Becoming Conscious

The Power of Perception Part 2: Alcatraz

 

"Life is an interesting puzzle box, given that we have no manual to our bodies, mind or the reality around us, yet here we are. We stumble around focusing on physical actions and outcomes, things that we see as objectively verifiable. In terms of the mind, it is hard to equate a thought to a particular outcome. I am not referring to thoughts that lead to body movements, those applied to problem solving about and so on. I am referring to the thoughts about other thoughts. These are the thoughts that bind us to our reality. They are the primary creator of the cohesive whole we perceive as reality. If we want to open the puzzle box, then understanding its creator is a good place to start." ~ Our Puzzle Box (1)

 

The menagerie, puzzle box or labyrinth that is our mind is a many headed beast with numerous ways to keep us locked in the illusion it creates. You could also call it our personal Alcatraz and it holds us tight. Fortunately, unlike those put into that infamous prison, we were not put in it by others, we have done this to ourselves. The fact that we do this and are mostly unaware of how and why we have done so is irrelevant. What is relevant is that we have done so and how long we stay in it is entirely up to us.

We must recognize that our minds do not keep us locked in the illusion maliciously, they only do so because we have allowed them to. If you look around the world you don't see people you perceive as not being in control of their minds. People appear to function quite well and they seem to be able to make choices for themselves, out of free will. However, as I examined in All Sales Are Final: The Anatomy of Choice (2) we saw that this is not the case. Free will as it is commonly understood is an illusion.

Free will is defined as the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate or the ability to act at ones own discretion. In the essay "All Sales Are Final" we saw that free will hinges on the notion of constraints and whether or not we have control over them. For most the very notion of free will hinges on the idea that we have the power to override even the non-conscious programmed in our minds; however, for the majority this is not the case. Further, we have not assumed any significant amount of conscious control over how they get programmed or in changing the programming. For example, we can to some extent manage our anger, fear, frustration or anxieties, but we cannot easily change what leads to our having them in the first place. Two passages from other essays I've written speak to the point that what we are constrained by places us in our personal menagerie or Alcatraz.

 

"...we like what we do and though we may not "need them to live" we certainly do not ignore our personal preferences when making decisions. Therefore we are constrained and also conditioned by what we have come to desire, need, want and so on even though it is not often that we are aware of why. As for discretion, which is the freedom to decide, we have that, though once again we are not fully conscious in the moment, unburdened by past experiences or the "ghosts in the machine" (The Long Shadow of the Dreamer (3))"

 

"The thoughts we created or reinforced by our reactions to our entire history of experiences are part of the "inner situation" Dr. Jung refers to, part of a sea of webs of entwined thoughts that make up the body of our mind. To us it appears that we act with free will when we make choices, unfortunately that simply isn't the case, at least not going by how it is defined. Every choice we make is burdened by various constraints all of which are part of our mind. The constraints are established by our past reactions to experiences. For example we tend to choose certain types of food but do not remember or are not aware of the when and why we decided we preferred it. Certainly, when making a choice, we are aware of some of our thoughts and emotions about the options though we are rarely aware of most let alone all of them. As a result, when we are choosing, we consider as many pro's and con's as our mind presents to us based on our experiences, what is occurring at the moment and any and all thoughts related to it." from All Sales are Final: The Anatomy of Choice (2)

 

We may not like to acknowledge the fact we are the creator's of the very illusion we are stuck in or the author of the issues and challenges we deal with in life, but that is the way it is. We will remain locked in our mental prison until we we are able to acknowledge and start accepting responsibility for it. Generally speaking this won't happen until we get tired of suffering that comes from resisting and begin to surrender to the nature of of the Cosmos, to act in alignment with it.

The path to awakening on the various levels takes no particular route. Over the course of our lives we gradually figure it out not unlike one could do with a jigsaw puzzle, though solving the puzzle of awakening tends to occurs little bits at a time rather than in whole sections. It can seem like we are getting nowhere then all of a sudden - wham - and a whole "chunk of awareness" can come into focus. This is what occurs when we have an epiphany. Such events seem to spring out of nowhere but they are actually the result of a gradual process whereby little pieces of the puzzle are grasped and then it all comes together and emerges into the light.

