The reticular Activation System (RAS) is a collection of neurons in the brain stem. It receives incoming sensory input(sight, sound, touch, etc.) and sends them to the brain.
There are many responsibilities of RAS in the human brain like attention, arousal, producing sleep, consciousness, and preventing sensory overload by filtering the important information.
We are not going to discuss the whole functions of the human brain today. We are talking about RAS only because of its function to filter important information.
RAS filters the important information base on the beliefs we have in our subconscious minds. For every belief, we have a neuron pathway in our brain. When the beliefs are changed the neuron pathway is changed.
For example, when you see a banana, you can remember everything about it because you have created a pathway for that in your brain. But a newborn baby will not understand it. With the experiences and time, he will create a pathway for the banana.
Suppose you love ice cream and you have this belief like “I love ice cream”. So if you are walking through a market, your senses will send a lot of information to your RAS. But your RAS will only send the important information further to your brain. Now if an ice cream shop comes, your RAS will treat it as important and send it to your brain. And you will become attentive to that shop.
RAS tries to automate your behavior as much as possible based on the information stored in your subconscious.
What we focus on intentionally is also important information to our RAS. By default, RAS will choose the important information based on subconscious programs. But focusing intently also makes the information important.
If you believe you are unlucky, your RAS will draw your attention to the areas of your life where you feel unlucky. And where focus goes energy flows.
But you can deliberately focus on the good part. You can see good things in your life and feel how lucky you are. When you focus on good, your RAS will filter and process that good information to your brain.
A mind movie is an amazing tool to program your RAS to filter and send positive information to your brain.
Once your RAS is programmed for positive by using your focus it will focus and show you opportunities in your life instead of focusing on lack.