Know Your Mind, Live Longer-Your Mysterious Mind And You

By Bernard Rourke

Newspapers and television stations constantly inform us of the benefits of looking after our body, but no one is teaching us about our mind and the benefits of knowing how it works.

This book takes you on a journey to discover what the mind is and how it works. You will come to appreciate why it is no longer a mystery but a wonderful instrument which evolution has produced to enable you to become the person you are.

Our minds are delicate, complicated and, at times, more troublesome than we would like, so we need all the help we can get if we are to learn how to live with it. Knowing how to look after it could lead to a more enjoyable and longer life. What more could one ask for!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: Aug 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463645079

Bernard Rourke

Newspapers and television stations constantly inform us of the benefits of looking after our body, but no one is teaching us about our mind and the benefits of knowing how it works. This book takes you on a journey to discover what the mind is and how it works. You will come to appreciate why it is no longer a mystery but a wonderful instrument which evolution has produced to enable you to become the person you are. Our minds are delicate, complicated and, at times, more troublesome than we would like, so we need all the help we can get if we are to learn how to live with it. Knowing how to look after it could lead to a more enjoyable and longer life. What more could one ask for!

Book preview

Our mind is so precious and powerful, yet we know nothing of how it works. We think of it as being shapeless and without substance, yet it creates and controls the person we become. How can this be?

Possessing knowledge about our body has enabled us to lead a healthier life-style and, when things have gone wrong with it, we have felt aware and involved in the mending process. This fact naturally inspires me to want to learn more about my mind so that, in times of change and need, I might be able to deal with mental issues in a more positive manner.

What exactly is my mind? Do I have effective input in the development of it or is it simply the end product of multiple forces that come to be invested in making me who I am? I know it guides and controls me when I sleep or am awake, and it handles every nuance of my nature without guidance from me. It preserves my memories, sanctions my emotions, exposes my character, displays my personality and, in a frightening way, is capable of revealing hidden depths which could range from kindness to murderous intent. In other words, it is the real me.

I feel now is the time to understand this mystery, to examine the mind’s origins, strengths and weaknesses, and to attempt to identify the processes by which it is possible for a thought to become a deed and for a deed to reveal the person. This is my journey seeking an understanding and connection with the human mind so that it may be understood and used more wisely.

Why rattle this particular cage now? Because I wish I had done it years ago.

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Section A

Initial Questions

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Chapter 1

What Exactly Is a ‘Mind’?

It is difficult trying to ‘visualise’ a human mind, which we normally consider to be an airy-fairy, nebulous item with no beginning or end, untouchable but undoubtedly there.

I can readily picture the brain inside my skull with its entangled tubes of tissue, blood vessels, cells etcetera: all visible and physical. Because it is physical, it will look the same whether I am alive or dead. But my Mind? That is something different, unless the brain and mind are one and the same thing. There is certainly some confusion in my mind at this point as to which does what.

The beating heart gives my body life, yet it is the mind that gives my life meaning. The healthy heart allows me to live, whereas my mind allows me to live as me.

Such statements only remind me how little I know about how my mind works. Since it plays such a powerful role in all our lives, I can only speculate that it must have substance of some description.

A body can survive without an active mind, whereas a mind cannot function without a living body. Maybe its prime function is to create energy and purpose in animate objects. I always imagined it existing as a partner with the brain, but have no idea of the working relationship.

We might consider the mind to be ‘consciousness’ or ‘awareness’, but these must surely be present in all life forms. Plants and trees have ‘life’ from humble beginnings, needing the correct sustenance to develop. They must possess some form of ‘mind’ which allows them to exist and co-habit in their special world.

We have seen television programmes demonstrating the ingenious methods they have evolved for ensuring growth, pollination, territorial strategies or even catching insects for survival. Ingenious behaviour usually stems from ingenious input. The plant world has male and female components and its development suggests mental ingenuity.

Who are we to claim that functional reasoning of any type only began with the arrival of the Animal Kingdom? Perhaps we should judge a ‘potential’ mind by what it achieves over time, and not what it appears to be in the present. After all, humans use intelligence, sight, sound, touch and smell to be aware. How many senses would plant life need?