We cannot plan to awaken, it does not follow a schedule and cannot be forced to happen. The difference lies not in if it happens, for this is inevitable, it is when. What we can do to a certain extent is hasten the process, though to do so we have to put in the effort on a continual basis. If this is a struggle then we should focus on one thing we feel we can do and do it (4). What we can also do is listen to our lives more and differently so as to notice the ripples in our pond (5). It is they that reflect the imbalances and disharmonies in our life, which is what we are hear to learn from. If we are paying attention we can notice and work on them. What is harder to see the bigger picture, namely the lessons that lie behind the ripples.

Knowing what the lesson is, from any given experience, may seem obvious from the outcomes or what happens in our lives, but that is not the case. The lesson is not found in the outcome, it is in the thoughts behind the reason(s) why we made a choice or choices that led the outcome. As long as those thoughts exist they will continue to be expressed. It is important to get at our lessons, which is something we can do in a variety of ways. It can also appear that life is testing us by thrusting lessons upon us, but we attract opportunities to learn. It is the same whether we are learning to awaken at the emotional, mental or causal level (we do them in the stated order) and just because we are not seeing the results does not mean they are not there. The reason being that, as alluded to above, we are not conscious on whichever level we working on and so cannot see the growth until it manifests in our lives.

We work on all three levels at the same time though our focus will be on the level corresponding to the stage we are at. The first is the primitive stage where we work on not be led by our non-conscious emotional reactions to our experiences. In the civilized and developed stages we are working on gaining gain control over how we think and our thoughts about our experiences. Doing so gives us more conscious control over our emotions. It is not until we gain more conscious control over our minds, in the humanistic stage, that we have fewer lower emotions and are able to work directly on the thoughts that give rise to them. Part of this is process is our developing a deeper understanding of the nature of ignorance and become more connected to everything.

Once we are conscious at the emotional and mental level and both vehicles are clearer we can put our full attention, figuratively speaking, on our intent. In order to do this we have to, in a very real way, not only purify our intent (bring it into alignment with the All or Cosmos) but to be fully conscious of what it is. This leads us to awakening at the causal level. This is something we start to work on more once we get to the humanistic stage because as we work on becoming mentally conscious we begin to develop an awareness of our intent even though we remain only semi-conscious of it. In this case the intent is why we put out the effort to become more connected to everything, or as some would say "the All" and alleviate the suffering in our lives (the angers, hurts, guilt, blame, malice, fears and so on) and help others do so as well. We do this by directing our efforts towards letting go of the "out of whack" thoughts we have and the lower emotions they give rise to or activate.

 

Source: EsotericScience.com

PICTURE FROM ESOTERIC SCIENCES from page 13a (include a link and credit Lee Blandon who wrote the material and built the site)

 

The majority of us have moved beyond the primitive level. Those still working on this stage of their evolution are guided by emotional reactions to things. In this stage we are only semi-conscious of our emotional vehicle and so our evolutionary path through this stage lies in our taking more conscious control over our emotions. In order to do this we must start to work on our thoughts with the result being we shift from being unconscious to semi-conscious at the mental level. We do this by using thoughts to control other thoughts. This is part of the puzzle, but as you might surmise a waste of power. The other part needed to become conscious mentally is that of working on our thoughts first by becoming more aware of them and gradually taking ownership over and accepting full responsibility for them.

Being conscious on the mental level means one has sufficient control over their non-conscious mind so as to render it more servant than master. It does not mean one has suddenly mastered their mind for this awakening occurs gradually. It is not as a series of punctuated steps. We are going through the same gradual process of awakening on the emotional, mental and causal levels and do not master any of them until we are enlightened. When we have mastered them all we are, essentially, no longer bound to the wheel of karma and the desire to incarnate. However we ought not get ahead of ourselves because for most of us the road to mastery is a ways away; however, it starts with becoming more conscious at the mental level.

