Chapter 2: Mind

You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

Marcus Aurelius

 What is the mind?

According to neuroscientific research explained by Joe Dispenza, the mind is the brain in motion.

The brain, a repository of past experiences, influences the present. Thoughts trigger biological responses, releasing chemical signals that affect feelings. A loop is created, where thoughts generate feelings and vice versa, shaping one's state of being. Repetitive thinking reinforces neural circuits, making the brain an artifact of past thoughts.

Daily routines become habits, forming unconscious patterns that govern behavior. When these routines dominate, the body operates on autopilot, perpetuating the same actions, decisions, and emotions. Over time, this leads to a predictable future based on past habits.

Put differently, there's an increase in the connectivity between neurons that fire together. You could argue that you are automatically choosing and commanding those neurons in your brain to fire and produce a level of mind when you consciously choose to operate a motor vehicle, taking a shower or doing laundry. This process involves neural networks forming patterns in the brain, becoming interconnected through repeated actions.

The way your brain functions is outdated. It has been shaped to become a living documentation of everything you have encountered and learned thus far in your life.

What impact does the past have on the present?

Your brain experiences a biological reaction when you think about something or recall something, which results in the release of specific chemical signals. It is these chemical impulses that give your body the sensation you were envisioning. For instance, you will feel terrified if you have a terrifying thought.

Fear drives the production of more chemicals in the brain and body, which in turn makes you feel even more afraid. Fear also encourages you to think of more frightening ideas. Then you get caught in a vicious cycle where thinking leads to feeling, which leads to thinking.

Your entire state of being is past if the cycle of your thoughts and feelings determines your state of being and if thoughts are the brain's vocabulary and feelings are the body's vocabulary.

When you fire and wire the same circuits in your brain repeatedly because you think the same thoughts repeatedly, you are hardwiring your brain into the same patterns. This makes your brain an artifact of the way you used to think, making it easier to think that way on autopilot over time.

And what does this mean in real life?

We now know that feelings and sensations are chemical residues of past experiences, so when you wake up in the morning and search for the comforting feeling that is you, you are essentially beginning your day in the past.

Your problems, which are connected to memories or past experiences of various people or things at various times and places, start to cause familiar feelings like unhappiness, futility, sadness, pain, grief, anxiety, worry, frustration, unworthiness, or guilt when you start thinking about them.

You're thinking backwards if your thoughts are dictated by your emotions, and you are unable to think beyond your feelings. And if those same emotions influence the choices you make in life, the ways you behave, or the circumstances you put yourself in, you'll come across as predictable and your life will stay the same.

Suppose you wake up in the morning, turn off your alarm, and lie in bed checking your texts, emails, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, and finally the news. (At this point, you are remembering your personality and relating it to the past and present.)

You then go to the restroom. You use the restroom, brush your teeth, shower, dress, and then proceed to the kitchen. You have your coffee and breakfast. Perhaps you watch the news or check your e-mail once more. Every day, you go through the same motions.

Then you drive to work using the same old route, and when you get there, you interact with the same coworkers you saw the day before.

You spend most of your day doing the same things you did the day before. You may react emotionally to the same issues at work. Then, after work, you go home, possibly stopping at the same grocery shop to buy the food you typically eat. 

You cook the same meal and watch the same television show while sitting in the same spot in the living room. Then you clean your teeth (with your right hand, starting from the top right side of your mouth), crawl into the same side of the bed, maybe read a little, and then go to sleep.

If you repeat these routines enough times, they will become a habit. A habit is a repetitious set of unconscious ideas, behaviors, and emotions that you must repeat frequently.

Essentially, it means that your body is now on autopilot, running a set of programs, and that your body will eventually become the mind. You've done this routine so many times that your body understands specific tasks better than your brain or conscious thought.

You just switch on the autopilot and go unconscious, which means you’ll wake up the next morning and essentially do the same things all over again.

In a sense, your body is dragging you towards the same predictable future based on what you have been doing repeatedly in the same familiar past. You will have the same ideas and then make the same decisions, which will lead to the same behaviors, which will result in the same feelings and emotions.

Your body has been emotionally conditioned to live in the past, and as a result, you have developed a set of hardwired neural networks in your brain that determine your future.

The same actions you take today are essentially the ones you will take tomorrow and the day after that. This means that if you were looking at a timeline of your day, which starts when you wake up in the morning and ends when you go to bed at night, you could pick up the timeline of yesterday or today (your past) and place it in the space designated for tomorrow (the future).

