Human beings are thinking animals. There would be hardly any time when one or the other thought does not keep us engaged. Our minds have millions of thoughts during the day. We think of our past and future. We keep recalling the past events and make plans for the future. Beyond the conscious mind, which is constantly busy thinking, we have the unconscious mind. The latest research in neurology shows that the unconscious mind's memory is stored in the body's cells. When we undergo any traumatic experience, these emotions stored in the unconscious mind get triggered and recreate that traumatic experience again.
When the conscious mind undergoes any experience, it results in the secretion of different hormones, and the body undergoes certain experiences. For example, when we feel threatened, the body undergoes tension because the mind prepares the body to be ready for a response. To fight or flee. If there is a severe threat, for example, we have a free fall of the lift, or witness a terrorist attack, or meet with an accident, the body somehow develops a hard memory of the incident. The next time we foresee any possibility of any such incident, the old memory of the unconscious mind, stored in our bodies, gets triggered, and the same experience is recreated. The unconscious mind also stores the memory of many pleasant experiences. When we go back to our hometown or meet our parents or siblings, the old memories get triggered, and that's why we feel so good.
All our experiences are products of the conscious and unconscious memories, and more so of the unconscious memories. Every time our parents pat our back, our unconscious mind records it as a happy event. Every time our friends ridiculed us, that was recorded as a sad event. Our present behaviour is a sum total of millions of such incidents that have happened in our lives. If a child is afraid to go to the stage for public speaking, or we have the fear of "what society will say," that is all made up of millions of small and big incidents. If somebody develops so much fascination with the pay package, that's because this has been a topic of discussion thousands of times in their home. The parents have appreciated the children who got a hefty pay package. He sees the children not able to make that hefty pay package hundreds of times. Not only the parents, but he sees everybody in society ridiculing the children who are not able to make it to that "dream job". The physical attributes of "white skin", "slim figure", and "tall height" are praised in so many Bollywood songs. He sees so many of his friends getting flat on such a girl, and that's why he also wants to possess one.
We all come with an empty hard drive, and our conscious and unconscious minds undergo all these experiences, and that's how the hard drive copies millions of files. Our processing engine also functions constantly. After all, we are thinking animals. One heartbreak, and we will keep thinking and creating, and adding millions more such files to the hard drive, as a result of thinking. These memories make us unique. However, all these memories are just experiences. Had we been born in a different home, the experiences would have been entirely different. Wisdom demands that we see all these experiences as relative. "I" am not these experiences. These experiences are like the weather. That keeps changing. "I" remain the same. The problem arises when "I" forget its independent existence and identify with these experiences and experience the "pain" whenever it undergoes some experience that "old memories" categorise as pleasant, and "pleasure" whenever "old memories" categorise the experiences as pleasure.
The understanding of "I" being free of "experiences" stored in the conscious as well as unconscious mind needs to be there in both the conscious as well as unconscious mind. Often, we read a spiritual book or attend a lecture by a spiritual master, and our conscious mind understands the truth. However, very shortly, the memories contained in the unconscious mind take over, and the conscious mind again starts dancing to their tunes. It's not easy to work on the unconscious mind because that is the domain of the unknown. We are not aware of that. That's why Vipassana offers us a wonderful technique whereby we take our attention away from the conscious mind to the breath, and then take our attention to different parts of the body to experience the sensations in different body parts. These sensations are the communications of the unconscious mind with the conscious mind. When we experience these sensations with equanimity, we format the old memory stored in the hard disk of the unconscious mind, and so much of our attention becomes free to act in the present moment. When our attention, the conscious and the unconscious mind, all three, are fully aware of the present moment, we can live peacefully fully enjoying life.
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