Whenever I consider our evolution I am reminded of what Buddha stated that "suffering is at the heart of man". One could call this the human condition (6). It is a statement to be taken figuratively and the way to alleviate the condition is by ceasing to be ignorant. In other words - by awakening. This is because our suffering is caused by our not being aligned with the "way things are". When you have forces that are unaligned the result is friction. So long as we expend our energies in this fashion we are resisting and in so doing manifest energies we will have to resolve at some point. Getting past or beyond this stage takes a lifetimes, but we eventually get there. After all, there is only so much pain and suffering that we will endure before our resistance fades. This is no small part the result of our mind, mostly at the non-conscious level, noticing and remembering all aspect our the experiences and our reaction to them.

How does this happen? Simply put, where there is pain or suffering, whether we are conscious of it or not, the mind will make adjustments to try to avoid it. The reason it takes so long to get it or wake up is that there are many elements or factors involved in every experience and many more times the number of combinations and permutations among them that have to be sorted through. This is somewhat similar to something you may have learned about in mathematics, specifically solving equations, where you need the same number of equations as you have unknowns in order to solve for the unknowns (see (7) for an explanation). Substitute experiences for equations and unknowns for truths and you get the idea.

Now, the notion that our minds are our personal menagerie is not dissimilar to the one suggested by the opening quote from Part 2 of the Our Puzzle Box series (2). It is our minds that keep us in the menagerie and it is our minds that are the key to our freedom from it. To gain our freedom we will look at our minds in more detail and apply our understandings of it to become more mentally conscious. In particular we will cover the following:

• What the mind is.
• The processes of mind (how it processes experiences).
• How the minds mental processes affects our thoughts and emotions.
• How our thoughts affect what we think, feel and are aware of.

I encourage you to read the referenced material if you have not and if you have read them take a moment to give them a quick scan to remind yourself of the concepts they cover. The reason is that I will not go over all aspects of the items on the above list in detail as many have been examined at length in other essays. In those essays I looked at particular "features and processes" of the mind, such as what thoughts are, how they are created, the Rational Mind Editor (RME) what we are conscious of and how the kinds of thoughts we have affect us and so on.

 

What is our mind?

The mind is not a physical thing though it is intrinsically linked to the brain. The mind itself consists of thoughts and nothing but thoughts. However, what we know as thoughts, as in the thoughts in our head, have both physical and non-physical components. One component is the vibrations embodied in energy of the mental sub-plane or level and the other is the representation of this vibration within the brain. For instance, the thought "table" at the mental level is a vibration of a certain type. The word table is not part of that vibration, that word or label table arises within the brain. It may seem like a distinction without a difference but it is not. We can have a thought at the mental level but no words for it; however we cannot have the word table without the thought already present in the mind.

The mind is not hardware like our arms, legs, eyes, internal organs and so on. The mind is more like software on a computer and our brain is the hardware. Our bodies come with built in systems that handle all the processes such as our endocrine, pulmonary and cardiovascular systems and so on that function without our conscious involvement. How they do this is essentially the same for everyone (genetic and minor physical differences affect how they function). In addition, how our bodies form is pre-determined. This is not the case with our minds as our thoughts or even our thinking processes, at least the vast majority. Both our thoughts and thinking processes are created as a result of how we react to our experiences and are unique to each of us. That this is the case is one of the truly fascinating things about our minds.

This is not to say that all processes are created as a result of our experiences, only the vast majority. Basic ones have been in place for a long time and made up a significant portion of them, but this was a long time ago when our minds were far less developed and survival was the number one priority. Here I am referring to what is commonly known as instinct. We still have many of them though as our mental capabilities have grown such that we now posses the capability of overriding them. One of the stronger ones, which is still somewhat "hard-wired" is the "fight or flight" mechanism. In this case our brains have the capacity to react on their own, that is until we start to take conscious control over them. Even then, unless one is fully conscious mentally they can still surface at those times when the mind assesses a risk as very high and potentially dangerous.