We may argue that your body and mind are in the known—the same foreseeable future that you can be certain of based on your actions in the same comfortable past—and that there is no place for the unknown in that certain, known future. In fact, you would probably be irritated at the interruption of your routine if something unexpected or new happened to you at that precise moment and altered the same predictable course of your day. You would probably find it annoying, bothersome, and just plain inconvenient. "Can you come back tomorrow?" one may ask. "Now is not the appropriate moment."

Energy flows where attention is directed.

When you wake up in the morning and focus all your attention on the people you have to see that day, the places you have to go, the things you own, and the things you have to do in the three-dimensional world, your energy becomes fractured because where you place your attention is where you place your energy. Your entire creative flow is being diverted by everything outside of you that is vying for your attention, such as your computer, phone, bank account, partner, coworker, home, workplace, children, pets, enemies, health issues, and so forth.

Your brain contains a neural network for every one of those functions. You perceive and thus experience things from your past because they are mapped in your brain. Because the redundancy of the various experiences keeps assembling and refining an increasing number of circuits, the more you experience them, the more automatic and enriched the neural circuits for each of them become.

Experience does just that—it makes the brain more sophisticated. As a result, you have neural networks about your children, your partner, your boss, and everything you own in the physical world because you have interacted with each of those individuals and objects at various points in time and space.

Your inner world of thoughts and feelings becomes unwary when your attention and energy are diverted to all these things, people, problems, and concerns in the outside world. That means you have run out of energy to do anything new.

Since your thoughts and emotions shape your own reality. As a result, you keep affirming the same life if you are thinking and feeling only what you know (that is, the known). Your thoughts and emotions are being influenced by the outside world. Your external world, which is a past-present reality composed of people and things at specific times and locations, and your inner world of thoughts are biologically matched.

Dispenza offers a fresh interpretation of the present eternal now.

The secret to altering our internal state and embarking on a journey within is meditation. It enables us to break free from our attachment to everyone, everything, everywhere, and all the time.

You are releasing your body from the bonds of habits and emotions that keep you stuck in the past when you move past your guilt, suffering, fear, frustration, resentment, or feelings of unworthiness. As a result, you are freeing energy that is now returning to you.

During meditation, you become whole with the unconscious when you close your eyes and enter the nonphysical realm without thinking of yourself as a body, role, name, or status. Instead, you simply become nothing, nowhere, or time.

Instead of adhering to the conventional wisdom that says you should not think about the past or the future but rather transcend your physical existence, identity, body, and surroundings,

The body is not becoming the mind as it lets go of all this pent-up emotional energy. You learn that knowing is just beyond doubt, wholeness is right on the other side of lack, and courage is right on the other side of fear. You find love and compassion when you let go of your anger and hatred and venture into the unknown. The energy is still the same; it has simply been stored in the body and is now yours to shape your own destiny.

It's difficult to transcend our bodies, our surroundings, and time, but it's worth it when we break free from three-dimensional reality and enter the quantum realm, which is a world of limitless possibilities.

The quantum (or unified) field is an energy and information field that is invisible and exists outside of space and time. It is also sometimes referred to as a field of consciousness or intelligence.

There is nothing material or physical there. It is beyond your senses' capacity to perceive. All the laws of nature are determined by one unified field of energy and information.

Great Intelligence organizing the universe

“Considering what I know and have experienced, I think there is energy-based self-organizing intelligence that is observing and organizing all universes and galaxies into order. Occasionally, I hear from people who think this theory is a little bit non-scientific. In response, I always ask the same question: What follows an explosion—a disorder or an order?

They always respond by saying that disorder ensues. Then I inquire: How come there is so much order created after the Big Bang, the largest explosion in history? To create such a work of art, intelligence must be organizing matter and energy into form and bringing all the forces of nature together,” argues Dispanza.

The unified field, or quantum field, is that intelligence, that energy.

Imagine removing every human being and body on the planet, along with every animal and plant, as well as every physical object created by humans and nature, as well as every continent, ocean, and even the entire world, to get an idea of what this field is like. Think about taking out every planet, moon, star, and solar system in our solar system, including the sun. And then there are all the universe's galaxies. You cannot see any light with your eyes, nor is there any air.

There is emptiness, total darkness, and the zero-point field. It is important to keep this in mind because you will be in the infinite black space, devoid of all physical existence, when you, as a consciousness, emerge into the united field in the present moment.

