Take back control of your mind.
Enjoy the moment. Feel the moment. Mindfulness and whatnot…there are innumerable quotes and yet we fail to do it again and again.
Is our mind in our control? Ads sway us, entertainment sways us, and our environment (man-made) is always trying to have a sway over us. Even in our dreams, we are not free. Subconsciousness can only build on what the mind has soaked throughout the day. In the past, it could have been our parents, friends, or any other mind. For the future, it’s our career, responsibilities, kids, etc. When is our mind truly free?
Thinking in terms of neurons: getting an input, it has to fire, and give a signal (input) to another. This chain will be followed unless our attention is grabbed by the activation of another neuron in a separate part of the brain. The switch is cumbersome, it’s easier to leave the firing of neurons to their own mechanics. Your mind will flow according to external factors like an animal. However, this simplicity can lead to trivial happiness. This could be the reason why people think that being stupid can lead to happiness. Just follow where the brain leads.
Inception could be a movie idea but it does have repercussions in real life. Just like the movie our environment is constantly pushing its own ideas and agenda inside our heads. It is a constant struggle to fight back against ideas that are being pushed around all the time. The rich can buy a security force for their mind: no ads, no posters in their vicinity, no constant search for the right knowledge, or hiring personal coaches. But we have to learn on our own and protect our brains against these unruly ideas. Following the pattern of life, like a leaf in wind, can be relaxing. In contrast, an independent thought can be pain-inducing: standing against a storm. But it will be the real you (a unique pattern) and not an outcome of your surroundings. That will be real happiness. No, more than that, that will be the true enjoyment of the living moment. It will be like taking life by the throat and drinking blood like a vampire. It’s intoxicating, it can feel like your true passion. A source of eternal bliss. It is and is not. A contradiction in itself but the experience of this moment is constantly changing. It can become the most painful moment you ever experienced. Or it could be empty like a void. However, it’s never stale or monotonous. It’s not a drug that should give you the same experience again and again. It will keep you on your toes. It’s thrilling. Life was never supposed to be a silent sea or a raging river. It’s an ocean that takes it all (water bodies and their behavior) and still remains a mystery.
Now, how do we train this army inside your head? Should we watch Inception again and soak all the ideas it’s based upon? The movie had some trained soldiers protecting the mind.
What if I tell you the army is already there? There are a set of dormant soldiers inside your mind that were placed by nature to make you a unique specimen. A set of neurons that will always be different than any other human being on earth. Remember the time as a kid, you did something special. Remember as a teenager you felt some different emotions, remember the pain, the sadness, the joy, …, the enjoyment. They are like the photographs of the essence, you were at that moment. If we could measure them, they would be like our own fingerprints or DNA evidence that we have left in the dimension of time. The soldiers and the army is our own selves distributed in the dimension of time. These soldiers may be divided by time but they do exist in our memory or in the weights of our neurons.
One has to hide behind a set of neurons to be truly free.
However, accepting them is the biggest task. We were ignorant, mean, angry, all sorts of negative, or in dark places. But we were we. Not an outcome of our surroundings, a contributing statistic, or a click on a website. Let your army exist and fight for you.
Take the energy from your past and future. At the end of the day, we can only control our present moment (super determinism in physics). However, in our mind, we have both the past and the future in the form of memories and predictions. You can either keep the thoughts of your parents, strangers, your surroundings, the AI algorithms, … as memories. Or you can let the future possibilities, your company, your career, your ladder, again the AI algorithms, … define the mind’s prediction. Both the past and the future will make your present their slave if you let them be. Challenge the time and take back your life. Easier said than done. You have to dominate all three to live life on your own terms. But you are not alone. You have an army at your back. You survived your past and more than likely will survive the immediate future. The you’s at different times were always stronger than your circumstances at one point or another. You didn’t have to win all the time. Even if you won for an instance. You have a soldier that dominated the target and planted the flag (your victory). Your army could have been annihilated but the target was achieved. Be proud. Don’t let survival guilt take over. You were better than your demons. You won.
Our mind is our domain, where we are like Gods and have power over everything. And yet we are limited by these chemical drugs and hormones. Let these drugs be and use the three tenses of time to make a beautiful story for yourself.
It’s not the outside experiences but the story in our mind that makes us really feel. Don’t let it be a mediocre one.