The part of the brain that handles the fear (which includes the fight or flight mechanism) is the amygdala (9) and it has been essential for survival. As mentioned, over the millennia the need for this function to be "automatic" has decreased steadily. We need it less because we are becoming more consciously aware and have developed the ability to analyze and assess both the risks and benefits and their relevance in a given situation. This notion of how the mind/brain has evolved is supported by research as as the following passage indicates:

 

Considering the amygdala as a 'relevance detector' would integrate the 'fear module' hypothesis with the concept of an evolved neural system devoted to the processing of a broader category of biologically relevant stimuli. In primates, socially relevant events appear to have become, through evolution, the dominant elements of the amygdala's domain of specificity. (11)

 

 

Becoming more mentally conscious does have its challenges, one being overcoming the fears and anxieties and so on that can be triggered not just by the perception of physical threats to our survival or person but also also threats to whatever we have come to need. The need could be being liked, always having a morning tea, for physical things or for things to be a certain way or even for our beliefs to be right. It is our needs for certain things or situations and so forth that leads us to and getting into ruts(10). The needs we take on often start off quite innocuously; however, we have a tendency to be creatures of habit. What starts as as a preference for something can become a reluctance to do or be otherwise and eventually to resistance of anything to the contrary. When we get in ruts we become fearful of any change that our minds see as a threat to "our rut". Whenever we react in fear or are anxious we can be certain that our non-conscious mind has assessed the risk of a particular threat to be high.

In the process of becoming mentally conscious we move from reacting to fears almost without consideration (non-consciously or unconsciously) to learning to override them when necessary (semi-conscious) to being able to examine and let them go (conscious). We shift from being controlled by our mental programming to noticing and overriding it to where we understand why we are afraid or anxious and taking control over it.

We are perfectly capable of assessing risk and it's relevance and making choices without fear clouding our decision making. Sure, we can act on our fear without consideration, with the obvious downside, or we can override our fears and anxieties and wastes of our mental and emotional "resources", though it takes effort to develop this capability. Either way we continually having to do something as the underlying issue remains intact. When we focus on trying to understand why we are afraid of various things and why instead of simply reacting we modify how our mind reactions. The more we do this the more mentally conscious we become so that rather than acting on, fighting or resisting our fears and anxieties we are able to let them go. If we continue to work on them we can get to the point where we are no longer afraid of them to begin with.

While our physical evolution has slowed the evolution of our consciousness has not. This aspect of our evolution is not due to changes in the brain itself so much as how we use it. The macro evolution of our physical bodies have given our consciousness a suitable home. It is pretty much all we need, though there continue to be adjustments to it. An example of the evolution of our consciousness can be found in how we read. At one time we had to read aloud in order to be able to grasp what was written. Over the centuries our consciousness has been gradually awakening and this is reflected in our increased mental consciousness. You could say the brightening light of our core self or consciousness is empowering and enlivening all our vehicles, including our mind. As a result we are now able to read without speaking aloud and can visualize, conceptualize and image without having to see a representation of it at all. Not everyone can do this yet, but all of us will eventually. At this point in time the need to read and speak aloud has mostly been reduced to inaudible subvocalization (12).

The matter at hand is becoming conscious at the mental level and having a clearer understanding of our minds helps to us in this regard. Some may think that the mind is too complicated to understand and that if it were easy someone would have figured it out long ago. The fact is they have and it is not rocket science, it is simply to know thyself. When we know ourselves we are in conscious control and not our egos. We see through the illusions of mind and we can can look within and see as clearly what is there as we can when we look without.

A clearer understanding of our minds helps us take more conscious control over it. What aids us in reducing our our ego, our puppet masters hold on us, is the fact that our mind is fully aware of itself, we are just not consciously aware of "it". Our evolutionary path is to change this and we can help the process along. To do so we will focus our attention on our minds, namely what they are and how they do what they do.

