What is Mind?

The Mind: A Powerful Tool

The mind is an extraordinary instrument, intricately woven into the fabric of our conscious awareness from the very beginning of our existence within reality. It serves as a crucial administrator, managing a vast, interconnected network of memories that document our life’s experiences.

The Mind as an Administrator

The mind’s role as an administrator involves cataloging each unique experience into memories. These memories are rich with information, encompassing feelings, emotions, thoughts, sensory perceptions, and the outcomes of actions taken during the experiences. This complex network of information allows us to identify various environments, people, places, communication methods, and potential hazards within our reality.

Building a Map of Reality

By utilising this extensive knowledge, the mind assists us in navigating life. It creates a map of reality based on our accumulated experiences. For instance, the mind can prompt us to adopt certain behavioural patterns in different settings. In a professional environment like an office, civility may be expected among co-workers whilst at a social gathering with friends, a more relaxed demeanour might be acceptable.

Practical Application of the Mind’s Processes

The mind constantly processes sensory information from the world—sight, touch, smell, hearing, and taste—against the data stored in our memory network, often at a subconscious level. When matches are found, the mind recalls the summary information from the memory or memories that contain matches and, if necessary, provides instructions, warnings, or initiates behavioural patterns that you have previously concluded are best for that particular situation.

Example: Learning from Experience

Consider the experience of touching a hot stove. The first time a child encounters a hot stove, they may lack the knowledge of its dangers and touch it, resulting in pain. This painful experience is stored in memory. If the child encounters a stove again, or anything that resembles a hot stove, the mind identifies it as a hazard based on the previous memory. This memory triggers various responses which may be in the form of logical thoughts, emotive reactions like fear, or physical responses, any of which acts to deliver a clear message: DANGER – DO NOT TOUCH THE STOVE.

The Evolution of the Mind’s Capabilities

As the mind develops and gathers more information about reality, it integrates this knowledge into a more complex set of understandings. The simple response of staying away from a hot stove evolves into more sophisticated behaviours, such as turning the stove off, allowing it to cool, and then cleaning it safely—actions that adults routinely perform after cooking.

The Mind as an Automatic Response System

Over a life time, the mind becomes an even more powerful tool, capable of responding automatically to repetitive events and experiences. This allows your conscious awareness to focus on present experiences, while the mind handles familiar tasks on autopilot. By doing so, we can conserve conscious energy for new and significant experiences, leveraging the mind’s capabilities to efficiently manage routine tasks and scan for dangers or opportunities based upon the information we are receiving through our physical senses. 

The Mind in relation to the Self.

One way to view your mind in relation to your self, is that your mind is a part of your consciousness that your develop to act on your behalf as you go about your business of living within reality. Your mind is part of you, but you are not your mind. You can program your mind, change your mind or overrule the actions that your mind is compelling you to take. The major point here is, ultimately, you control your mind and how it functions to serve you. Click here to read more about the mind in relation to your Self.