There is no vacuum in the quantum field. It is an endless field of energy and frequency. Each frequency also transmits data. Imagine that the quantum field is full of infinite energy, unseen waves of energy that we can use to create, vibrating beyond the realm of matter and our senses.

All possibilities exist, an infinite sea of potential.

The Egoic Mind

Eckhart Tolle, in "A New Earth," characterizes the ego as a compulsive conditioned process of futile thinking, with approximately 98 percent of thoughts being repetitive and devoid of useful energy. The mind-possessed voice inside the head. Who are we, then, if not the never-ending stream of thought?

In response, the mind provides an idea of who we are. I work as a mother and am a woman of color in my profession. However, beyond that, who are we? To that, there is no conceptual response.

The I, me story are the past identified by our successes, failures, make us think who we are. That is not who we are. They are a bundle of thoughts we believe in, a phantom entity we refer to as ourselves.

Since the ego cannot exist when you are fully present in the moment, it lives in the past and the future, identifies with the past, which is not a very happy identity, and looks to the future to complete itself. This makes the present moment the easiest exist point for the ego, a state of consciousness. Other than right now, there is no life.

“Tolle once said, "What you strengthen in another, you react to in yourself." Usually, the traits we strongly condemn in others are also our own. We become disturbed in our consciousness when we come across someone who is avaricious, deceitful, etc. The intensity of your response serves as a cue to look deeply within. One of the ego's favorite ways to bolster itself is to complain. You give in to your whiny thoughts and allow them to occupy all available space within you. When you give someone a label, you start to lose interest in them as unique human beings.

When the voice in your head starts complaining about something, pay attention to it and identify it as the ego's voice. The instant you realize that the voice in you is not your ego, or unconsciousness, it is no longer the ego but rather a long-standing conditioned thought pattern.

When people notice the voices in their heads complaining, they can ask themselves, "Is this meant to change the situation?" Usually not. You are correct to complain, and you are feeding my sense of entitlement.

What role does the ego play in hurt feelings?

Yes, the ego is the one that experiences hurt; all you have to do is acknowledge that this is how you are feeling at the moment and identify the part of yourself that is creating the wounded mental image of yourself. Most people believe they are good people. When someone tells them they are not, they become enraged and feel hurt, as well as an urge to protect their ego.

Consider one of the tragic events that frequently occurs when driving: when someone calls you a fool, your ego becomes defensive and enters a self-remote code. This code often results in shooting incidents that end in fatalities as your ego tries to defend itself.

Grief is held on by the ego because it sustains it. Realizing that harboring resentment feeds your ego—your fictitious sense of self—leads to forgiveness.

 So, why is the mind prone to negativity?

Negative thinking is cherished by the ego. It fortifies it, and the drama or ideas nourish your body. To observe what is happening when you interact with your thoughts, particularly when you are angry, you need to be somewhat aware of them.

The ego enjoys being angry or aggressive in any way, and it searches the mind for an excuse or ingrained belief to complain about. People are trained to ignore the present moment, which is the most significant thing of all. When you stop to think about it, the future arrives as the present moment, but people don't like the present moment for what it is—the only thing that exists and has the potential to become the now.

Everyone has weathered unpleasant experiences throughout life, lodging them within. Every displeasing event leaves a mark, accumulating like a collector's array of stamps or coins—except, in this case, they are bad experiences. Imagine locking these within a room; it inevitably becomes saturated with unpleasantness.

Stored within, these experiences emanate negativity. Our sanctuary is self-created; the mind shapes our internal environment. This burden obstructs enjoyment; we anticipate unpleasantness, thereby preventing its recurrence. This tussle with life brings tension, anxiety, and stress, as this stored mess perpetually resurfaces.

These experiences are mere travelers within the universe, but we clasp onto them, disrupting their journey. The key lies in releasing them—allowing their passage through the universe. This act of relaxation welcomes tranquility in the face of mind-generated turmoil.

You are the guardian of your inner environment—why then hoard everything that agitates you? Relevance is lost in storing your past grievances. Cross-benefit analysis reveals this—0% benefit versus 100% cost. The impact of your mother's deeds or a divorce—what purpose does this stored baggage serve? It distracts and agitates, negating your engagement with unfolding moments. Release it, don't reject it.

Things and opinions are fine; it's when you identify with them that you get defensive and suffer. Advertising industry professionals are aware of this. They persuade people that purchasing unnecessary items will enhance their sense of self to sell them.

