Unlock The Masterplan With Your Mind
- Johnny Footwrinkle
- Feb 16
- 6 min read
Attachment is the root of all suffering .....attachment to your thoughts. - Buddha
It's uncanny how similar the mind is to a piece of software, almost like humans are programmed plasma. The mind acts like a database; every time there is change in your emotional state, whether good or bad, it gets recorded and used as a reference for future stimuli. I shall use an example from Michael Singer to explain how this works.
Picture yourself driving along a road, it's a sunny day and you're just casually driving along without a care in the world. Normally your focus would be on the driving and staying safe. Everything else around you would pass through your mind relatively unnoticed, the fields either side of the road, buildings, infrastructure, other cars, billboards, the weather, the smells the sounds etc etc. You're in a kind of autopilot mode just blissfully minding your own business. Suddenly you see a car on the other side of the road that looks like your partners car, and you thought you saw 2 people cuddling in the front seat. Straight away your mind locks onto it and starts to cling to it. You start thinking it through, was that their car? no, it couldn't have been.... where are they today? They're over at so n' so's.. are they with someone else? am I being taken for a fool??? The mind starts ticking over and over, creating drama, winding you up, making you angry. 5 years later you are walking along a road, with a new partner. You see a car, maybe same colour but different model, maybe a toy car in a shop window. Perhaps you see a car in an advert, maybe it's people cuddling, the weather just happens to be the exact same temperature, the smell in the air. Something reminds you of your ex and suddenly you feel angry and annoyed, your day has been upset by something that happened 5 years ago.
Sounds silly doesn't it? getting upset by something so old, but that's what our minds are doing. They act like a database that stores a record of our experiences and then recalls them later on to recreate a similar reaction to an event. This includes releasing the same endorphins to create the same feelings that were experienced initially. And this is why simply remembering something can cause such a change in ones own emotional state.
Your mind is running on autopilot 24/7 because you allow it to. Imagine your mind was a person and you have to spend 24 hours with them. They never ever shut up, all the good stuff and all the bad stuff that goes through your mind all day, with no filter! Imagine all those thoughts you have everyday being spoken out loud by another person. You can't talk to anyone, can't do anything because they're always there. "did you turn the light out... you need to save electricity... you're seeing so n so tommorrow... he's going to moan about everything as usual... what's for dinner... get some chicken in....". The endless babble would drive you crazy but that's what we allow our minds to do, to just run by themselves unchecked all day every day!
It's quite simple to rein the mind in and regain some clarity. In your head right now just say 'hello', then say it several more times, now in your head shout 'hello' so loud the entire universe could hear you. What you need to understand is that that voice you hear saying hello, it's not you! You are not the voice in your head, you are the one that is listening to it!
Once you create this distance between your consciousness and the mind it becomes simple to quieten the mind. This is the goal of eastern meditation practices, to create that distance. To stop the endless stream of noise within and find some clarity. Thanks to decades of diligent research we are now able to explain these once mysterious practices in much simpler terms. In the west we pay very little attention to educating ourselves and the younger generations about what actually goes in inside their heads.
The brain contains a network of trillions of synaptic connections. The connections that were lit up by the experience of seeing your ex in a car with someone else are stored like a snapshot of your brain activity. When you were walking along the road and felt triggered causing you to remember the whole ex in her car drama again, that snapshot was reloaded into the brain and those connections lit up once more in exactly the same pattern. This is known as neuroplasticity and every experience you ever have has a snapshot of the connections that were lit up at the time you experienced it. Your environment constantly influences your neuroplasticity throughout your entire life. If you spend time in negative situations you end up with a brain that is wired for negative thinking patterns, and likewise positive environments create positive mindsets and neuroplasticity snapshots.
Most people have a problem with memory or imagination. Their minds are always in the past thinking about something that happened to them, or in the future dreaming of an escape from their present situation. Maybe someone hurt them in the past or they did something they regret. Maybe they are dreading seeing a relative next week or looking forward to a holiday in a few months time. Many are trying to escape their current situation with thoughts of winning the lottery or a new job or payrise. The truth is they are not happy in their current situation because they are fighting reality. The mind is telling them they need to escape, that this isn't good enough, they are unable to be comfortable with their current situation. The mind is busy projecting a mask over reality to hide the emotional discomfort we feel inside. When you saw your ex's car the mind clung to it, you should have just taken a long deep breath. relaxed the shoulders and let it go, but the mind wouldn't let you. The mind wanted to tell you you were being taken for a fool and you allowed it respond with an emotional reaction - anger.
Everything is always as it should be, you are always exactly where you are meant to be, doing exactly what you are meant to be doing or you would be somewhere else doing something else. Everything is meant to be the way it is and you have to simply accept it. Some higher force, be that God, Allah, fate, destiny, Kismet etc etc, doesn't really matter what name it has, has decided it's going to be this way. The reason for this is that there is a lesson in everything for all of us. When something bad is happening, no matter how bad, you have to accept this is how it is. Obviously if you are being attacked or in danger get the hell out of there, fight back and stay safe! But don't cling to the feelings around the experience. People find it hard to let go of the feelings associated with bad things, and they want to hold onto the good feelings as long as they can, neither is a healthy option.
When you feel a change in your emotional state you need to recognise what is causing it and allow the feeling to pass. Take a deep breath, relax the shoulders and silence the mind. It's ok to feel the feelings and they take as long as they take to pass, just be patient. Often people try to hide the feelings, they drink, use drugs, eat or apply one of many more coping mechanisms as a way of suppressing the feeling. This kind of response rarely provides a positive outcome! You have to simply accept that this is how it is, don't fight your reality. When you stop trying to fight it, you grow, you overcome patterns of thinking and behaviours and become a better version of yourself, able to deal with lifes drama's instead of being overwhelmed and consumed by them. Once you let go you will understand that the higher power that wanted it like this wanted it this way to help you grow into a better version of yourself. And that once you stop fighting reality everything will stop being such a challenge, life will fall into place without all the emotional upset and turmoil. There truly is a masterplanI
You can find Michael Singer's book 'The Untethered Soul' here:
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