Before we can answer that question, we need to first understand what we mean by the term mind. The classic model taught that our mind is synonymous with brain, but we are learning that that is nowhere close to the true picture. The brain is a part of the mind, certainly, but the neural network that actually constitutes our mind extends to every part of our body. Have you ever had a thought that made your heart race or tied your stomach up in a knot? Have you ever had a feeling in the pit of your stomach that only eventually turned into a thought? Whereas scientists and philosophers used to talk about how the mind can affect the body and the body can affect the mind, they now speak of a Mind/Body Connection, or just call it BodyMind or MindBody. Turns out, our entire corporeal being is an information processing system.
If we begin with the analogy that the mind is like a computer, which is also an information processing system, we immediately realize that, like a computer, the results are only as good as the data that was fed into the computer to begin with. The computer term for that is GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. Our job, as deliberate co-creators of our own reality, is to minimize the garbage that enters our system and to consciously choose good data as fodder for all those incessant thoughts.
All computers have one or more means of inputting data, and our minds are no exception. A good deal of the data comes to us from external sources, and enters the mind through our five senses: we see, hear, taste, smell, and feel the world outside of us, and our reactions to those sensations happen in our mind. For instance, when we see something with our eye, it is our brain that unscrambles all those pixels of data and turns them into a recognizable image. We can easily control the data that enters through our senses by being selective about what we see and hear. We can be choosy about the music we listen to and the programs and films that we watch, and we can limit our time with those toxic people who constantly spew negativity. We can surround ourselves with beauty.
But there is another source of data that is harder to control, and that is the data that enters our mind through internal sources. Have you ever had dealings with another person that hurt your feelings or made you angry, only to find out later that you had misinterpreted the situation? The data that caused you to become hurt and angry in that instance didn't enter your system from your five senses; you supplied that offending data yourself, from one of these internal sources of data entry.
There are six basic faculties of our higher mind, all of which supply us with data that affects what we think and how we feel. These faculties are perception, will, imagination, memory, intuition, and reason. Unlike sensory data, which is fairly objective, the data that enters our system through one of these six internal sources is highly subjective and very susceptible to being dead wrong. These are the source of most of the garbage that enters our mind and skews our results. Let's briefly look at each one.
Perception is our point of view. It is the filter through which we perceive our world. Whether we are glass-half-empty or glass-half-full kind of people is a result of our perception.
Will is our ability to stay focused on one thing. We will be using our will quite a bit as we learn to change our thinking. Untrained, the will is just as easily able to stay focused on negative things that make us miserable and keep us attracting what we don't want.
Imagination is our ability to picture things that do not exist on the physical plane. We can imagine good, beautiful, happy things, or we can imagine doom and gloom and danger.
Memory is perfect. We remember everything, even those things we've tried to repress. Memory tapes run through our mind constantly. We can, with our will, choose to focus on pleasant memories, or we can constantly replay memories in which we were hurt or felt betrayed or wronged.
Intuition is that gut feeling we have about people or situations. We all have it, in varying degrees. It is the still small voice that we hear when we are silent, our Sixth Sense. Intuition is the faculty we are using when we say things like, "I get a bad vibe from that guy."
Reason is the faculty of the rational mind. It is our ability to think, to originate thoughts, and to synthesize those thoughts into new ideas. It is this faculty of reason that allows us to consciously choose our thoughts.
All of these faculties of the mind can either work in our favor, or they can work against us to keep our lives "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (in the famous words of Thomas Hobbes). Like physical muscles, these mental muscles can be trained and strengthened. The purpose of this series of articles is to learn how to consciously use these higher faculties of mind to control our thinking so that we can actively control the results that we get.
For today, your challenge is to pay attention to what is happening in your mind. When you find yourself becoming angry, sad, offended, irritable, or afraid, take a minute to figure out which of these faculties was the culprit. Was it a matter of perceiving the situation through a negative filter? Did the situation trigger a negative memory? Did your will run so rampant in one direction that you were unwilling to give ground to a new idea? Don't judge, just notice.
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Many of the ideas from today's post come from the Introduction to the MasterMind Group currently being facilitated by Nicola Lennon. It is an eleven week program where we are discussing and applying the ideas from Bob Proctor's book, You Were Born Rich. If these ideas intrigue you, I would highly recommend that you contact Nicola and let her know you are interested in participating in her next MasterMind Group. Ideas are so much more powerful when shared.
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