What Is The Mind?
In reality, we don’t know WHAT the mind is!
We know that it’s like pure air – can’t see it, touch it, taste it or smell it. But like air, when the wind blows, we can hear it through the thoughts we have.
We have no proof of its physical existence, but we know we have a mind because we have thoughts, we visualise, imagine, get ideas and so on. In a way, it’s the software to the hardware we call our brain.
Or Is It?
One school of thought, “Dualism” by René Descartes, says that the brain and the mind are two separate entities, that the brain and the mind are not linked. Monism says that the mind cannot exist without the brain.
Near Death Experiences (NDE’s) are telling us, through science, that our consciousness exists beyond physical death.
What we do know is that our mind is the sum of what we think, imagine, when we form ideas and plans, the library of our knowledge and experience. It is where our beliefs exist.
And all of these are reflected in the way our brain is shaped. Which means that our thoughts and ideas shape our brain. Which in turn must shape our thinking and ideas, until we change the way we think.
It’s like being aware that there’s a “Catch 22” and breaking out of it!
To do that, we need to understand how our mind works.
Understanding the Mind
We do that by explaining how the mind works, separating it into two main parts – the Conscious Mind and the Subconscious mind (also referred to as the unconscious mind or as an addition to it).
Even though we separate it to understand it, our mind is still one whole part, one consciousness.
In truth, the only way to prove the mind’s existence, is by looking around us to see what humanity has accomplished by thought, idea and imagination (action is physical).
It is a mental machine with a set of rules. You have to press the right button to get it to do something. And when you press that button you will get out of it what you put in.
It’s the analogy of the planting of a seed; whatever you plant in your mind, that is what you will get in return. At the same time, you have to maintain the soil in which the seed is planted so it remains fertile.
What Does That Mean?
It means that you might have an idea that you want to follow. You have planted that idea in your mind – that is the seed.
But to get to the point you want to get, you have to maintain a mindset of success and achievement. That you will succeed in your endeavour and achieve it. You have to believe it will happen.
You have to keep your mind on the positive and push away the negative, by replacing one negative idea with a positive one. By feeding your mind with positive thoughts, such as motivational speeches on YouTube, reading books related to improving your mindset and your specialisation, you are “fertilising” your mind the right way.
When you allow negativity in, when you become judgemental and hateful towards others, talking negatively about your environment, your job, your boss, your colleagues, you are driving that negativity into your own mind.
It’s the same as throwing poison on a corn field and hoping that you’ll get a good crop yield – it isn’t going to happen. All you’ll get is a dead field and you’ll have to start from the beginning.
Needless to say, if you talk, for example, about one colleague and their faults to another colleague, they will eventually realise that anything they say to you, you could say to someone else. And whatever another person tells you about another person, they could be saying the same to you.
The wise person keeps their mouth closed and ears open, speaking only when it’s necessary and with knowledge and experience to back it up.
How We Should Use Our Mind
Our mind picks up all this information and begins to form a plan of how to get us there.
We use our conscious mind, together with emotion, with feeling, to implant an idea into the subconscious. This synergistic association directs the path of our life; whether we get what we truly want or a life of existence. Every choice is a directing path that we direct our mind towards.
This is why so many people never get what they ask for. They may be consciously asking for the best, but, if they were true with themselves, they don’t actually believe that they can have what they ask for.
So, they block it and either receive nothing or they receive what they fear.
Our mind is our own. No-one but us controls it – after a given age that is. Our younger years are influenced by our environment, including family. However, there comes a time when we do become aware and we are able to make our own choices.
If we choose to.
Then again there are people who don’t know this “secret”, which is really not a secret – it’s just not known. As Earl Nightingale would say,
“We become what we think about most of the time…”
To take control of our mind we must take 100% responsibility for our life. From that stand-point we begin to change our life.
The mind is complex, but, when it comes to the creation of a life of our choosing it boils down to one simple sentence:
We must take control of our mind by taking control of what we think about, consistently. Effort is required in the achievement of anything great.
You can either exist or live a life of example, a life of meaning.
It really is a choice!
A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it. – Marcus Aurelius
If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results. – Norman Vincent Peale
Photograph by Jack Finnigan on Unsplash
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