My waking thoughts on the untrained mind. There is a major crisis in the world that threatens our human spirit, creativity, growth, and our ability to love, love unconditionally our brothers and sisters of the human race.
The formula is simple, yet it’s the most difficult to accomplish because of our conditioning, programming and beliefs.
We live in a world with people who have been able to master their mental capacity (our ultimate goal in life), and those who have not (the untrained mind) which is where most of us fall into.
What is alarming about living with and from an untrained mind is its limited capacity for growth and creation. It is mostly stagnant, forever repeating itself, goes around in circles except with new characters. It has an ultimate end point or limit or ceiling. There will come a point in one’s life where their untrained mind will not be able to take them any further than they are unless they are willing to change it.
It is often unwilling to change, fearful of change or fearful of the unknown. It repeats itself because it is what is known and predictable.
Here is how it works: The untrained mind makes impressions in life of everything it encounters. Some impressions are more impressionable than others. The more value or importance we give to an object, person, or experience the more impressionable or importance we place on that thing; the more we are likely to remember that thing (good or bad, happy or sad).
For example, we go about our daily lives and things impress us or not. Let’s say we discover new restaurant, we try it out, and we like it. Well we are more likely to recommend that restaurant to others or return because it made a good impression. Similarly, if our impression of the restaurant was not good, we would not likely return or recommend it. Simple, right?
We trust our impressions and stay true to them in many such situations like restaurants, stores, etc. Our impressions in these situations help to make or keep things stable and predictable. They help us to organize our lives.
With people, it’s not so simple. Yet we apply the same principle to them in an attempt to make sense of our world and keep it simple. You see, as human beings we are not as static as a restaurant or store. We are forever changing, learning, growing, experiencing, etc., and the person we were yesterday is not identical to the person we are today, because we’ve aged, we learned many things, we had many experiences big or small that changed us ever so subtly; some of us have experienced major and massive life experiences and changes in just one day.
So why then do we hold on to and maintain the images and impressions we made of people in the past to the present day and their present existence. Let’s say I met someone many years ago that made me angry for some reason or another and I made an impression of that person as arrogant and full of themselves and intimidating, etc.; I will not likely spend a lot of time with that person if I had a choice.
Let’s say that person continued to be part of my life somehow and every time I saw them, I saw this angry, arrogant, intimidating person. Would that original impression I made of them continue to be true today? The answer is, “no”. However, my untrained mind projects that image onto that person every time I see them and doesn’t allow me to see them any other way.
Since the time that person made that impression on me so many things have changed in both of us. Yet, my mind only sees and recalls that original impression. My untrained mind robs me of vision, and growth and holds me back and prevents me from seeing the growth of that individual, and allow growth in myself. If I was not aware of this, I would go to my grave believing in an impression I made of that person and never see the real person behind the image and impression I made of them.
Many people live their entire lives in this way, believing in the images and impressions they made of people and things and events, and not allowing themselves to see any other way. It is the biggest self limiting mind trap there is, that we fall into every day and become a victim of.
Our ultimate goal in life is to gain control of our mental capacity, not to continuously prove or invest in our beliefs which are false anyway. Believe it or not. I invite you to test this out yourself. Think of someone you hold a grudge for or someone you can’t stand for whatever reason. Think of why you feel the way you do, and consider seeing that person in another way, from another vantage point.
Think of it this way, if your beliefs of that person were true, then everyone in the entire world would see them the same way you do. That is simply not true and will not ever be true.
You will likely find your mind resisting this concept because our untrained minds do not like to be challenged or outed. Its only job is preservation and dwelling on things in the past. It truly stunts our growth and robs us of the endless possibilities life has to offer. Rescue yourselves from this self inflicted trap.