When one considers the mind there are essentially four key elements of the mind we need be concerned with, though there are a number of aspects to each. By doing this we reduce the complexity of the mind without losing any elements or aspects of it. These elements are:

• The thoughts in our minds: all the various thoughts we hold and their attributes or properties
• The connections between thoughts: all the various relationships between thoughts
• The processes that create and influence thoughts: the processes that affect our reaction to and integration of experiences
• Our conscious attention: what thoughts we are conscious of and why as well as the nature of our attention to them

 

 

The Thoughts In Our Mind

Few people give thoughts much consideration, at least not in regards to what they are. They are not physical so we tend to not perceived of them as things in the way we do with physical objects. This is why we tend to not realize how powerful they truly are. Be that as it may, thoughts are certainly things such as the chair you sit in, the car you drive or the ground under your feet. Thoughts are vibrations embodied in or perhaps more accurately impressed on energy, only it is subtler energy, matter of a different "form" than that of a physical object, electromagnetic radiation or strong and weak nuclear forces and so on. As I've said before it is a difference of degree rather than kind.

The nature of vibrancy the energy takes on is the substance of the thought. A thought is also not a word or an image, certainly not in normal context of either of these. Words and discrete images are our brains doing as it is what creates the virtual reality we perceive. Our minds really cannot tell the difference between a dream, reality or even our imagination for they are all thoughts or vibrations. We are obviously doing something or acting when we walk and the same applies to having a thought. This is in part how and why we can learn to do something simply by imagining and visualizing ourselves doing it. if we believe something to be true, it is as real to us as anything else. We notice the difference between reality and what we imagine so long as we are, for example, of relatively sound mind or and not affected by mind altering drugs.

Our ability to distinguish things is what John Locke, the great English philosopher and physician, referred to as discrimination. At the physical level we have five senses that help us discriminate between objects. We also have this at every level we posses as illustrated by our ability to discriminate between various emotions and thoughts. We all possess these abilities though the level of skill varies from person to person.

A thought about a "particular chair", for example, is set of vibrations impressed in energy, energy that our brain is able to translate or decodes as "That chair." Those who know someone who's suffered a stroke might have observed that the person may not be able to identify an object but they can know what it is and how to interact with it. The word is, for lack of a better way of saying it, "in the brain" while the thought is a vibration of matter of the mental sub-plane.

We are capable of using a chair before our mind originally comes to an understanding of what a chair is. An understanding of what a chair is only forms when we have integrating sufficient thoughts to define one. Note that our definitions of things are not rigid, they can and often do change over time. We see this process in action with children when they are learning about the objects they perceive and interact with. In fact, our growing ability to put together and integrate more complex thought forms is part of the evolution of our consciousness. For example, Children today easily grasp concepts that would have baffled our early ancestors.

Thoughts about things, indeed most thoughts, have attributes that are both physically and conceptually. For example, the though chair has obvious physical attributes, the conceptual ones would be ones such as "something to repose in" or "something I like". Neither of the conceptual thoughts are physical things, reposing being an action and liking an intangible quality we assign. Further, each attribute also has its own attributes and so on. From this it is plain to see that while we may consider the thought "chair" to be a simple one, it certainly is not. We make good use of the mind's use of classes, otherwise we would get lost in unnecessary detail.

I have referred to a thought about a particular object. such as a chair, as a composite thought and the thought about the class or grouping of objects labelled "chairs" as a conceptual thought (8).They both are thoughts, I make the somewhat arbitrary distinction in order to differentiate between them. This is because conceptual thoughts, thoughts about other thoughts, are "applied more broadly" by our minds as we shall see in due course. We will look at how this occurs a little later on.

