How to Understand the MindA Quick Start Guide

By John R. Ewing, M.D.

A Spirit Lake Wellness, Inc Publication

copyright 2010Spirit Lake Wellness, IncBaraboo, WisconsinAll Rights Reserved.

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How to Understand The MindA Quick Start Guide

When we map out the events in a process, we understand it. Understanding the mind and our feel-ings can help us avoid a lot of misery.

As we map out the events in the mind we will discuss:

1. Consciousness: This is our personal series of experiences as we go from one moment to the next. We can direct our attention to various sensations, desires, and trains of thought. We can shift from being alert, fast and tightly focused. Or, we can slow down to a relaxed dreamy or even sleepy level of consciousness. We can focus on the outside world or on our inner thoughts.

2. Desire and Emotion: When sensations arrive on the surface of the brain, ripples spread out. Sensations result in trains of thought and perception. Growing sensations result in longer trains of thought. These plans and fantasies compete for our attention. Rejecting an idea can result in temp-tation. Waiting to act on an idea can result in an emotion which is a state of anticipation. We can learn to cultivate effective trains of thought and reduce our experience of frustration and sadness and enjoy more success and happiness.

It is helpful to think of the Universe as a series of events. Recurring events develop into patterns. We experience this activity as the objects and forces in the world around us. Describing the thought process leads to an understanding of the mind. We will chart out the life cycle of our trains of thought.

Our trains of thought and desires compete for our attention. Our sensations and percep-tions create a window to the outside world.

Thoughts come strung together like beads on a string.

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Let us Describe Consciousness:The basic event in the brain is the firing of a nerve cell. You can picture a nerve cell sitting in a chair. If it gets excited enough it stands up and sits back down.

Imagine the brain as an auditorium full of nerve cells each exciting its neighbors. If one stands up and sits down the nearby nerve cells are activated. The ripple of excitement spreads just like the wave of spectators rising up and sitting down travels around the sports stadium.

The brain can be visualized as a wrinkled up hollow ball on a stick. The spinal cord goes up our neck into the stick like brainstem. The wrinkled up hollow ball is the cortex (cortex means cover-ing like the peel of an orange).

Lets inflate the hollow ball of the mind to smooth out the wrinkles. Our trains of thought ripple across the surface. Imagine yourself standing on a platform on the top of the stick-like brainstem. The platform is inside the hollow ball of the cortex.

You are holding a flashlight and as you shine it around in the hollow ball of the cortex it enables you to be aware of what is going on in that part of the mind that is now illuminated by the light of your awareness.

The trains of thought are spreading out in ripples inside the hollow cortex. The flashlight of our attention flashes off and on rapidly. Each flash freezes and captures one picture after another as we tune in a movie like fantasy or plan and experience a train of thought.

Ripples spread across the surface of the cortex as trains of thought develop.

If we expand the brain, we see it as a hollow ball on a stick.

We shine our awareness inside the mind.

cortex

brainstemcortex

brainstem

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Each flash produces a slice of awareness. When we slice vegetables we hear shush, shush, shush as each slice is formed. Or, in the case of a radar or sonar we hear “ping” then “blip”.

The radar acts like the brain stem and sends out the flash of illumination. The sky is the cortex, the hollow ball of the mind in which we experience our world. Each ping and blip makes a slice of awareness.

Con is to steer and scious is to slice. Thus con-scious-ness translates literally “to steer our slice.” We experience these slices of perception as a movie-like stream of sensations and ideas. Con-sciousness is the process of the brainstem interacting with the cortex.

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* The Brainstem pings and the cortex blips back producing a slice of awareness.

*The cortex “blips” produce the large discharges we can measure as brainwaves.

* Slow brainwaves are associated with sleep. Faster brainwaves signal that we are awake.

This is a picture of the brain upside down. The spinal cord (on top) goes to the brainstem. Sensa-tions arrive on the inside surface of the hollow ball or cortex. The perspective of our consciousness is as if we were sitting on a swing below the brainstem looking toward the back of the brain.

The lens in the eye flips the image upside down and the nerves carry it to the back of the brain. The perspective of the self is thus to view the images from the eye as if they were shown on an upside down big screen TV in the back of our head with two speakers up and to the sides. This is our view of the outside world.

