The “mind” is a compilation of all of our experiences that are recorded in machine–like fashion. This meticulous recording orders and combines all the sensations, emotions, attitudes, mental states, behaviors, thoughts, and fantasies/imaginations that make up a given experience. From the sum total of these experiences, the mind generates certain organizing principles that enable it to analyze, explain, and rationalize the experiences in ways that optimally preserve and protect its survival.
These explanations and rationalizations are conceptualized in the form of a voice–over “story” that constructs a self-identity (based on the past) that separates and distinguishes us from others, that creates an experience of self-importance and self esteem, and from which the mind decides how to be in the future so as to protect its self-esteem best. This story determines how we perceive, identify, and interpret new events in our lives. Each of our uniquely organized patterns and contents of mind is our “point of view,” the particular place from which we view the world. This process is automatic and machine–like even though, at times, it appears to be animated and full of excitement. This point of view gives the individual the illusion that he “knows” why events occur and the “whys” are almost always are seen as existing outside the control of the individual.
The ongoing accumulation of experiences, each organized according to previously existing patterns, results in most people’s lives being a monument to the past. Behavior-based on prior experiences is evoked automatically, and the individual plays out his action with no awareness that he is simply repeating earlier patterns of behavior with those minor variations that make it appropriate to current conditions. In this way the mind function acts out a dedication to its own survival, a survival of what has already been stored and concluded.
Some of the common attitudes and activities associated with the protection of identity include (i) the need to be right while making others wrong, (ii) the need to dominate the situation while reducing the effect of others, (iii) the need for self-justification that results in the invalidation of the ideas of others, and (iv) the sense of self-righteousness that provides an illusion of survival. Self-righteousness, for example, can take various forms, such as the attitudes that “I am poorer than thou;” “I'm more stupid than thou,” and “I'm more tragic than thou.” It generates a kind of reverse superiority.
How we perceive the world is a function of psychic principles that have been unconsciously organized from decisions and rationalizations we have made from earlier experiences in our lives. Collectively, these principles are called the mind. Using these principles, the mind unconsciously imparts meaning and understanding to and interpretations of our day–to–day experiences. The mind organizes the memory of our experiences, together with all of the accompanying sensations, emotions, attitudes, thoughts, fantasies and imaginings in a chronological format, then conceptualizes this chronology in the form of a “story.” This story is greatly influenced by our biases, perspectives, prejudices, judgments, complexes, fears, beliefs, and insecurities that also have been formed, for the most part, unconsciously. From these conceptualizations the mind constructs a point of view that determines how we will respond in the future to those situations, circumstances, and conditions that are in any way like the memory of our previous experiences maintained by the mind. And how we respond is how we show up.
Thus, our perception of what we call reality is automatic and machine–like, embedded in the past. For most of us, despite our animated behavior and what appears to be our aliveness, as we stand in the present, our behavior is grounded in the past, a monument to yesteryear. It is from this place that each projects our point of view. We are not at choice about having a point of view. We all have it; it’s automatic, and for better or worse, it is what it is.
Quantum physics tells us that our intention—the thoughts we direct by our will toward the achievement of a particular goal or result—is a well–ordered, highly coherent energy surge that contains information. Our intention maintained a sustained by the dominant thoughts in our mind. The brain is recognized as a transducer that transmits our intentions and receives energy transmitted by others. We can consciously use our intention to create a shift in our point of view and how we experience life and relate to others.
Our overriding need is to transform our protective point of view so that we can interpret, characterize, and conceptualize our environment in a manner that empowers us to see the potential for our vision to evolve out of the present environment. This seeing is the ability to appreciate the latent potential of the moment.