If we wanted to analyze a thought we would do so in a similar fashion to how we analyze the light emitted from a star. The light of a star appears to us as one colour; however it is made up of energies of different frequencies. We determine things such as the velocity and composition of a star by breaking down the light we see using spectral analysis. In a similar fashion we can break down the attributes of the thought represented by the label "that chair" into such things as its size, shape, texture and colour and even how we feel about the chair and so on. A thought about "chairs" also has aspects or attributes, though they would be related to the properties or qualities we use to define them.

The minds grouping of sets of attributes to leads to the classifying of things. For example, the mind can have classes of things that are round, can hold water, be sat upon or even things that are liked. Any class can have sub-classes or be the sub-class of another class and classes can also overlap. The class of objects called cars can have many subclasses such as two-doored, sedans or diesel powered. In turn the class of objects called cars is a subclass of objects called vehicles.

While most "sets of things" are defined commonly, which facilitates communication, we still have our own classifications for things. For example, I may love to drive out in the country and define my own class of cars, "country cars" that have the attributes I select such as they are convertibles, have a manual transmission, wide tires and rack and pinion steering.

You also may have noticed that I stated "properties we use to define a chair" and not the "properties of a chair". Chairs have legs, also a class of objects, but the definition of chairs doesn't include what the legs are made of for this would be a property of the class of objects called "legs". My definition of a chair will vary from someone else's, which reflects the fact that all our thoughts are subjective. This is what makes being specific with one's use of language so important and is also why communicating spiritual concepts and notions challenging. By this I mean, for example, that we all have or share a clear understanding of what water is while our thoughts about abstract notions such as what a soul is vary significantly.

We do not need to know how the thoughts are encoded in energy to be aware of, use or work with them. We know this because we do not need to now how the thought "chair" is encoded to use it. We also know we can change our minds about things. By this I mean we can change our definitions of and thoughts about them. Also, typically at least, we can find the thought we are looking for without too much trouble, especially if it is a physical object that we are fairly familiar with. However, when we are looking at our minds as a whole and consider the vast number of highly interconnected thoughts they hold trying to consider the complexity of it is mind boggling.

Fortunately we need not concern ourselves directly with the complexities of mind because what applies to the whole, applies to each and every part. As a result it is far easier to consider aspects of minds such as individual thoughts and the connections between them figuratively rather than trying to consider all of the thoughts we have and the even more numerous connections between them.

In terms of a single thought, be it a simple, composite one or conceptual one, imagine a vast symphony of musicians each playing one note at the same time. Liken the combined sound they make to a thought such as "chair" where each individual sound corresponds to an attribute of the class of objects called "chairs" and you will get the idea I am attempting to convey. In the below picture consider what is in the center of the picture as a thought, such as "chair" and the streams coming out of it as connections to other thoughts (well will touch on this shortly).

Thoughts have another property that we need to be aware of, that property is "energy field". It would be more comparable to a magnetic field than a sound. The field is generated by the energy of the thought and its attributes. The strength of that field depends on the nature of the reaction that gave rise to it and how frequently it is accessed whether consciously or not. You could liken this to how noticeable the thought is though even very strong thoughts can be suppressed by the mind. Both of these play a critical role in how thoughts become associated. We will look at how the strength of the field affects how thoughts become associated shortly.

Now that we understand a thought a little better we can consider the mind as a whole. It can be quite daunting to consider our mind as a whole; however, we can do this for two main reasons. One being that the complexity is due to the vast number of thoughts and connections and not the number of "mental processes". The other is that the mind is fully aware of itself even though most of us are not. We can use this to become more mentally conscious as understanding how the mind does what it does allows us to better direct its activities. In addition, we can do so regardless of whether we are working with one thought or many.

At this point what you might be wondering how knowing the things I've written about help us to become conscious on the mental level. In partial answer to this question (if you have indeed been wondering) I will reiterate the following: "The mind does not need to be informed, it needs to be trained". We can do more far easier with a better trained mind as this way we can direct its activities at both conscious and non-conscious levels. In order for this to work the training of our minds must be based on ideas that reflect its nature. These ideas are conceptual and in some cases quite abstract though this is actually of no consequence because once the mind gets them, and we accept their validity, it will use them.

