the mind Essay -- essays research papers

Free Your Mind - Free Your Life. Escape entrapment by developing: thought emotion, and communication. Clear out your mental garbage and Develop new ways of thinking. Avoid being overwhelmed - by your emotions or by another's. Be in control of your feelings and be in control your life. Renew your mind and renew your existence. We are trapped within our minds within our universes. Like the maker of the computer who becomes controlled by his creation, we as spiritual beings have become entrapped within our own creations - our minds. Developed, like the computer, to free us from the tedium of routine existence, our minds have become our masters. Made originally for us to control, they now control us. Minds full of junk As beings living now, we have minds filled with junk - perhaps from many aeons ago. And ways of doing things that belong in the days of tooth and claw! We need to both clean out our minds, and remake new, more useful programs to help us live effectively and to continue our spiritual quest. Our minds contain thoughts, procedures and images - pictures, sounds, feelings and taste-smells. We think by following procedures we have developed - but probably long forgotten and long been unaware of. For example, in a phobic situation, we see something which we associate with some emotions and consequently behave in a certain way. In the phobic state the emotion is fear and the behaviour is probably escape or attack. In a phobia the thing we are afraid of is not a threat to the body. "Nothing is a threat to the spirit!" (Nothing is a threat to the spirit!) The fear is irrational or extreme. Even if we do not have phobias, the principle affects all of us. The way we think in phobicly does not help us at all. At the very most it is a relic from some past threat. Phobias are not usually big issues with many of us, but their principle affects us all, when we think of irrational nervousness in situations where there is no physical threat. And the same mechanism works whenever we loose control of ourselves, either due to extremely pleasurable or painful emotions. We react with too much emotion and overwhelm ourselves. When we hear speech in a certain tone, for example, and we note certain actions we might conclude that the other person doesn't like us, and we think we should get our own back. Mental program: ... When ... ...fainted in a certain situation. She could not recall the image she made in that situation - that frightened her so much she fainted. So Freud sent her back to that situation, with the instructions that she should remember the image this time! By becoming aware and confronting the image, the girl was able to overcome her fainting attacks! Making Progress In making our progress we need to clear the mind of old, useless thoughts. We need to be aware of them and deal with them appropriately. These thoughts can be mental images, sounds, etc, and also language. Our minds can generalise and the troublesome thinking might be extremely abstract generalisations. By clearing the mind of this debris and replacing old, useless procedures with useful ones we can begin to make spiritual progress, and begin to learn about our true nature. Minds are useful, but not minds filled with garbage. The answer isn't to throw out the mind, but to clean it up and put the right data in it this time! Freed of our fears and our excitements, we can begin to live live more fully and happily, attaining our goals for the benefit of all. We will also have removed some of the impediments to spiritual development.