His best contribution was the concept of “Multiple Intelligences.”

It is not that these constructs exist in separate realities, but that these ideas break free from the obsolete notion of Intelligence Quotient (IQ).

The point: People have unique patterns of learning and unique patterns of mental, emotional and behavioral processing.

Howard Gardner lists the “Five Minds” as:

• The Synthesizing Mind
• The Creating Mind
• The Disciplined Mind
• The Ethical Mind
• The Respectful Mind

These are more like descriptions of attitudes than the identification of mental functions.

However, there are “Multiple Minds” that are associated with Altered States of Awareness. These include:

• The Body-Mind – Consciousness of the Body, part of the Personal Unconscious
• The Conscious Mind – Mind of the Self
• The Astral Mind – The Mind of Dreams and Past Lives
• The Super Conscious Mind (Mind of the Soul
• The Collective Unconscious – Connection with Consciousness of the Human Race
• The Causal Mind – our Connection with Thought and Being beyond Ourselves

These “Multiple Minds” are easy to explore with the many relics of Altered States awareness:

• Meditation and Concentration
• Dreams and Lucid Dreaming
• Hypnosis and Self-Hypnosis
• Music and Creative Expression
• Trance Dance and other Trance-Inducing Activities
• NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP)
• Chanting
• Breathing Exercises
• Prayer
• Astral Travel

In particular, the techniques of Creative Imagination and Creative Revision provide a workshop for study and use of our “Multiple Minds.”

NLP provides a vehicle for rapidly, even instantaneously, remolding or reworking or revising the past. The basic techniques for doing this include:

• Reframing
• Anchoring
• Repairing Beliefs
• Installing More Adaptive and Useful Mental Processes

In summary, Howard Gardner’s Five Minds represent an investigation into (and an abstract description of) interpersonal and intrapersonal and collective meta-process.

These are higher-order organizations, similar to abstractions such as:

• The Executive Mind
• The Managerial Mind
• The Marketing Mind
• The Mind of a Sales Person
• The Mind of a Leader
• The Mind of a Soldier
• The Entrepreneur Mind

These can be considered “Mindsets” rather than separate minds.

But our “Multiple Minds” are organic, basic, integral, structural and non-abstract. Our “Multiple Minds” are the building blocks of our conscious reality. Experiment with your “Multiple Minds” and see, feel, hear, touch and perceive their reality.

Some others might label such a person, a “Type A” personality.

The fact is that our bodies perform a huge amount of maintenance work during the time that we sleep. So much that, people who spend less time sleeping tend to gain (or retain) more weight. Our bodies use up lots of calories during this nightly repair routine.

But, there are plenty of other uses for sleep. These include:

• Dreaming
• Problem Solving
• Creative Idea Incubation
• Stress Relief
• Insight – Ah Ha!

And, there are a lot of uses for the time, just before falling asleep:

• Programming our Dreams
• Programming for Brainstorming
• Programming for the Next Day
• Prayer for Others
• Self-Affirmations
• Self-Suggestions for Improved Self-Esteem, Improved Self-Confidence, Improved Interpersonal Relationships

There are also a lot of uses for the time just after we awake:

• Programming our Day
• Setting our Goals and Priorities
• Reviewing (Recording) our Dreams
• Adjusting our Attitude for the Day
• Meditation

During sleep, we enter several levels, or Altered States of Awareness. Some of these Altered States are akin to hypnosis, and programming ourselves just prior to sleep so that we use positive goal-directed suggestions is a productive use of sleep.

Upon awakening, instead of jumping up and rushing through our day, we can also focus on Affirmations and Autosuggestion.

Analysis and interpretation of our dreams also broadens our insights and intuitions. Our dreams contain more value to us than a most people discover because most people don’t pay attention to their dreams.

Dreams can:

• Analyze Other People, and Analyze Ourselves
• Provide Solutions to Problems
• Provide Clues and Strategies for More Productive Living
• Show us how to Interpret Other People
• Teach us a Visual Language, a Language of Metaphor
• Anchor Learning into Long-Term Memory
• Desensitize us from Phobias
• Show us Glimpses of the Future
• Show us Glimpses of our Past Lives
• Show us Glimpses of Other Dimensions

It is easy to reframe these uses of sleep and adjust our attitude that “Sleep is a waste of time.”

A bit of experimentation will open plenty of new vistas and new horizons for our sleep time.

Relax and let go, and discover that you have a lot of abilities and skills that reside in areas of your mind and your being beyond the highly-stressed, outcome-obsessed focus of your conscious mind.

Your conscious mind usually thinks in a linear, sequential fashion, but sometimes, other modes of thought are more productive.

Your conscious mind exercises executive functions, but other functions, i.e., managerial, creative, interpretive, intuitive, communicative, memory, habit integration and self-talk reside outside the conscous mind.

Using sleep to its full measure of profitability and productivity is easy and balances our lives.

Find the ways that are easy for you to use sleep, and you will reward yourself.