Now back to the matter at hand, namely looking at how we can shift from being semi-conscious to conscious at the mental level. To aid us in conceptualizing it we will use an analogy that's been used before (though perhaps not as I have) and liken our mind to a house. Our mental house is comprised of thoughts and not words or images. The thoughts within it were created by our reactions to experiences. It is conceptual thoughts that arrange and order thoughts within our mental house.

When we have an experience we react. The initial reaction is based on our past experiences and after that the mind integrates it's reaction. The initial reaction is over quite quickly while the integration process can and often does take far longer. How long it takes our mind to complete the integration process depends on how much time it spends "chewing" over its reactions. During the integration process it will both activity existing thoughts and manifest new ones.

 

 

A good analogy for the integration process would be a chemical reaction in that once a reaction is started it will continue for as long as there reactants left to interact. Some reactions are over quickly, others take a long time to come to completion. It is the same with how we integrate experiences. The more thoughts that come into play the longer the process tends to take. This is typically what is going on when we have trouble getting to sleep because we keep thinking about many different things and cannot get the mind to stop processing it. It is also responsible for making meditation difficult for many as they cannot shut off the relentless processing their minds are engaged in. The way around this is to simply resolve the matters our minds are pouring over one at a time.

Our minds spend more time integrating experiences when there is uncertainty, some form of risk or lower emotional component to it. For instance, when we are learning something and get it we move on and typically do not spend any more time processing what we've learned; however, if we didn't get it the mind will continue to try to figure it out. If "not getting it" causes us concern the mind will continue to pour over it. The mind can become engrossed in processing concerns. This in turn makes focus, learning and making decisions harder as we can start to get nervous, anxious or even scared due to the perceiving consequences of not getting it. This in turn will create more new thoughts or activates existing ones. This can lead to endless loops where the mind continues to try to process our reactions.

The more we react to every little thing that goes the more our minds become filled with of thoughts that are of little to no benefit to us. We are free to do so if we choose though all we are doing is what a hoarder does: we are filling our mental house with junk. The more junk we have in our minds the harder it is to get around and we become mentally less nimble By doing this we are also adding to the programming of our minds. Remember that our mind is not us, it is the vehicle our consciousness uses to express itself. So in doing this we spend more time in our minds, which strengthens our ego making it harder for our inner self or consciousness to shine through.

The important points to note about thoughts are:

• Thoughts are created by our reaction to experiences
• Thoughts have attributes
• There are different types of thoughts (variance in degree not kind) 
• Thoughts are organized into groups or classes 
• Thoughts have "energy fields"
• We create most but not all of the thoughts we have

 

In next parts of this essay we will look at the remaining three of the four key elements of mind I listed above.

 

End of Part 2

==> Continue to Part 3: The Ties That Bind
==> Return to Part 1: The Menagerie

 

© 2015 Allan Beveridge

Last Updated January 13, 2018

 

References:
Click on the title to access the essay (*- denotes essays only available to site members)

1. Our Puzzle Box series (link is to Part 1 of 2)
2. All Sales Are Final: The Anatomy of Choice
3. The Long Shadow of the Dreamer
4. One Thought
5. Ripples In My Pond
6. The Human Condition
7. Example: Let us say we are dealing with 2 variables X and Y where they are both whole numbers. We cannot determine the values of X or Y with just the one equation such as "X + Y = 10". This is because there is an infinite number of combinations of two numbers that equal 10. We can solve for them if we add the equation "2X - Y = 2". In this case there are only one value of X and Y (4 and 6 respectively) that works with both equations.
8. Our Mental House series (link is to Part 1 of 6)
9. Amygdala (Wiki explanation)- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala
10. The Folly of Familiarity
11. The Human Amygdala: An evolving system for relevance detection; authors Sander D., Grafman J., Zalla T.; 2003; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14640318
12. Subvocalization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization