Find Your Way, Part 9… The Conditioned Mind

The brain / mind 

Learning more about the functioning of the brain (often expressed as the hardware) and the mind (often expressed as the software), can help you to better understand how patterns have evolved and influenced the formation of your beliefs and how you see things.    

If you are looking to improve how you experience and feel the gift of this wondrous life and planet, it is helpful to be prepared with what may be inhibiting that. 

As we look to how our mind’s development has helped our survival, it also highlights how it has limited us. 

Let’s look at some key mind functions that may help explain why.    

Our early brains, the amygdala (fight, flight, freeze, fawn response) helped us to respond in the face of danger for our survival. This was relevant when there was real fear because there was real life threatening danger! These same physiological reactions are still prevalent in our lives today no matter the type of danger; perceived or real. 
 
It explains how in times of anxiety and stress, our negative bias that worked to protect us in the past, is now making it difficult for our nervous and other systems, to regulate.    

During the early formation of societies (stemming from the ‘hunter and gathers’ era) men were considered providers and leaders, while women as carers and home makers. It satisfied the basic needs of that time, however it was also the start to some deeply gendered perspectives that have been passed on throughout generations through governments, religions, institutions, economies, cultures.

It explains how these traditional gendered roles have become embedded in our societies and how far we have moved from seeing gender (as a balance of both masculine and feminine qualities) in everything around us. 

As humans we are social beings in need of connection, hence when we feel isolated or alone, we find groups who share some form of common to fill the gap.
 
It explains the deep and important role of nature in our lives, and how people may even compromise themselves to feel part of something. 

The ongoing development of our intellect and insights into our whole brain function, has resulted in a high level capacity for learning, planning, recalling, creating, imagining, feeling, sensing. We have evolved strategies for problem solving and setting goals for success. 

It also helps explain the reason for our minds becoming overly busy, which can have a ripple effect on other aspects such as our mood, sleep patterns, and ability to function. Time spent on worry and anxiety affects the mind’s ability to imagine and feel calm and at peace. 

Our brain’s ability to find meaning, has helped us to explore what is taking place inside (emotions and feelings) and outside of us (situations and triggers). It helps us to piece together information to make sense of things. 

Finding meaning also helps explain how it is possible to make assumptions (perceived as truths), and arrive at judgement, opinions, labels and more. It is the reason that our thoughts are not necessarily true.  

Our brain’s ability to create routines, provides us with a sense of certainty, which is something needed for humans, given uncertainty is one of human’s most significant fears. Developing routines creates order in our lives, and is helpful for our health and wellness.
 
It may also help to explain how we form routines that become fixations, attachments, addictions and obsessions, and in an indirect way, have us feel we can control outcomes. Evidence shows that for many, our brains can easily form habits.   

The function of our RAS (reticular activating system) helps us to sort and organise and swiftly pin point and hone in on single objects, which can significantly lessen overwhelm.

It may also help explain the reason we find it challenging to see things that go against our beliefs, rules and assumptions. The RAS will gravitate to evidence that supports what we currently see. 

Our ability to adapt helps us to change, and to compensate when we lose a particular function. It contributes to living life, still capable of functioning such as when our bodies can adapt after having a stroke.
 
It also helps explain negative adaptations such as changes in our brains capacity to focus (on our screens and devices), which in 2004 was 2 1/2 minutes, by 2012 was 75 seconds and by 2020 it was 47 seconds. Dr Gloria Mark published a book called Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity, which highlights the long term impact of this particular adaptation. 

We have a capacity for self awareness through introspection, compassion and reflection which has enabled us to step outside of ourselves to broaden our perspectives and live in harmony with others. 

It helps explain how people who have become separated from nature, close their minds and hearts to the deeper needs and wants of others and the environment, and can no longer see the value or beauty of what they offer.  

Our capacity to tap into a consciousness with frequencies and vibrations beyond what we can see, helps us to receive wisdom and insights in diverse ways. 

It helps explain how when our mind is preoccupied, busy or closed, our senses are unable to tap into or access the quiet and unseen. 

So the very things that have helped us survive, have also led us further away from living as our true selves. 

What have you noticed about your own personal functioning?

Your conditioning 

As children, we looked to our caregivers for guidance and direction, unaware that they too were influenced by their own traumas or difficult circumstances, and formed beliefs and rules about life (family, work, parenting and more) from the messages, stories and words, that they were told. 

Your conditioning is based on how things were brought to you. For example you may have been directly told, or it was inferred (actions or how you saw things) that you were superior because you were tall, clever, funny, brown eyed, anglo Saxon. Or that you deserve to be rich, have a good job, be the leader, power over others, because of it. 

Or it could have been the opposite. 

No matter which, no matter how they were created, no matter if they were true or not, they became part of your reality. They became embedded in your biology, physiology, psychology, neurology. 