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We can use symbols to represent our desires. Many desires compete for our attention.

When we are awake we look out at the outer world as if through a big round window. Occasion-ally we pull our attention inside and tune in to one of our desires as represented by the smaller symbols on the same side as the window to the outer world. If we spend too much time inside our minds daydreaming someone might say “Hey, pull your head out.”

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We can focus our attention on events in the past and think about what we could have done. We can think about the future and worry about what might be. We know people who live in the past. Some people are so worried about the future that they can’t enjoy the present.

The only thing that is real is the present moment. This is why one basic approach to wisdom is to be here now in the present moment.

Our memories of the past are reconstructed movies. They may be useful but they are not real. Memories are maps. Some are useful and can help us go where we want.

Our perception of the future is just a movie. It may be particularly useful when crossing the street in heavy traffic. Some of our maps of the future are illusions that bring no happiness. Some bring happiness but bear no fruit.

Once you recognize that memories and perceptions are just maps you can choose the ones you want to use more wisely.

You can choose when you want to get caught up in these trains of thought and you can choose how much to get involved in them.

The ripples of the day’s events are gradually encoded into the nerve cell networks. Then, like a tuning fork, they resonate and rise up from the background and we are able to remember things from the distant past when similar events call them forth.

Every once in a while we see something good happen and this can become a special type of memory; an Ideal. We pick up our ideals through our experiences and they become our goals and the target of our desires.

Trains of thought as memories and perceptions give us a sense of time.

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Here is Amoeba man in the desert.

Special memories can become our ideals.

Sensations evoke a series of Ideals.

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Just as sensations lead to a series of ideas we experience as perceptions, desires evoke a series of ideas in a fantasy or plan to get what we want.

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When we are not busy we tune in to our most intense desire. Our desires often ham it up and use props like Amoeba Man’s sword, shield, campaign hat, and background music. Our other desires insert their comments and ideas.

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If we decide not to act on an idea, we come up with a new plan and we experience this process as temptation and rationalization.

Hmmmm... we like the new idea.

Secondary evaluation is when we consciously think about something. Primary evaluation is when we act out of habit.

This is the temptation and rationalization loop. This shows how our desires can result in a recy-cling of our trains of thought. Temptation persists until the sensation fades or until we switch to a new ideal.

Here is the new idea or temptation.

We may decide to not act.

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It is ten miles to the mountain and Amoeba Man is pretty good at walking. He can go on autopilot. The Act loop enables us to act out of habit. If all goes well we can think about other things. If the unexpected arises it pulls us out of our daydreams and our attention snaps back to what we are doing.

Primary evaluation lets us act out of habit. We put one foot in front of the other and walk along without really thinking about it.

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He sees the dragon, stops daydreaming and starts paying attention.

While acting out of habit, we may view other trains of thought.

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We might think about what went wrong while we hear the looming doom “on the way to the Prin-cipal’s office” music. Meanwhile our ever supportive inner chorus sings our “Doom Song”.

While we wait, we can’t decide what to do. We are getting ready to run. We imagine the drag-on’s hot breath consuming our body.

Our heart speeds up, we get tense, our consciousness speeds up, we have feelings!

We are waiting. We are anticipating.

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An Emotion is an internal process similar to a state of anticipation. If we change a step in the process we change how we feel.

The sequence of events in an emotion is:A: an event.B: an evaluation, which consists of a train of thought.C: the feeling (or state of anticipation).

For Example: We look at our gas gauge and it shows 1/8th of a tank. It is not seeing that we have only 1/8th of a tank of gas that makes us feel as we do.

We evaluate the situation and are lost somewhere in South Dakota in a winter storm with no lights in sight, no cellphone, no money, and no coat or blanket. We might feel a sense of dread.

We evaluate the situation and realize we have plenty of time and money and an open gas station is nearby. We are not at all upset.

Events do not make us feel as we do. It is our evaluation, the material in our train of thought, that results in our feelings.

Attitudes result from habits in our thinking. This results in our seeming to jump from the event to the feeling. An Attitude is:A: an eventC: the feeling

We still use the train of thought but out of habit do so rapidly and often without conscious aware-ness.

