imaginary walks in your mind, down roads you know. You can mentally place items you have seen in places you know. This internal model of the world is then constantly kept updated with the new data coming in from the senses, to keep us safe in a changing world. You simply learn from whatever you take notice of, coming in from your senses.
YOUR TEN SENSES
Your senses provide input for perception. Traditionally, we talk about five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. (This classification is possibly the work of Aristotle). Humans have at least five more senses: pain, balance, joint motion and acceleration (proprioception), a sense of time, and a sense of temperature differences.
What we here call senses are not some randomly thought-of ways we perceive the world. Each “sense” consists of sensory cells that responds to something physical in the world, and then signals specific parts of the brain to this particular stimuli.
That is: we have specific sensory cells for sight, and specific sensory cells for hearing, and correspondingly we have specific regions of the brain that respond to sights, and specific regions of the brain that respond to sounds. And we also have specific sensory cells that responds to pain, and specific parts of the brain that respond to these pain signals. And the same goes for balance, joint motion and acceleration, and so on.
Your brain learns a whole lot about the world by noticing when the senses are activated together. If you see your finger on the stove and feel a lot of pain in that finger a the same time, your brain correlates these sensory signals. “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”
HOW YOU LEARN
When neurons in the brain fire together, a link is created between them, and the more times they fire together, the stronger that physical link becomes. Eventually, when one is fired, the other will become very excitable and will fire very easily.
This goes not only for the senses, but for the “opposite” system as well. Just as the senses are the brain’s input channels, the motor system is the output channel. By moving muscles (large or small) it controls everything we do, how we affect the world. The brain will obviously also learn how movements and sensory inputs link together. Again, repetition will give stronger links, and eventually make what first seemed difficult or impossible, easy.
We can use this knowledge to our advantage. When you study the Bible, you will want to apply as many senses as you can.
HOW TO LEARN QUICKER
I most certainly believe the most common way of studying the Bible, is by reading it. But have you tried listening to it? Adding a modality will most certainly let you learn quicker.
An easy way to start listening to the Bible is to use the online audio Bible found at http://www.audio-bible.com/bible/bible.html.
Now here’s a twist. How about reading it out loud to yourself. That will activate both your eyes, your mouth, and your ears. Now while you read, why don’t you record your voice, so that you can listen to your own rendition later? You should. An easy way would be to use your computer. You can simply hook up a microphone (a cheap one will do) and use the built-in recording software that comes with most Windows and Mac computers these days. I wouldn’t recommend using the built-in microphone on your computer, as you’ll capture too much noise from the internal fan.
ACTION STEP
Here’s what to do, right now.
Record yourself reading from the Bible. If you don’t have a specific part you want to learn, you can start at the beginning. Record Genisis, Chapter 1. If you don’t have a Bible handy, there are many online versions. You’ll find the King James Version here: http://www.allonlinebible.com/Genesis/1.html.
Most computers these days have ready-installed software for recording audio. If you don’t have anything like that, or don’t know how to find or use it, Audacity is a great, free piece of software that works for both Windows PCs and Macs. You’ll find it at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/.
After having created the audio, you can upload the file or files to your mp3-player, create CDs, or just listen on your computer.
Now don’t just sit there — do it! You will never be able to memorize the Bible if you don’t actually put in the effort. This is a fun little thing to do. Don’t try to bite over too much, just do a little bit and enjoy it
HOW TO GET MORE
If you found this illuminating and interesting, I’m absolutely convinced you’ll be thrilled by a new product I’ve just released called Bibelizer 101: Bible Power Tools.
To get it, all you have to do is jump on over to http://www.bibelizer.com/BiblePowerTools/ then click the button that says “Download Now”. That will take you to a PayPal payment page. If you don’t have a PayPal-account, that’s no problem. Just look for the link that says “Pay with Credit or Debit card”. (It’s located under the sign-in form, at least on my screen.)
Enjoy!