Most people searching for ways to “reduce cognitive load” or “increase IQ” end up with the usual advice: nootropics, dual n-back apps, exercise, or better sleep. Those methods can help, but they often focus on tweaking the brain’s hardware or adding external tools.
This is a different, novel approach — one that doesn’t try to change your biology or add new techniques. It comes straight from the theory of Frued, Jung and Maslow Instead of fighting or upgrading the brain, you remove the massive hidden load created by inner lies, masks, self-deception, and unprocessed “shadows.” When that internal friction disappears, your existing mental bandwidth is suddenly freed up. The result feels like a real increase in effective IQ — sharper thinking, faster insight, better memory access, and smoother problem-solving — without any new supplement or program. But there is training, get ready!
The need for efficacy
Self-improvement is here to stay and grows ever stronger, people are constantly searching for ways to enhance their mental capacities. At Beacon of Clarity, the focus is often on increasing intelligence, sharpening memory, and improving cognitive performance. But what if the key to genuine improvement does not lie in changing our biological systems, but rather in optimizing how they function? We cannot change what we have been given in terms of body and biology — but we can make it work far more efficiently.
This theory explores the idea that our mind is freed from unnecessary mental obstacles once we begin to live more authentically. Instead of maintaining a complex web of lies and confusing contradictions, an authentic life allows our brains to function much more efficiently. When we reduce this inner dissonance, more mental “bandwidth” becomes available, enabling processes such as thinking, learning, and problem-solving to occur faster and more smoothly.
We can view it this way: as long as we maintain lies and masks, we constantly consume mental energy to hide contradictions, deceive ourselves, and suppress parts of ourselves. This unconsciously drains a significant portion of our cognitive resources. When we let go of these lies and live more honestly, that constant tension disappears. This frees up mental space because we no longer fight against reality and can live more in a state of suchness — a state of direct, unfiltered presence in the moment.
In this emerging theory, we explore how optimizing our mental processes — without altering the foundations of our brain — offers a practical way to improve ourselves within the boundaries of reality.
Everyone belongs to the truth, and the truth belongs to everyone.
Whether the truth is found outside us or within. One thing is certain: we all originate from that same truth. I will gladly explain why this is important for understanding your memory.
In scientific-reductionist circles, it is claimed that the mind consists of the sum of its parts: a spontaneous phenomenon based on chemical parallel processes. A neurologist might therefore say that all mental phenomena are chemical in nature. Yet we do not usually experience it that way.
To truly understand memory, we must understand what we are seeing. If what the neurologists say is correct, then in our free mind we are not entirely free, but still subject to a set of laws. You often hear it: people want to understand something complex, but they can’t quite manage it yet. Just like me — I would love to play Bach, but that doesn’t happen without training. What I personally experience is that we can project a kind of idea that falls within the realm of fiction. There are, therefore, chemical rules linked to our thinking.
This would give the neurologists a point. And an additional argument I add myself is as follows: what if the world is not dualistic, but like the brain, a parallel phenomenon that arises from a memory complex that receives rules from outside? Because both the external world and the internal world consist of relations or form — which I call the essence of logic — one could say that all phenomena, both those we perceive with the senses and those we create with our brain, are a play of relations.
Simply put: everything is logic. And in this proposition, we are logic itself that can think in terms of relations. In doing so, you create a reality as logic, relations, or form.
Everything is form, but not without the formless, and that is good.
But the idea that relations can exist at all appears, for now, to always still be formless. For medical works like this article, that doesn’t matter much for the healing itself. But it is interesting to understand.
There is something like a medium of media. That is often the carrier of the carrier, such as a canvas for an illustration. We then say that the many illustrations a canvas can contain are the media of that medium. But we can also view the canvas itself as media. In that case, an illustration made with canvases would still simply form an illustration. Sometimes you see artists play with this fourth-wall principle.
Because the content can constantly change, there must be something we can transcend; it necessitates the idea of formlessness. Just as a caterpillar can turn into a butterfly, is it still the same caterpillar? Or is it completely reborn? Spiritually, we transcend our own volumetrics. Through this, we can become larger, more stable, and we also evolve in form. This is necessary for healing and plasticity, because the person who changes is no longer the old one, but carries something of the old. In psychology, this is called rebirth.