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We absorb a lot of beliefs and assumptions from the world around us. Some of these were learned years ago and are hidden within layers of habit and attitude. Many of these beliefs and assump-tions work well for us. There are a few however that cause a lot of unnecessary misery. We can describe a method for finding the hidden beliefs and assumptions in our trains of thought. When we update our thinking habits or attitudes, we begin to avoid unnecessary misery.

There is a type of journaling where you let your candid thoughts spill out on the left half of the page and then rewrite the statements using more effective ideas and language. Episodes of unhap-piness are good hunting grounds for ineffective beliefs and assumptions. On the left you write down what happened and below this you write down what you said to your-self in that train of thought. Then you write down how you felt. All of this is written on the left so you can update your self talk on the right side of the page.

Any episode of unhappiness is a hunting ground for ineffective beliefs and assumptions that can be updated.

Writing helps us to slow down our trains of thought so we can be aware of our hidden assumptions.

Updating How You Think Changes How You Feel.

Sample journal sheet:

What Happened: What a camera would see:I went out to go to work The car would not startAnd the Car would not start`````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````What I said to myself about it: Updated Self Talk:1. Piece of crud car. Come on darn it. 1. This is not what I expected2. Oh, no. This is terrible 2. This is highly inconvenient3. Now I’ll never get to work 3. I may be late for work4. I am so fired 4. I will look better if I call in5. I am such a loser 5. How can I avoid this inconvenience6. I am doomed 6. This is a little setback7. I’m going to lose everything 7. I may have to delay getting stuff8. I might as well go live under the bridge 8. Let’s see, what are my options9. Argghh 9. Hmm`````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````How I felt: Updated Feeling: Despair, Rage, Fear Mildly disappointed

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1. In debating the first statement imagine a piece of crud in one hand and the car in the other hand. Now squeeze. EWW, a completely different result. We can say “My car is not a piece of crud”. When we think about our car we think about a shiny box with wheels going down the road not sitting in our driveway making ever slower grinding starter noises. What we mean is, “This is unexpected.”2. “Oh No, This is terrible” The unconscious mind brings up images of burning buildings washed into giant cracks in the earth accompanied by screaming. What we mean is that “this is highly inconvenient”.3. “Now I’ll never get to work”. Our unconscious mind brings up images of an invisible wall around the workplace guarded by evil fairies who somehow misdirect us and keep us from getting to work because “They” hate us and the Universe delights in our frustration and doom. What we really mean is that “we may be late”.

Changing a habit takes practice. Looking at the right half of the page and imagining yourself us-ing the more effective thinking helps you to remember it. When you use a more effective way of thinking under stress you are immediately rewarded by feeling less upset.

Old habits often come back when we are busy and distracted. With ongoing practice we can reap enough rewards from new habits that they will displace the old. This enables us to gradually trans-form into a happier and more effective person who is more likely to understand what they want and how to get it.

Common ineffective assumptions : I need approval to be happy Fear is terrible. Worrying about things makes us safer Failure is terrible Blaming helps erase consequences Beating yourself up makes you a better person You have to control anger with willpower Others must see that I am nearly always right

ConclusionYou can update the beliefs and assumptions in your trains of thought and feel better. You can slow yourself down and relax or you can speed yourself up. Your trains of thought are movies, they are not real. They are maps. The present moment is real. If you find yourself upset, just pause for a moment and be here now. Enjoy the present. It is a gift.

Examples of Catastrophic Absolutistic words and some alternatives that expand our choices : Should I would prefer Must Not What I Expected Terrible, Awful Highly Unfortunate Have To Next time I would like to

Effective Thinking : Is likely to be true Keeps you safe Helps you get what you want Keeps you out of trouble with others Does not upset you

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The Human Operating System consists of several channels within which desire based fantasies are constructed.

Each channel has several loops.

The “Not Act”, “Wait”, and “Act” loops combined form the flowchart of the Thought Process.

Our Stream of Consciousness results from switching between channels of various desires, perceptions, and sensations.

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The flowchart shows the life cycle of our trains of thought. Primary evaluation is what we do out of habit. Secondary evaluation is when we think about what to do.

We look out at the world around us and our trains of thought com- pete for our attention.

Our inner world is populated by desire. It is a large and important dimension of our being.