I had a bit of a diatribe today about the word, "to read".

What does that mean?

To stutter out a string of letter pahonetically and somehow understand that this string of letters is supposed to mean "cat"?

No. I don't know what that is, but that's not reading.

Reading is when you open a book, and it says, "The girl stepped into the garden ..." AND YOU ARE IN THE GARDEN.

You are right there, feeling the breeze, scenting the grass, squinting into the sunlight, hearing the bees buzz and feeling quite disorientated for a moment, because just seconds earlier, you were an old man in a chair, and now you're a young woman in a white dress who steps upon the soft green grass in her bare feet, catching her tongue expectantly between her lips, for her lover is awaiting her ...

THAT IS READING, ladies, gentlemen, and all others.

If THAT does NOT happen when you open a well written book by a famous author (and they are famous because they were good at helping the reader make that happen, take that step from the w-o-r-d into a WORLD that is completely here and real!) then I am afraid, you are not READING yet.

And if that's the case and you haven't learned to read yet, do you now understand why you think books are boring and pointless, and why other people, those who can actually read, find them so exciting and worthwhile? Why they are so transfixed, so transported, why they LOVE stepping into all these different personaes, all these different lives and events, simply by opening up A BOOK?

And if you can understand that, we can start asking ourselves, "HOW CAN WE TEACH PEOPLE TO READ?"

That's a good question. A really, really good question.

The first thing I'd say is to be sure that until you can transfer your consciousness via the w-or-d-s into the WORLDS that are being described, don't call yourself a reader yet, and there's more that needs to be done.

Mostly, it has to do with how reading was taught at an early age, often attempted at too early an age for an individual, and usually in a dreadful and counterproductive way if you wanted to ever go beyond those who can make out the label on a can and sort it correctly, and into the realms of the real readers as described above.

So the first thing I would advise is trauma clearance and belief clearance around the topic of reading, using EFT or any suitable technique that can help with that.

Once all the nonsense of "I hate reading ..." "Reading hurts ..." "Reading is for losers ..." "Reading is only w-o-r-d-s ..." has been cleared out and healed, we can see what happens next.

Now I'm going to recommend as an instructional manual to get started "Little House On The Prairie" by Laura Ingalls.

She - and long before she became an author - was tasked with describing the world to her blind sister Mary and did so from an early age, all the time and every day.

Uniquely amongst all and any authors, Laura therefore had acquired through daily practice the skill how to make the world come to life for real to a blind person in as few w-o-r-d-s as possible.

For those who are still "blind" in the sense of being unable to read in the true meaning of the word, Laura is the perfect instructor, tourguide and example.

Get the book and start reading it.

Stretch yourself beyond the words, try and really feel the grass on the prairy, the wind that day, how scared the girls were when the bear came, try as hard as you can to make it be real.

Use EFT, EmoTrance or whatever other de-stressing techniques you know to help you along the way. Keep at it!

A single flash of really seeing, feeling or hearing ANYTHING AT ALL jump out of the book and into YOUR MIND, to make things real there, is your entrance point and your convincer that you can read, that your neurology is all there, just waiting to do this extraordinary trick for you whereby words on a page become worlds you walk in, you feel, YOU EXPERIENCE ABSOLUTELY as though it was you who fought the orcs, or fell in love, or saw the valley before you on that day.

This is such a wondrous thing, such a remarkable skill, with so many benefits on so many different levels, it really is worth persevering with.

So if you can't read properly yet, please, have another go.

Being able to read like that has many side effects, it makes you more intelligent, more comfortable with words and the use of words all over, it makes magic easier or even available, opens the door for using your mind in whole new ways that are simply extraordinary.

Perhaps much of it starts with learning to read ...

And those amongst you now smug and happy because you already read like that, can you evolve it further?

Can you make it even more real, even better still, are there any reversals or fears you might need to take out, right down to loving reading too much so if it was an even better experience, you wouldn't do anything else, ever?

Reading well is a true human masterskill, so ...

Get reading!