And as a child, you can only process at the level of your brain’s development at that time. In other words, you did your best to make sense of things, with what you had! 

And then it depended on your own personal characteristics and personality as to what you did with that information. For some it may have been to accept and comply and for others it may have been to question and oppose. Or it may be something else.  

How did you go about things in response? How did that affect your life?

These indirect learnings when you were a child, are usually not conscious to you, yet they (the embedded rules, beliefs, myths) still exist and affect what you bring and pass on to others.  

While details of the memories may fade, the patterns of behaviours and stories evolve, continue and get stronger. 

You could say they have become your own personal algorithm that you live by, without even knowing! When you don’t ever revisit or see whether those embedded beliefs or rules still work or align, you may continue to be carrying the things that you are in a personal battle with… 

Looking back to my own parenting, I carried my beliefs and many behaviours that I was unaware of. 
While my intention was to be a good parent, I know now that many of my actions did not yield the outcome I had intended.
 
I may have been ‘nice’, but I may not have shared my true feelings, I may have been helpful, but I may not have taught some necessary skills, I may have been loyal but I may not have confronted what was harmful, I may have managed things, but I may not have given enough time to what mattered.
 
I am now discovering the impact and harm this has had on my children because of it. I can’t change the past, however by understanding and resolving things within myself, I bring more of this self to my next moments with them. 
Over time, as I better understand and resolve more parts, there is hope for even more healing.  

What stories were you told as a youngster?

Conditioned mind markers 

Nigel and I looked closely at some common patterns of behaviour, language, thoughts and approaches commonly used in the societies we live, and noticed the flaws based on many of the inconvenient truths about our mind’s development.  

It became clear how human vulnerabilities provided ways for economies to benefit. Humans showed they could be manipulated to obey or to buy, or to comply without challenge, or be convinced that something that harms, can be good for you.  

We noticed it in our own narratives and we observed it in the narratives of others. We called these conditioned behaviours, ‘red’ behaviours. 

While these red patterns are common to humans (because of our evolution), the situations, contexts and reasons for their use, are unique to each of us. 

As we have unconsciously collected and accepted these ‘red’ patterns, words, thoughts, actions and approaches, an important step is to notice them.  

What do you notice in yourself or others? 

This is not to judge, punish or blame. 

It is to honestly and openly observe. In time these provide clues to better understand yourself and the unhelpful beliefs you may hold.

Fixate – where you lock into a belief or rule as a truth and remain closed to anything else.   

Blame – where you isolate the cause to something that you or others have been responsible for, which is not the whole picture.  

Judge – where you compare yourself to others or the reverse, in relation to what you or others say, do, feel.    

Harm – where you inflict hurt on yourself or others. 
 
Expect – where you anticipate outcomes based on what you believe should happen. 

Deserve – where you feel entitled to something because of what you believe.  
 
Overdo- where you feel the need to gain more, bringing your life out of balance 

Give to receive – where you or others do things because you / they want something back in return  

Wear a mask – where you cover up and don’t share your true feelings or the whole picture  
 
Please  – where you present in a nice or positive way to avoid repercussions or you believe it is safer  
 
Blindly trust – where you trust based on convenience or inconvenience without questioning what lies behind it 
 
Comply – where you obey, bring blind loyalty or respect, doing what is told without question or honest expression 

Label – where you give yourself or others a label that may not tell the whole story 
   
Strive to win – where the purpose is to win. Where the prize is seen as the holy grail despite the harm to you or others along the way 

Hoard – where you collect things you no longer need or use for fear of missing out

Coerce – where you use opinions as facts to convince others and gain more followers or support 

Follow –  where you seek groups to band together on issues to feel part of something
 
Resent – where you hold on to past hurts because of the stories you repeat 
 
Put down – where you use hurtful words, expressions or humour to shame or humiliate 

Give away your freedom – where you surrender to those who you believe have more control or power over you 

What do you see is the reason, we have named them ‘red behaviours’? 

A clue lies in how you feel when you ‘gave or received’ any of these ‘red behaviours.’ 

Just notice. 

Let any natural questions arrive in you.  

The new relationship with your conditioning (ego)

The nature of evolution and your conditioning is like a web woven amongst your unique self and the situations you have lived in. It highlights a very important point; you don’t need fixing, you are not broken. 

Rather you are the byproduct of the entanglement of this evolution. 

Knowledge and our circumstances have become familiar sounding voices (like a comfortable ‘friend’) and our egos have done their best to protect us to survive.

We are however, at a point in our historical evolution where we have the capacity to better understand how we have traces of both darkness and lightness. 

Perhaps it is just in time…  

To stop running from ourselves, and instead seek ways and tools to see and do things differently. 

We have wanted our beliefs to be true, however as the philosopher Saanen stated in 1980, that until the imbalance that exists from the corruption of the ego ‘mind’, the freedom needed for us to live fully and survive as humans will evade us .

How do you recognise when your mind is tricking you?