Awareness of the Mind Stream
This refers to the psychological layer of the pyramid. Have you ever stopped for a moment and paid attention to your inner experience? Our inner experience consists of thoughts, emotions and sense perceptions. Have you noticed that a very high proportion of our day-to-day thinking is completely useless? If I asked you what percentage of your daily thoughts were not really of any use to you whatsoever, what number would you give? 50%? 70%? I would suggest that it’s even higher than you might think, perhaps even 90%. Going even further, a very high proportion of this useless thinking is actually extremely harmful to us.
Our brains are very powerful biological habit-forming computers and left to their own devices, will run out of control with devastating consequences. Would you ever get in your car and start driving without any hands on the wheel and with your eyes closed? No of course, you wouldn’t. But this is what we are doing when we allow the mind to operate on its own without any level of ‘Awareness’.
The mind forms habits which are essentially revolving patterns of thought that are automatically repeated over and over. What is happening in the brain during this process? Thoughts are electrical impulses travelling down the length of a neuron and every time a set of neurons fires off in a certain pattern, the pathways become stronger. If a neural pathway becomes stronger, it has a tendency to fire off more often. You can imagine these patterns as grooves in your mind and the more you send thoughts down the grooves, the deeper they get. After a while it becomes almost impossible to stop a particular thought pattern or thinking process.
Try this little exercise: at random times during the day. Suddenly become aware of what you are thinking about, and what you have been thinking about for the last few minutes. When you become aware of your thoughts, ask yourself this: are your thoughts useful? Are you perhaps thinking about the things you have to do today or tomorrow, a presentation that is due in the morning, or perhaps you need to go shopping later? On the other hand, are the thoughts very negative? Are you annoyed with something, frustrated with someone? Perhaps you are angry at events that are happening in the world or maybe someone at work has caused you some problems? Or perhaps you are afraid of something? Anxiety is one of the most common forms of suffering. Have you been locked in a negative mind stream that you were completely unaware of? This is exactly how we suffer, from a psychological perspective.
Our day-to-day mind stream is very closely linked to how we are actually feeling throughout the day, due to what is called the ‘emotional cycle’. Our thinking processes are directly responsible for the emotions that we feel. You might have previously thought that it is the external circumstances in your life that are causing your emotions, but take a closer look. The external circumstances are just the triggers. The emotions that you feel are coming directly from your thinking habits.
Both the mind stream and the emotional cycle are created from our past emotional traumas and past thinking patterns. We tend to get locked in cycles of negative thinking, which create negative emotions, which in turn create more negative thinking. As events happen in our lives, these negative thinking patterns and emotions may well encourage us to react badly and the more we react badly to our life circumstances, the more negative situations tend to occur. This is a cycle of suffering that we are powerless to stop unless we become aware of the mind stream.
We have a conscious thought process and we have a subconscious which is outside of our conscious experience. Our personalities are formed by laying down memories in our subconscious. Over time, the subconscious mind becomes a large pile of memories all piled on top of each other and, if it is left to its own devices, it can get messy and very painful. When memories are laid down, they are always laid down in the present moment, as it is always now. Whenever we experience an event, we experience it in the present, and it gets laid down in memory immediately in the present moment. The more emotional the event is, the stronger the memory and negative experiences will always take precedence over the positive (This is an evolutionary survival tactic). The irony is that it is actually the subconscious mind that is producing the thoughts that we experience consciously in the first place (The conscious mind stream is generated by the subconscious mind). This can be a vicious circle or loop when we get trapped in cycles of negative thoughts and emotions.
How can we have any control over this? We CAN actually have the power to influence our own psychology if we take control of our inner experience in the present moment. This gives us the power to shape our future experiences. It is the thoughts in our conscious mind that are shaping our future experiences and, therefore, the first step in healing this layer is to become 'Aware of the Mind Stream'.
