Typically we are so accustom to the flow of thoughts, emotions, and sensations that we rarely stop to look at them individually, to greet each with the openness that we would offer a stranger.
- More often than not, our experiences past through our awareness more or less as mental, emotional, and sensory aggregates.
- This tendency to roll many different stands of experience into a single package represents the normal operation of the human mind.
- Our brains are constantly processing multiple streams of information through our sense organs, evaluating them against past experience, and preparing the body to respond in certain ways.
- For example – releasing adrenaline into the bloodstream to heighten awareness and potentially situations.
- At the same time, areas of the brain associated with memory and planning start spinning out thoughts.
- They are typically colored by some sort of feeling that is usually unpleasant.
- Because the areas associated with reason, memory, and planning are closely linked with the areas that generate emotional responses (whatever thoughts arise)
- For the most part, these processes occur spontaneously beyond the range of ordinary consciousness.
Re-source: Reevaluate
Less than one percent of the information our brain receives through the senses actually reaches our awareness. The brain competes for limited resources of attention, sifting out what it judges as unnecessary and honing in on what appears to be important.
- In general, this is quite a useful arrangement. If we were acutely conscious of every stage of the process involved, an activity as simple as walking from room to another, we would be so quickly overcome by the details (lifting one foot and setting down another, small changes in the room, levels of sound, and so on) that probably wouldn’t get very far. And if we did manage to get to the next room, we might not remember what we wanted to do when we arrived.
- The disadvantage of this arrangement, however, lies in the fact that at the end of mistaking a very small fraction of our moment by moment experience for the whole.
- This can cause problems when we are faced with an uncomfortable situation of a strong emotion.
- Our attention fixes on the most intense aspect of whatever we are experiencing
- physical pain, the experience of being late, the embarrassment of failing an exam, the grief of losing a friend.
In general, our mind spins in one of two directions when faced with such situations – we try to escape or we become overwhelmed.
- Our experience appears to us as either an enemy or by completely taking over our thoughts
- like a boss.
craving and resource from ““Joyful Wisdom” – embracing change and finding freedom – by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche with Eric Swanson