Week 1 Day 3: The mind

Week 1 Day 3: The Mind

"To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him. " - Buddha

Before we can control the mind, we must first understand what the mind is. Many people think that the mind is the brain and the brain is the mind. However the brain is an organ of the body that the mind utilizes to accomplish its goals. The mind is the substance that the brain creates. The electrical impulses that create pathways of memory, feelings, perception, imagination, learning abilities, math abilities, artistic abilities etc. The mind is the energy and information that stimulates the brain, and the brain then stimulates the body which creates actions and reactions.

Our minds are formed from the time we are conceived in the womb. From that moment on we perceive light and noise and start to formulate conclusions about our outside world. We then begin to categorize the things we are learning. We categorize our emotions, things to do, things not to do, pretty things, loud things and so on; and as we grow older we continue to create more categories that become more specific. The mind is the collaboration of all of these perceptions, mixed in with memories and thoughts.

We could say that our minds are divided into 2 parts. We have our conscious and our sub conscious. Our conscious is our everyday thoughts and actions. It is the things we do and think most about, we are aware of these thoughts and actions. Our sub conscious is very subtle and plays a huge role in our lives without our even realizing it. Our sub conscious is programmed over the years to create certain reactions and actions for us based on previous experiences, things we have seen or felt repeatedly. The sub conscious acts on auto pilot. Things like when you are nervous playing with your hair, when you are annoyed rolling your eyes, when you get mad yelling... these reactions to certain stimuli occur without the conscious thought of... I am nervous let me play with my hair, or I am annoyed I will now roll my eyes. In most of these cases an action is performed without much thought at all based on the stimuli of the given situation.

So now that we understand that the mind is the energetic collaboration of our thoughts, our feelings, memories, emotions etc. and we can either use our mind consciously our sub consciously from here we can begin to talk about how we do have control over our mind. We have control over both our conscious and our sub conscious mind. The way we can control our minds is to first of all pay attention to them. We have to understand how our minds operate as an individual. We have to learn when we are letting our sub conscious take over and just reacting to things without really thinking about them. We have to learn what it is we do think about all day long. Yes we think, all day, but are you really aware of what you are thinking? Once you begin to be aware of what it is you are thinking from here you can decide and control whether to think positive, or negative, whether to react to the guy cutting you off or to chose to stay calm and let the moment pass. You are what you think. Think positive and you will be positive, think negative and you will be negative... it is your choice how you use your mind!

Mind Challenge: Today take notice of your thoughts. Notice when you are feeling tired or upset... what are you thinking about? Notice if you live out of fear of doing things wrong or out of faith doing things right. Just start to take notice of your thoughts. No judgment, just notice. Write them down, start a journal. Start to get to know your mind. Notice how you react when things make you mad and happy. Take notice of who you are and then you can begin to take notice of who it is you want to be! Again you are what you think. What are you thinking?