Pay Attention!

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This is so important that when I realized it I had to add a page to this site.  Changing your mind can affect your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual life and bring about wonderful, great things, or terrible and destructive things.  We think we change our minds when we have been convinced to think differently about a subject, or position, or logic, but then bcome confused when that doesn't match our experience.  The difference between a change of mind and a change of reality is almost nil when we really understand how "mind" works.

You would think that something "as simple as" changing our mind would be easy.  Facts support another point of view.  Changing a mind is one of the most misunderstood things about us.  You might also think that once we really understood how it works we wouldn't forget it.  Then why do we continually find ourselves frustrated by the same behaviors over and over again?

The ego's job is to protect us, that's all.  It does that primarily by keeping us in the familiar.  That's why we experience a little anxiety when we're in unfamiliar territory.  It's our ego telling us it's not safe here.  Our ego doesn't really know that we have a mind that is not the ego..  The ego thinks that it is all there is.  The ego thinks that if the ego goes away, so does the entire person.  The truth is that when the ego stays out of the way, the person behind the mind that's behind the ego can emerge and become what and who they really are.

The ego is not thoughtful and not a sociable unless it benefits the ego to be sociable.  It likes to make us think it is, but it isn't.  Ego doesn't think, it reacts.  It directs instinctual reactions to situations from a purely "what's in it for me" position.  Sometimes that's good, like when we're in danger of being run over by a truck.  When trying to evolve and grow into higher levels of consciousness and awareness, the ego only gets in the way.  

Behaviors are the end result of a process of thought, word, and deed.  Normally we think something first.  We conceptualize, we "get an idea."  Then we talk about it and give it a verbal reality.  This begins the process of "condensing" our creative concept into a physical reality.  After we have given it verbal form, we act it out, or create it.

A WAY-oversimplified example:  You get an idea to create a dwelling that provides safety and security.  Bing.... a picture forms in your head (wherever that is).  (By the way, when that picture forms in your head, where is it really?  Is it behind your eyes?  Is it in the middle of your brain?  Try to pin that one down sometime.  But for now let's get back to the example.)  So you have this picture in your head, then you start to draw that picture on a piece of paper.  You draw walls, doors, windows, and a roof.  You put as much detail into it as you want.  After all, it is your house.  Wait a minute!  Did you just say "HOUSE"?  Ahhh.... I see.  You gave it verbal reality.  And now that you have a picture and a name for all those details, you can start putting it together, or hire someone to put it together, because now you can communicate about the house.  And at some point after that, the house is complete and you can move in.  You can begin to experience the house.  But that's not all...

Now we can see how almost everything around us comes from our mind and our thoughts about something.  The first thing is the thought.  It's like a wave on the surface of the mind, rippling and giving form to something that wasn't there a moment ago.  That's pretty creative isn't it?

Even the words used to give the thing verbal reality come from our mind as it contemplates the pictures going around on the surface of the pond of our mind.

Think about this: collecting objects that weren't there and connecting them so they make something else is creative isn't it?  Your house didn't just "HAPPEN"; it was created.  If you separated all the parts of the house, the house wouldn't exist as a house.  In fact, it wouldn't even exist as PARTS of a house because those parts are made up of other stuff.  An object that is eight feet long, 2 inches wide, and four inches tall, and made of pine wood isn't intrinsically a stud for the wall of a house.  At that level it could be anything.  And if you place it in sufficient heat, it will become carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and a few other gaseous substances.  It wouldn't even be a 2" x 4".

When things become so entrenched in our experience that it is difficult to avoid them, and they are causing problems, we need to stop doing them.  But it isn't all that easy.  We need to change our mind about that behavior or experience.  I may see that something isn't all that good for me, but I won't stop unless it's better for me to stop than it is to continue.  That doesn't always just happen to us.  What we really need to do is change our thinking about it.  And to change our thinking about something, we need to change our mind.  A mind that thinks one way can't automatically think another.  Just try telling yourself to not think about grey elephants with big, floppy ears, and two white tusks, a trunk and a tail.  Tell yourself to stop thinking about a string of these elephants walking along single file down a jungle pathway.  Even if I told you I'd give you a million dollars if you would not think about those elephants right now, you would have to be an extraordinary person to be able to not think.  Of course you could lie and tell me you're not thinking of those elephants, but that would be a lie and not the real thing.  By the way, that million dollars I told you about wasn't real anyway.  It was just a picture in my mind - and yours.

Changing your mind about something isn't easy, but it is simple.  I'm going to explain how in a minute, but first think about something being simple but not easy.  Maybe something like pushing a train locomotive backwards down the track would work.  It's simple, right?  You just get in front and push the other way.  Even if the train's brake isn't on it isn't going to be easy.  Even if there is nothing preventing the train from moving in one direction or the other it isn't going to be easy to move it.  There's too much weight for us to push by ourselves.  So you can see that the process might be simple, but not easy.

The spirit is the driving force behind the mind.  When it is broken, or sick, it cannot sponsor a thought to the mind that will help.  The mind doesn't come up with it's own thoughts so it's really hard to change that behavior.  Untreated spiritual illness will result in addiction of one form or another every time.  Every addiction is a symptom of a spiritual lack.  Some people become addicted to substances like alcohol or drugs.  Some become addicted to relationships like marriage, care-giving, or even mental health counseling.  Some become addicted to actions like running, biking, or other sports.  All of it can be boiled down to an intense feeling that without that external thing (whether it's a substance, relationship, action, or anything else) they are not complete, not whole.  It's an empty feeling.

That's where 12 Step recovery programs, psychologists, therapists and treatment centers can help.  That's why sometimes a person turns to a church and finds help.  It's because the spiritual issue is addressed at a "doing" level rather than a thinking or talking level.  And eventually the spirit becomes more healthy.

Normally people who are healthy in body, mind, and spirit may experience a sense of loss and get that empty feeling.  But normally these people will go through a grieving process and eventually regain their sense of wholeness.  They will come to acceptance and be healed.  Others have never learned how to deal with loss.  It really does happen in childhood.  But this doesn't give anyone any justification for blaming parents.  Parents usually do their best, and do what they have learned from their parents.  If you want someone to blame, you'll have to go back to the first human on the planet that walked upright, maybe even further.  They never learned how to do it right themselves, or never learned how to pass it on.  And what makes you think you know everything, anyway?

If you did your best, and later found out that you had missed something, you might at first blame whoever it was that originally showed you how something was supposed to work.  But then let's say that you passed on that knowledge before you were aware of the error.  Would you want the person down-line to blame you for not knowing?  If you didn't know, how could you know what it is you didn't know?