They accomplish this by assuring them that by using this product, they will stand out from the crowd and, implicitly, become more authentic versions of themselves. Because designer labels are pricey and thus exclusive, people often purchase them as identity enhancers rather than products. Designer labels are essentially collective identities.

They would lose their psychological worth if they were affordable to everyone, leaving them only worth what was paid for, their material worth.

Ego cannot be eliminated by giving up everything. Sure, some people have accomplished that, but their egos are larger than those of some millionaires. Your ego will find another identity if you choose one. I am more spiritual than you.

The goal of ego's constant comparisons to others is to always feel superior to others. The source of your feelings of superiority or inferiority towards others is always your own ego. You can see yourself in a variety of circumstances; for example, your ego constantly watches you when you approach a crowd or meet new people and tries to find a place for itself.

Am I more intelligent or just more attractive? Am I richer, or does it cause me to feel inferior, superior, or both? Your ego feeds off your constant need for more. The ego never finds fulfillment. When you accomplish something, you set out to do, like buy a nice house or some furniture, you soon grow dissatisfied with it, which is a symptom of ego.

How can we put an end to that?

You start to feel content with who you are, where you are, and what you have. You have to first recognize the myth that you can find fulfillment in the future because no matter what you succeed in, your happiness will fade eventually. We come to see that the most crucial aspect of ourselves—the ego—is something we have always ignored.

Try to spend as much of your time as you can in the present, giving it more importance in your life than the past or the future. Make friends with the present moment, as the ego is inherently antagonistic and cannot accomplish that.

It makes use of the present as a foundation for the future. In the here and now, the ego recedes. Letting go has greater power than sticking with what you know. You give in and take action. Using the example of the mud, nothing will change if you fall into it, curse, and refuse to accept what happened.

Alternatively, if you acknowledge that it happened and then move to move past it. Your actions are now motivated by life and a lack of resistance to the status quo rather than by negativity. Overcoming the ego entails overcoming suffering because the ego is the source of all suffering.

Who we are beyond the mind?

We are that which words and concepts cannot describe. I have lost all identity. We enter the unknown when I realize who I am not—a career, gender, race, etc.—because if I am not any of those things, I no longer know who I am.

We once experienced a state of totality, where we were attuned to the center of our being—the thoughts—but further contemplation drove us away from that state. You are the state of Oneness with life itself. In every interpretation, we identify more with our thoughts than with our true selves, and for the ego, this is paradise and the reason it flourishes.

Remember, you retain these experiences due to a conscious decision. Release them; they only persist because you've kept them. As peculiar sensations surface, examine their origins. Are they remnants of the past? Do someone else's words resonate within you? Shed the meaningless baggage—it disrupts your equilibrium. Embrace a mindset of letting go, a beginner's mind—no expectations, no judgments.

Invite the notion of 'being.' You are the awareness, the essence of thought—an intrinsic facet of your existence. Invite the divine to work through you, transforming you into a servant spirit, guided by awareness. True bliss and heightened awareness arise in moments of present consciousness, transcending the ego's incessant mental chatter. Inner peace, independent of external influences, manifests when one is fully present in each moment.

 What does it mean to be me?

The empty, blank space is you. Develop your awareness of your inner presence and the vitality of each cell in your body. Let go of your ego, which causes you to identify with things outside of yourself, such as your house, car, or toy. When a child loses a toy, it's the beginning of their ego because they feel like they've lost something important. As we get older, our toys get bigger, we learn to identify with material and social belongings, and we take on roles like mother and father, among others. You are not your thoughts; you are formless. Just concentrate on your wellbeing, which is evident in nature, as the more you talk about your illness, the more power it has over you.

Pain demands surrender, but don't try to inflict psychological suffering to express your physical suffering. Be like a child for a few minutes in the morning. Don’t get absorbed in the conceptual realm. Things lose their miraculous quality and vitality when they are labeled.

Consider this: Rather than asking what I want from life, ask what does God want from me? Find out from life what it wants from you. To find the answer, try making time in your life for moments of stillness. Give up naming and labeling people and establish closer ties to the natural world. Pay attention to your inner voice. The nature of the mind is addiction to thought.

Thoughts are allowed to exist in the background while in presence; the key is to avoid becoming identified with them. Take each moment as it comes.

 

 
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Chapter 3: The power of thoughts

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Introduction