Mind Matters Most - Chapter Five

MMM005

Every thought is a seed so be careful what you plant

In preceding chapters the emphasis has been on the dramatic.   We spoke of those deeply-rooted sankaras which cause emotional chaos.  You could say that these particular sankaras, when they were laid down, were caused by something very bad, very unacceptable.  At least that was how we interpreted them at that time.  They were accepted, albeit against our will.  That’s why they’re inside us.  But what of our normal, average, day-to-day thinking?  I’m referring to our habitual mind-chatter.   Do these verbal thoughts and imaginings have any lasting effect on us?  Do they have an influence upon our wellbeing? �" upon our health, for example, or upon any aspect of our lives for that matter?

 They do.   The obvious answer to this question being, that the more positive, happy, contented, joyous, et cetera we are in our day-to-day thinking, the more positive or pleasant are the sensations which accompany such thought.   These sensations will be also stored away within us along with the accompanying thought.  Nothing is forgotten, recall is our problem.  Yes, those pleasant sensations or feelings are continually being deposited within our mind-body.   But being accepted below the surface, we don’t feel them.

On the other hand, bitter, cynical and awful thoughts along with their sensations are also being laid down.  The proviso in both cases being that they are accepted and therefore actually go into  our  subconscious mind.   That is, they go into our long-term memory. When this happens, they are added to those that are already there, thus making these respective accumulations even bigger.  If our store of happy thoughts outweighs our unhappy ones, then it could be said that, by and large, we have happy dispositions.  We’re happy a good deal of the time.  Should the opposite be the case, then so is our general outlook on life: we’re unhappy much of the time.   All of us have stores of either category; it is just a matter of how the scales are weighted.

Our subconscious says “Yes” to whatever we put into it

In many ways these internal emotional stores determine our attitude and, as we know, attitude is very important.   Not that this is news.   What might not be so well known is how easy it is to start down a pathway of increasing or decreasing happiness by our habitual thinking. 

Our subconscious mind is very different to its counterpart, our conscious mind.  The latter’s job is to think analytically, to evaluate, discriminate, ponder, decide.  It is the mind we identify with.   Our unconscious or subconscious mind �" or at least one important aspect of it �" is very different.  It acts like a machine. It does not consider.   It is robotic in that whatsoever is put to it is either accepted or it is not.   With enough persistence it says “Yes,” to whatever is received.   Once it says, “Yes,” that belief becomes registered.  Once registered, it becomes a ‘truth’ as far as that part of our mind is concerned.   It will then act from that precept.   This is why the practice of ‘Affirmations’ has become so popular over the years.   As Dr. Maxwell Maltz stated in his bestselling book, Psycho-cybernetics way back in 1960, our minds cannot tell the difference between something vividly imagined and an actual real life experience.  Once that visionary concept is placed into and accepted by this robotic part of our subconscious mind, it is every bit as meaningful to us as an actual experience.

It is as if every thought we have is a seed and our subconscious mind is a well-watered, rich and fertilized garden bed waiting to take that seed.  We are the gardener.   If the thought is a meaningful one, coming from intent along with its attendant emotion, it will be fall into the garden bed.  It will germinate.  It will grow over time.  Moreover, the more passionate and emotional we are when we plant that seed the greater the impact in our lives.  And the more we dwell on that seed thought the quicker it will grow.  

It is important to our welfare that we plant the right seeds.  If we cast a sweet seed it will grow into a plant which bears sweet fruit.   If we throw in a bitter seed it will yield bitter fruit.   We cannot expect to pick ripe mangoes if we plant stinging-nettles.  We reap what we sow.  This growing from casual thoughts might take a long time, decades.   Nevertheless, these thought-forms will continue to grow and, as they do so, so the influence that their growth has on our lives will steadily increase through the years.   We will grow happier or unhappier with time depending upon what we’ve planted.

This is why we are advised by those who have mastered the art of living, if I might put it that way, the spiritual masters of old plus modern day teachers such as the Dalai Lama that we should be ‘mindful.’  We should be ‘aware.’  We should monitor our thoughts and be careful what we think.   But how many of us do this?

Do you think, or are you being thought?

Another point about thought and our thinking processes is that most people do very little real thinking.  By thinking, I’m talking about directed thought; thought created and channeled towards a purpose.   Writing a letter, or composing an email is directed thought.  Listening intently is directed thought.    Day dreaming whilst listening to one’s Ipod is not directed thought.

Having a series of thoughts enter our awareness from a mind-stream whilst our attention is pulled this way and that by whimsical half-hearted attention is not thinking.   Listening to our own habitual undisciplined verbiage is not thinking.  This, oh so common, ‘mind chatter’ has been likened to a monkey which jumps from one tree branch to another, drawn first by this thought, then that, then another, and so on.  This is not real thinking.   We are simply immersed and identifying with a flow.   We’re reacting to whatever idea arises.    Ask a person involved in such ‘automated attention’ what they were thinking and they probably won’t remember. “Oh, nothing much.” they might say.   Yet the emotional aspects of such thinking are sinking down.   Even from this sort of shallow thinking seeds are dropped.  One or two or even dozens, won’t count for much.   But we often think the same types of thoughts thousands, even hundreds of thousands of times.   Most of us tend to daydream along the same lines of thought, perhaps for years, even decades.    How many drops of water need to drip on a stone before an indentation is made?   Such continuity can result in “beliefs carved into stone.”

I’m sure all of us have watched a late night television show and then had the images of that show going around and around in our mind before we dropped off to sleep.  This is not thinking �" not the deliberate, creative thinking directed by ourselves.   This is more a passive, reactive experience much like watching the television show or film itself.   Nevertheless, the emotional scenes we react to are dropping their seeds into us.    They are helping form the patterns of our subconscious mind from which our reactions come.

Mind Matters Most.  It really does.  In this context we are talking about the control of our destinies.  

Habits form character, character determines choices, choices determine destiny

You think not!   I’m exaggerating?    We know that a single act repeated enough can become a habit.  We know that habits form character.  We know that our character determines our choices and our choices determine our destiny.   Our decisions are important for they are determined by our beliefs.  Our conscious choices come from our soul as it is now �" right at this moment �" our reactions come from something else again, our conditioned past.  Our reactions come not from us but from something which belongs to us �" our mind.  They come from images we have of ourselves, our conditioning, what we have built up.

But once again, we know from the works of such people as Dr. Maxwell Maltz and others that the self-image can be changed.    Our self-image sets the parameters of what and who we believe we are.  We always operate within our self-image.  But, to state it once more, the self-image can be changed.

Change our thoughts �" that is our habitual thoughts �" and we change our lives.  But in order to change our thoughts we have to know and understand our present-day thought patterns.   We need to know which avenues of thinking are beneficial to us and which are not.      An adequate level of self-understanding is essential if we are to choose wisely.   That is why it is imperative that we never stop learning about ourselves.