Why is this not a problem for psychological work? When we work with memory, we are working with something chemical that relates to us. Because it is itself strictly chemical, we must surrender to the ground of physical laws. This is because we must fully immerse ourselves in the chemistry and the facts as they are. At that moment, we are lived by the body, but we see the memory for what it truly is, without trying to exert influence on it. You can understand that what is called the ego can stand quite in the way of this. Since it often tries to stop these processes.
When we experience ourselves as the truth, we undergo these adjustments ourselves, and this yields new insights and possibilities. With practice, you can create a Freud-moment by fully reliving an upcoming trauma without wanting to direct it. If you do this with the ego anyway, you lose the origin of this trauma. You will notice that understanding the chemical origin is extremely important for the overall picture of memory.
If you succeed in bringing something to the surface and understanding it for what it is, it will often bring up a traumatic emotional charge. People are conditioned to fear this, because they constantly delegate the feeling to the same scripts. As a result, it gets stuck under what is called a shadow. This is then no longer experienced mentally, but it does consume bandwidth or resources. It is also one of the reasons why cognitive compulsion therapy works so well, because one no longer has to go through such emotional fear. This allows you to learn to observe scary facts without becoming anxious about the fear it might contain. This makes the work less scary, and you become more open to it. This is required to open someone up more to their trauma, but the work often involves tissues and panic.
Example: Trauma from the social matrix
One of the most common fears that form a shadow complex are fears of social interactions. In which the fear of rejection can take on a life of its own in the mind. It can shape a person, and various complexes arise when someone actively avoids these conditioned fears. You don’t notice this if you are not tested. But there will be many triggers; asking out an attractive lady can confront you directly with these fears. When the logic of these kinds of fears is delegated and not processed — whether through dissociation — they go into the shadow.
In many cases, I hear that cognitive compulsion helps with this. People then gain confidence in their social skillset and forget that they were bad at it. And thus process the fears through a proactive approach. Understand that you change in this process, and that a certain permanent dose of interactions is required so as not to become rusty. Once seen, it is quickly picked up again. But I often see that people win once and then forfeit the war. While we truly live this day to day.
Misaligned thoughts
Here is an immediate example with a statement. If I say that illusions are real, is that statement strictly philosophically correct or incorrect? If you follow the illusion, you are led astray. Then an illusion sounds untrue. That would be wise to follow, but not correct. We are studying the truth here, and in this case it depends on how you look at it.
Strictly chemically speaking, it is like all other things: a chemical relation that appears in the brain, albeit with an illusory character. It usually comes down to a personal misinterpretation of such a phenomenon.
If I say that an illusion is untrue, I reduce myself to an abstraction of chemical phenomena. This allows us to state that something is good or bad for us, even though nature itself does not strictly believe in that. A lion can eat a gazelle in a playful way without us finding it wrong. When people do the same, that feeling does arise in us.
Nature itself has not changed, only how we look at it. That is crucial if you want to understand memory. In its nature, it is a chemical process that speaks the truth. Yet it can still deceive you, even though its suchness is true. After all, you experience something from your memory — that makes it truthful. But in its language, it can refer to things that never happened, but which do have something to do with you.
If we return to the illusory question, you can now also claim that the greatest illusions are a truthful phenomenon. Only the content can refer to something abstract that has nothing to do with reality. Again: if you write, read, or mentally experience a lot of fiction, you understand this all too well.
If we see a fata morgana in the desert, it looks like water. But it is a mirage, a reflection via light. This illusion is real, but nothing is what it seems.
If we now agree with this statement, we can take a step further. I come with the following thought: the truth is like a great book. A kind of living memory construct in which every manifestation stands as a symbol for everything that has ever happened. Because this great book follows specific laws that are always obeyed — due to its physical nature — memory will always show a form of truth. You can therefore say that memory never lies. It forms a rock-solid foundation that will never change. It is something upon which we can build the strongest houses and the tallest skyscrapers — provided we accept it in its true nature. And that acceptance can only happen if we also understand it in its true nature. And all of this does not seem easy.’
A Crystallized Memory
When we desire people to behave more authentically, we are actually asking them to act more in accordance with their “hardware” self. This is not animal or primitive behavior, but rather insight into who we truly are in that moment. We are often afraid of this; we don’t quite know how we are when we are really very honest. Sometimes blunt, but mostly we hide ourselves because we have fears of rejection.
