(Excerpt form the book Open Secrets of Polyglots)
I suppose you like reading. Otherwise you wouldn’t have started reading this book. But have you ever put the question to yourself – why do you like reading?
You may come to different answers than the following but I think it is important to think a bit about it. It confirms our confidence in the importance of reading and can make us even more regular readers.
I think reading works because it helps us get into a different state of mind. You may enter a different world compared to your sometimes chaotic everyday life. It allows you to be alone but contented, shutting off disturbances from the outside world.
By reading you may also experience your inner pictures. These pictures are coming about partly unconsciously but they may come about in an active way as well.
The pictures you see in a movie or television, though sometimes unbeatable, are ready made. They may be beautiful and full of action but they are someone else’s and therefore experiencing them is more passive than letting your own pictures roll on and exploring your own emotions while reading a good book! To put it simply, by reading you enrich your life in an active way!
You experience your uniqueness through these inner pictures (or feelings). For your inner pictures mostly are unique. They are just as much your own as your personal memories. No-one shares them in the same way as you! Yes, your fantasies and inner pictures belong to you.
Interestingly, according to Jung there are common pictures of all humanity that can appear while reading or dreaming. In this case you get to a deeper level in your imagination, which has a psychically healing effect.
Inner pictures will have a certain importance even in the technique I’ll present to you in this book.
I have been reading regularly since I developed the taste for reading as a child. I don’t want to miss reading. So I read each day something, be it in my native language or in a language that I am practicing or learning at that moment!
My enthusiasm for reading makes learning languages much easier and more interesting than simply learning from course books or on organized courses.
But there are other pros t reading as well – you can tell yours now. Why do you like reading?
All in all the benefits of reading in my view are:
you enter “a new world”;
you experience your inner pictures;
you not only train your brain and allow it to build new neuronal structures, but get involved emotionally in the text;
you learn new experiences from others that you may use for yourself;
Excerpt form the book: The Open Secret of Polyglots by Mihaly Hevesi