Living things utilise many means to survive and thrive. Humans have ‘intelligence’ and the five senses. All of these sources centre in the head. The mind is the receiver, the controller, the director and the enforcer. It seems to demand and command, while giving the impression of being the one that serves. It leads us through life, yet we, the ordinary person, rarely bother to think what ‘it’ is or precisely how it is so successful – or otherwise. We constantly idolise the body and its potential, but almost completely neglect our mind. How typical. It is like concentrating on the wrapping of a present and ignoring the magical gift inside.

By one means or another, our mind has absorbed every strength and weakness we possess, as well as all that is good and bad about our person. It has matured a plethora of emotional levels without our permission, while still retaining the ability to render us mentally ill at a moment’s notice.

So much power, yet we know so little of its numerous sources of information, its means of direction and control, its plans for our future and whether we can influence any of these features.

The ever-present mystery surrounding the mind has enabled countless cultures and religions to proclaim it the possessor and protector of the soul, the spirit, the essence, the life force that is us. Add on further hearsay gifts such as telepathy, intuition, sixth sense, psychic phenomena, communion with the departed and a host of other capabilities about which there may be more hope than reality.

A mind that is all-capable and all-powerful in our lives is a living entity which, no matter what we may think, essentially controls us. When we are giving it simple instructions for body movement, we feel we are in full control, but whether we always control our mind is not so apparent.

When we are reacting to seeing someone we like or love, we believe we are the one initiating that mental response. So who is in control when we are depressed for no apparent reason and are genuinely trying to snap out of it?

We should try to become more aware of what our mind’s true role is in our lives. We should be asking such ridiculous questions as to whether or not it is to serve us, or whether on occasions it is a force to be faced, battled and controlled? Is it simply a messenger delivering our strengths and weaknesses and leaving us to get on with it, or could it even contain a reservoir of qualities and abilities which are there to be tapped into when the need arises or demands it? We just don’t know.

Continued ignorance on such important matters is really unacceptable.

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Chapter 2

What Do I Hope to Achieve?

Having decided to go ahead and think seriously about my mind, the first sensible question I asked myself was, How the hell do I approach it?

A structured approach to this multi-faceted subject, hopefully ending with indisputable proof as to how it works would be very welcome. It would also be convenient to create a logical approach to understanding something as mysterious and complicated as the human mind without becoming drowned in a tide of scientific terminology.

As I am writing for the general public, I will begin by gathering what relevant information I can, use my intelligence to hypothesise on the mysterious working of the mind, the technicalities of memory, the creation of dreams and emotions, not to mention the origins of inclinations, character and personality. That should be enough to begin with.

We know that thoughts have to be encoded, collated and stored, as if they were car parts on a shelf, waiting to be retrieved at a moment’s notice. It is difficult to imagine memories being an individual item capable of being recognised, itemised, distributed and retrieved? Amazingly, a similar process must be employed when dealing with everything we see, hear, smell, touch and taste.

Never mind the material bombarding the mind from the outside, what about my inner qualities: emotions, feelings of desperation, fear and joy surging through my body from dawn to dusk?

Just listing some of the functions my mind copes with and how it directs every aspect of my existence from abilities to zany ideas constantly floating in my head fills me with awe and admiration. Understanding how it all works is not going to be an easy task.

One could almost imagine it as a large orchestra with numerous different instruments being played at the same time. This begs the question, who is the conductor? It should be me during the day, but who will be conducting when I am sleep, am mentally ill or have dementia?

Now I am beginning to doubt whether I really need to know how my mind works. Will understanding make me a better person and strengthen me mentally? Will it enable me to understand who I am, how I became me and whether I have the ability to change?