In contrast to a hard drive, however, the brain is plastic and parallel — it can change shape based on our thoughts in a volumetric cortex. This means we are formed in a holistic way. But here lies a subtle pitfall: if deep down we are not convinced of what we think, we remain in uncertainty, and our brain forms itself accordingly. Ultimately, the key is to bring our thoughts and actions into line with the truth, so that we can lead an authentic life.
A Parallel Complex
Our thoughts have a foundation, but at the same time our thoughts are that foundation. It is an inseparable connection between our physical brain and our mental world. They are so closely interwoven that they seem inseparable. Our thoughts direct our brain, and our brain shapes our thoughts — an endless circle of self-drawing hands.
Here arises a challenge: if there is no distinction between thoughts and the brain — the physical and the mental — how do you then break through an illusion if that illusion itself forms reality? How do you see through something that is so deeply embedded in the structure of your mind that it doesn’t feel like an illusion, but like the truth itself?
The illusion is not just a misconception or a lie. It is our self-image, our beliefs, and our perception of the world. Yet these are phenomena that we can read but are fictional stories about a possible person. That is why breaking through them is so complex. But there is still a way out: by not fighting the memory, but fully reliving it as it truly is, we discover parts of ourselves and can bring our self-image more into line with what it is.
How to Practice This
Sit comfortably, grab some coffee or tea. And if you don’t need anything, that’s only better. Let yourself relax and try not to actively direct your mind. Just let it be, in its own nature. After a moment, you start to forget that you sat down with a specific goal. This is important, because you don’t want to be proactive. Your system then goes into the default mode network and begins consulting its memory. You enter a kind of daydreaming, and your body navigates through the memory palace. Things come up, and there, just when you’re not paying attention, a constricting thought arises to which you have learned a conditioned response.
Understand that we bend ourselves to the will of this condition. But is it the truth? Is it truly us? I can tell you: we may think whatever we want, but we cannot do everything. Therefore, do not reject yourself, but also do not chase dreams while doing this. Let your mind calmly hollow out and let it come forward. Be honest, and if there is fear, try to explain why you are afraid. You might get quite a macho feeling. But if you are brutally honest, you will pave your way to the suchness of yourself.
Another method that I often use myself:
If you work from home or on a project, just keep going as you are. While you’re busy, your mind — just like when sitting — is inclined to throw up thoughts. And it is precisely here that the conditioned part plays a strong role. Often these thoughts stand in the way of our concentration. But if you learn to accept yourself, all these thoughts will find a place. What you get back is more motivation and more focus. When such a thought does arise, you are honest about it, and in this way you remain stable yourself.
Conclusion
The key to true cognitive enhancement does not lie in forcing our brain, but in stopping the unnecessary struggle we constantly engage in with ourselves. When we stop maintaining lies, wearing masks, and suppressing parts of ourselves, space suddenly appears. Not because we become smarter, faster, or more efficient in the traditional sense, but because we finally stop wasting mental energy on inner contradictions.
Everything we have explored in this article — the chemical truth of memory, the formless background on which all relations rest, the self-drawing hand of thoughts and brain, the shadow that arises through denial — points to one simple reality: our brain works best when it no longer has to lie, neither to the world nor to itself. Authentic living is not a spiritual ideal; it is the most efficient way to optimize our biological system. By fully surrendering to the suchness of our memory, by reliving illusions instead of fighting them, and by confronting ourselves with brutal honesty, we free up mental bandwidth that would otherwise be lost to fear, dissociation, and self-deception.
The greatest upgrade of the mind is therefore not a new technique or nootropic.
It is the courage to stop fighting against what already is.
Everyone belongs to the truth, and the truth belongs to everyone.
Sources
Classic Works (Foundation of the Theory)
- Maslow, A. H. (1968). Toward a Psychology of Being (2nd ed.) → Core idea: self-actualization = authentic living → more mental freedom and efficiency.
- Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. → The basis of self-actualization and authentic functioning.
- Rogers, C. R. (1961). On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. → Congruence (being authentic) vs. incongruence (masks) = less inner struggle, more mental energy.
Modern Empirical Studies (Direct Evidence for “Lighter Living” + Cognitive Efficiency)
- Bailey, E. R., Matz, S. C., Youyou, W., & Iyengar, S. S. (2020). Authentic self-expression on social media is associated with greater subjective well-being. Nature Communications, 11(1), 4889. → Scientific evidence that being authentic = more well-being and less mental load. Link: Full article open access DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18539-w