The Conscious Mind

The Conscious Mind...

Experience is the product of the mind, the spirit, conscious thoughts and feelings, and unconscious thoughts and feelings. These together form the reality that you know. You are hardly at the mercy of a reality, therefore, that exists apart from yourself, or is thrust upon you, You are so intimate1y connected with the physical events composing your life experience that often you cannot distinguish between the seemingly material occurrences and the thoughts, expectations and desires that gave them birth. If there are strongly negative characteristics present in your most intimate thoughts, if these actually form bars between you and a more full life, still you often look through the bars, not seeing them. Until they are recognized they are impediments. Even obstacles have a reason for being. If they are your own, then it is up to you to recognize them and discover the circumstances behind their existence. Your conscious thoughts can be great clues in uncovering such obstructions. You are not nearly as familiar with your own thoughts as you may imagine. They can escape from you like water through your fingers, carrying with them vital nutrients that spread across the landscape of your psyche- - -and all too often carrying sludge and mud that clog up the channels of experience and creativity.

An examination of your conscious thoughts will tell you much about the state of your inner mind, your intentions and expectations, and will often lead you to a direct confrontation with challenges and problems. Your thoughts, studied, will let you see where you are going. They point clearly to the nature of physical events. What exists physically exists first in thought and feeling. There is no other rule.

You have the conscious mind for a good reason. You are not at the ´mercy´ of unconscious drives unless you consciously acquiesce to them. Your present feelings and expectations can always be used to check your progress. If you do not like your experience, then you must change the nature of your conscious thoughts and expectations. You must alter the kind of messages that you are sending through your thoughts to your own body, to friends and associates. Each thought has a result, in your terms. The same kind of thought, habitually repeated, will seem to have a more or less permanent effect. If you like the effect then you seldom examine the thought. If you find yourself assailed by physical difficulties, however, you begin to wonder what is wrong. Sometimes you blame others, your own background, or a previous life -- if you accept reincarnation. You may hold God or the devil responsible, or you may simply say, "That is life," and accept the negative experience as a necessary portion of your lot.

You may finally come to a ha1f-understanding of the nature of reality and wail, "1 believe that I have caused these ill effects, but I find myself unable to reverse them."
If this is the case, then regardless of what you have told yourself thus far, you still do not believe that you are the creator of your own expe- rience. As soon as you recognize this fact you can begin at once to alter those conditions that cause you dismay or dissatisfaction.

No one forces you to think in any particular manner. In the past you may have learned to consider things pessimistically. You may believe that pessimism is more realistic than optimism. You may even suppose, and many do, that sorrow is ennobling, a sign of deep spiritualism, a mark of apartness, a necessary mental garb of saints and poets. Nothing could be further from the truth. All consciousness has within it the deep abiding impetus to use its abilities fully, to expand its capacities, to venture joyfully beyond the seeming barriers of its own experience. The very consciousnesses within the smallest molecules cry out against any ideas of limitation. They yearn toward new forms and experiences. Even atoms, then, constantly seek to join in new organizations of structure and meaning. They do this "instinctively."

Man has been endowed, and has endowed himself, with a conscious mind to direct the nature, shape and form of his creations. All deep aspirations and unconscious motivations, all unspoken drives, rise up for the approval or disapproval of the conscious mind, and await its direction. Only when it abdicates its functions does it allow itself to become swayed by "negative" experience. Only when it refuses responsibility does it finally find itself at the seeming mercy of events over which it appears to have no control.
(thanks J&S)

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