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Chapter 4 - Our Mental Natures
Mental thoughts are descriptors of reality only. If you stop and look at a rainbow your mind might say, “Oh, look at the pretty colors of reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, indigos, and violets and how they interact as a result of light’s refraction through water and the atmosphere.” But as you have been spending your time thinking, the rainbow has disappeared and you missed the beauty inherent in the experience.
When it’s all said and done, lying on your deathbed do you want to look back and say, “I am so grateful I was able to appreciate all the beautiful moments in my life,” “Or, I spent so much time thinking about life that I missed it.”
Our thoughts help us to create, consider and direct our choices into the physical through our actions.
Thoughts are language dependent. Try thinking without language (Hint - a way to stop thinking is to stop talking to yourself and stop any language from being spoken in your head. Try it and see for yourself.)
Constant Thinking: The Payoff and the Price
It is clear, the state of our bodies directly affects the state of our minds and the freedom or lack of freedom inherent in our emotions. For example, peaceful thinking leads to peaceful experiences. Angry thinking leads to angry experiences.
While Type A-consistent-protracted-detailed-always-on-the-move-lifestyle-thinking is very effective for achieving results, maintaining structure and addressing problems, the price of this habitual thought pattern often results in tight bodies, unreleased accumulations of muscular tension, constant aches, chronic pains and eventually, disease.
The problem with this type of thinking is it creates an addiction to solving problems. It is true, there is a great kick from seeing the nuances of a particular complex situation and being able to tackle it with your mind and create the best solution. It stretches your mind and imagination. It can be challenging and most gratifying. There are times when helping another is achieved through providing solutions and there are also times when all you need to do is listen and hear what someone is saying. (Be aware, if you actually listen to someone, you may learn something about them and yourself!) I am not disparaging this type of thinking for it has its uses. My point is, after a time this pattern of training your mind to only solve problems will eventually stop being something you choose to do and it will become automatic. Most people who think in this way find it very difficult to stop even when the circumstances they find themselves in no longer call for it (sometimes to the annoyance of those around them).
Constant thought is when we stay in our heads and have internal conversations with ourselves about our day, our work, what we don’t have, what we think we need, what we want, where we came from, or where we want to go.
This constant stream of thought prevents us from tuning into our bodies and we treat them like pieces of luggage. Constant thoughts also prevent us from being in the moment where life is happening. If you examine the underlying nature of your thoughts, you will find most of them are about either the past or the future.
Our lives do not have to be this way. Wouldn’t you like the ability to stop your mind from thinking all the time? We put so much of our energy towards thinking and not experiencing the moment. This overly-mental-behavioral-program has become so embedded in our way of life we now spend less time being in the moment and more time thinking about the last moment (or a possible future moment that has not and may not ever occur).
We use logic to examine our lives and the myriad assortment of problems we encounter on a daily basis. Logic works by taking in all available information and then forming a conclusion.
However, logic is limited to the amount of data we are able to receive. Both emotional and sensory information provide us with a tremendous amount of personal data to be processed, but due to the overwhelming sensory bombardment from our environment and our society’s judgmental nature regarding emotionality, we have been forced to shut down a large number of our physical and emotional receptors. Blocking this information results in a loss of data and a subsequent diminishment of valid logical conclusions.
The logical process is founded upon a vantage point. Where your vantage point is determines the data you allow in through your sensors and as a result, affects your conclusions.
The larger or more expanded our point of view is (vantage point), the more information we can receive and make better predications, conclusions and as a result, better choices.
Your vantage point is usually dictated by the limits of your mental and emotional comfort zone. This is where you feel the safest and in the most control.
Everything that is inside your comfort zone, you can meet with confidence and security. To a large degree, you can predict events and take your chances within its protective shell.
Outside of your comfort zone is everything else. It is the unknown. This is the place where you take risks without knowing what will happen. Pushing your comfort zone increases the boundaries of your known world. The result is your world expands, as does your life.
Our fight or flight monitor carefully patrols the outer boundary of our comfort zones. This patrol is constantly scanning our environments for any events; people or things, which can make us feel unsafe. Anything threatening our survival is searched out and avoided. Most of what we encounter outside our comfort zones are usually not physically threatening. However, they are more than likely to be emotionally threatening. An emotional threat will cause our nervous systems to shut down even though we are not in physical danger.
A shut down nervous system will no longer receive any information or data that is outside your comfort zone. The question then is do you want a nervous system that shuts down every time you have an opportunity to evolve and change your vantage point?