I soon dismissed all these doubts on the basis that none of us will ever know the answer to any of these questions unless we ask them. Even failing to find convincing answers should provide the satisfaction of knowing ourselves a little better than before. After all, knowing how our body works gives us the option of looking after it to the best of our ability and to our advantage. We do that believing it will lead to a healthier and longer life. Should we fail to look after it, we are well aware what the outcome could be, with only ourselves to blame

If we don’t even try to do something similar with our minds, then let it not be due to ignorance and lack of trying to discover how it functions. We must begin believing that a greater awareness will not only enable us to strive after a healthier mind, but will create a connection and some feelings of confidence about it. Whenever the bad times come mentally, we must hope and believe we will be better equipped to deal with each situation.

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Chapter 3

A Starting Point

I believe I am in charge of my conscious mind when I am awake and able to activate my thoughts and deeds, so I decided a reasonable beginning to this difficult investigation was to assess how my mind always seemed to have possessed so much. It has to deal with so much information from different sources. How much content is it born with, or is all knowledge entirely derived from external sources and life’s experiences?

The easy external sources to catalogue are the five senses. They constantly feed information about my surroundings. They are my immediate contact with the world in which I live. Much of this information is mundane and may be recorded or discarded.

Even more important is the source of my countless personal qualities before they were collated and stored. Were they acquired piece by piece as days and years and experiences went by?

A good starting point is probably to look for powerful childhood and teenage influences. This makes sense because we have been led to believe that life’s experiences during our early years are the most influential in creating the building blocks of both our mind and the person we become.

Many sections of society: parents, teachers, religious groups and social workers included, consider the influence and careful development of young minds to be one of their principal duties and responsibilities. They all strive to achieve this goal, secure in the knowledge it will help both the individual and society.

They are so dedicated and convinced about this particular goal. Perhaps they should question whether their good intentions might be far less influential than they expect. Do they ever consider that those same young minds might not need their assistance? After all, do-gooders have no grounds to believe they know for certain how the minds of others work because no one has ever educated them on that subject.

Perhaps failure to consider this possibility has been a blessing for them, otherwise those countless, well-intentioned paragons of society might have suffered the sadness of discovering that a long-acknowledged feature and justification of their time and efforts had been of little value.

Their emphasis has always been on what they felt the young needed to experience to develop into well-adjusted individuals and useful contributors to the community. Perhaps they assumed that young minds were sponges waiting to soak up all that a good life had to offer. There was always the chance they could have been wrong.

Let us consider that, before those well-intentioned upholders of society even had the opportunity to exert their combined efforts, every young human mind they endeavoured to influence already possessed a cocktail of personal ingredients which had been inexorably and inevitably donated through their species and ancestral lines.

Those praiseworthy members of society could have mistakenly been assuming young minds to be lumps of clay waiting to be moulded into acceptable models of humanity. Never in their wildest dreams would they have cause to believe that those same young minds had already begun striding proudly through their private worlds on paths which were becoming clearer and more natural to them as each of their early years passed by.

No wonder society is frequently forced to express surprise, disappointment and horror when the little gems of humanity they have been trying to create frequently matured into unattractive pebbles.

Some of you may disagree with this assessment and prefer to agree with the current beliefs on upbringing generally held by society. If so, maybe we should begin examining and explaining in greater detail whether or not there are grounds for a change in your opinion.

Such a process might even allow each of us, no matter in which age group we now find ourselves, to re-assess our lives and behaviour over the years in the hope of drawing some informed conclusions about ourselves and what we have, or should have, achieved. That would be enlightening.

There are many very frightened and disturbed minds out there. If society’s influences are so strong, which training organisations advocated the benefits of brutality or the art of obtaining pleasure from another’s fear and pain? Moreover, it cannot be assumed that recipients of these dark arts all had deprived childhoods or came from dysfunctional families.

We need to go into our mind to learn how it obtains and deals with the masses of information it receives on a daily basis, to examine potential sources of our numerous personal attributes and how the mind deals with such sensitive material. Finally, we would require some idea of the acknowledged mechanism behind our mind’s management processes, all combining to create the person we have become.

We are all individuals with personal qualities and emotional cocktails. Personal qualities are essential, but our emotions, their intensity levels and their influence on how we cope with all that confronts us, are also vital components. The least we can do is try to describe, analyse and understand the interaction between them and us.

We should investigate the conundrum we call our mind. It has