Emotional energy exists. It lives within us like flowing water. An emotion may come up to the surface, which is a natural expression of being human; however, societal pressure and judgments causes us to shut down and repress this energy. Like water, emotional energy will not be denied for long. It finds other avenues of expression and ultimately causes aches, pains, headaches and eventually disease.
Emotions are a great source of energy. When we feel good and accept things and ourselves as they are, we look better, we glow, we smile more and we tend to give more and have more patience.
Our society has frowned upon emotional evolution in favor of mental prowess and physical beauty. So, we are all brought up in a world where our feelings become repressed as we learn to “think” or “rationalize” our way out of experiencing what we truly feel.
You can feel good or bad, unsure or confidant, rejected or accepted, belittled or valued. This list goes on. But what is a feeling? A feeling is personalized data your body generates to inform you about the current experience you are having. It can be in your head or heart, your stomach or your chest. These sensations can be “gut feelings” or just something you know.
An experience is having your whole being involved in something that is occurring in the moment. That is, your body, mind and feelings are all sharing the same event that is occurring for you in a moment.
For instance, water can be mentally described by its components: H20, molecular densities and formulas. I can sit you in a classroom (heaven forbid) and we can discuss the many uses of water in your body for hours. The information we have for water is almost endless.
However, the experience of water is completely different. You experience it by drinking it or bathing in it. You can wash your car with it and spray someone with the hose. Playing with it and seeing how it “feels” involves your physical body feeling the sensation of the water on your body, your mental body paying attention to what is happening while its happening and your emotional body enjoying the moment through the feelings the water elicits. All of these elements contribute to your experience of water.
To sum up, mental thought provides descriptions by which we can communicate to others our personal experience. A “negative” feeling is an undesired and unwanted experience. Your desire not to feel something is usually based upon a previous experience you had with it and as a result of that experience you deem it to be bad. This deeming is a judgment.
A judgment is:
Imagine you’re a young child. You are given your first ice cream cone. You positively love ice cream and not only that, its chocolate, your absolute favorite! You begin to eat it on a hot summer day. From nothing more than a lack of experience you did not know ice cream quickly melts out of a cone on a hot day. You learn because within minutes it’s all over you. Your shirt and face are soon covered in ice cream.
Is this a good or bad experience? Lets throw in some scenarios…
Scenario 1
You are covered in ice cream and you are on the street. People pass you on the street and start laughing. Maybe the laughter is cruel or maybe it is just laughter borne of amusement. Either way you experience embarrassment or shame of being you.
Your mom comes along and smiles at you and takes your picture because she thinks you look adorable. You have this big grin on your face because you are having such a good time.
Which is the “good” experience and which is the “bad”? Lets ask a more specific question. Which is the “negative” experience and which is the “positive?” An embarrassing experience is usually agreed upon to be undesired and, therefore, negative while the experience where Mom accepted you as you are is considered to be positive. The actual act of getting ice cream all over you is not bad. The judgment is on the result of the experience. The result of being laughed at, which made you feel a certain undesirable way is therefore “bad.” So, embarrassment is considered harmful (bad) and acceptance is “good.” But, of course no one dies from being embarrassed. Ultimately, it is just a feeling we have judged so strongly that the automatic reaction is to avoid it at all cost.
The point is experiences in and of themselves are not bad. Ice cream all over someone is not bad; it is just undesired depending upon your perspective (or maybe it isn’t, remember experiences are subjective).
The child, who was embarrassed, may not ever eat another chocolate cone again. Maybe (because feelings and beings evolve) he starts to develop a fear of chocolate ice cream cones for the feeling it may cause within him. In other words, because of this shameful and therefore embarrassing experience, this child may associate shame with eating chocolate ice cream cones and decide eating ice cream cones in public may not be worth the effort because the risk is too great.
(On a side note: Yes, this is what happened to me the first time I ate a cone and we do have pictures and I eventually got over my embarrassment and I eat ice cream cones whenever I want. )
If we break it down, what we have is:
An Experience – Ice cream all over self + laughing people = shame/embarrassment or bad feelings
Result (Interpretation) – Bad feelings are to be avoided (judgment) therefore the cause should be avoided – no more chocolate ice cream cones. All to avoid “experiencing a feeling.”
We have all had experiences like this in our childhoods where we did not feel good about ourselves as a result of something we did or did not do. These experiences are “imprinted” on our nervous systems and can influence us for the rest of our lives. If we as adults looked back upon these experiences, we would probably laugh at the amount of meaning we placed upon them.