2014 ms item01 03 04 b phillips awakeningday4
Formula for Miracles® Presents
30 Days to Awakening
Thousands of Years of Spiritual Wisdom Revealed in Fun, Ten Minute Insights ©2012-2013 Brent Phillips www.FormulaForMiracles.net
Day 4: The “Screen of the Mind”: Sensations, Feelings, Emotions, and Consciousness Our first goal with Awakening is to move towards achieving a crystal clear understanding of the truth of who/what YOU truly are. To facilitate your Awakening, let’s develop a specialized vocabulary by introducing the concept of the “screen of the mind”, and providing precise definitions to the most common contents of the screen of the mind. First, let’s clearly define what is meant by the “screen of the mind”. Essentially, the screen of the mind consists of all the things that you can perceive or be aware of, including but not limited to your own body, other people, thoughts, feelings, and emotions. In other words, anything that you can see, or smell, or touch, or taste, or feel, or think about, or experience or perceive in any way, is an object on the screen of the mind. Feelings are the most primitive and most basic objects on the screen of the mind; babies and animals live in a world of pure feelings. Drives then evolve on top feelings, and then thoughts evolve on top of drives, and finally emotions evolve on top of thoughts. Next, let’s enumerate and clearly define the meaning of these terms to establish our vocabulary of Awakening. The objects that can appear on the screen of the mind include:
Sensations
Feelings
Drives
Thoughts
Emotions
In particular, I want to make a distinction between “feelings” and “emotions”, and introduce the concept of “sensations”, which are a superset that includes thoughts, feelings, emotions, and drives. “Sensation” is a general term I use for any experience or perception. All sensations are perceived or experienced on the “screen of the mind”, in the same way that a movie is projected onto a screen so that it can be watched. (Remember that I warned you that those movie projector metaphors would start to make sense!) Events, circumstances, and anything that happens inside or outside of you must be projected onto the screen of the mind so that it can be experienced or perceived; this is similar to how the people in a movie theater can’t watch the movie until it’s projected onto the screen. “Consciousness” is the ability to have sensations and is that which perceives or experiences those sensations.
“Feelings” are sensations you directly experience as a result of what’s happening around you at that moment. Feelings may be physical, mental, or both. This is important, so let’s repeat that: feelings are the direct experience of what is happening to you, right now, exactly where you are. For example, if you hold your hands up in front of a fire, you will feel warmth. In this case, “warmth” is a sensation that I would categorize as a feeling (and more specifically as a physical feeling.) Animals and infants live almost entirely in a world of feelings, and only the higher mammals – such as cats, dogs, dolphins, etc. – have a nervous system and brain that are sufficiently evolved to allow them to experience human-like emotions such as anger or jealousy. “Drives” are collections of emotions and thoughts that move us towards a goal, usually one that involves some combination of survival, sensual pleasure, and/or propagation of the species. (We actually have at least seven primary drives, each corresponding to a particular chakra and its “game of consciousness”; we’ll cover these games of consciousness later in this series.) For example, hunger is a drive that motivates us to obtain food, and sex is a drive that motivates us to mate. “Thoughts” are purely mental sensations that (at least for modern humans that use language) usually involve hearing your own voice in your head, or (less commonly) imagining a picture or some other physical sensation. By contrast, “emotions” are sensations that are created in your head by various chemicals (mostly produced in the middle of your brain) based on the meaning you give to things that have happened, are happening, or will happen, according to your subconscious belief systems. (If you are curious to learn more about the biochemistry of emotions, check out Candace Pert’s book The Molecules of Emotion.) Let’s use an example to clearly articulate the difference between feelings and emotions. In our example, let’s say that you buy a lottery ticket. Later, you go online to check the winning numbers, and you find out that you have won 10 million dollars! Thinking you have hit the jackpot, you get really excited, and you start making plans for how you’re going to tell off your boss, quit your job, buy a big fancy house, and go on a dream vacation. But notice that nothing has actually changed in your immediate circumstances. In fact, the only change that’s occurred in your life is seeing some numbers on a screen; everything else, including your excitement, is entirely in your head! More specifically, because you believe you have won a ton of money, your subconscious mind automatically responds by getting happy and excited, because (if you are like most people) your mind is full of thousands or millions of subconscious programs that tell you that money is good and having lots of it will make you happy. But again, note that nothing has actually changed in your immediate circumstances – hence, the happiness and excitement you experience when you think you’ve won the lottery is an emotion, and not a feeling. To continue this example, let’s say that you later go back and double check the winning numbers. Sadly, you find that you made a mistake and you didn’t win…oops! Perhaps it turns out that while the numbers you picked would have won the jackpot two weeks before, those numbers are not winners this week.
When this happens, it would be natural for you to immediately become disappointed and unhappy that you didn’t actually win 10 million dollars, and you may even get quite upset with yourself for your mistake. Again, this experience is pure emotion - not feeling - because nothing actually changed in your immediate circumstances; note that the difference between winning and losing the lottery (at least at first) is entirely in your head. In particular, notice that the genuine feelings you experienced before (when you thought you had won the lottery) and after (when you realized you hadn’t) are identical. For example, the temperature in the room feels the same. However, the emotions you experience are completely different, because emotion is a mind/body sensation synthesized from the meaning that your mind has (subconsciously) applied to what’s happening in your life, according to your (subconscious) belief systems. Hence, neither your initial excitement about winning the lottery nor your disappointment at realizing you didn’t win the lottery are genuine feelings. Instead, they are both emotions synthesized in your brain as a direct result of the meaning your belief systems have applied to having (or not having) won a lot of money. Please note that I’m not saying that your excitement and disappointment, or emotions in general, aren’t real. Emotions are absolutely real! But they aren’t feelings, since emotions are synthesized in your brain as a result of your subconscious belief systems. By contrast, genuine feelings are created by what’s happening in your immediate environment and circumstances. For example, when you step into the shower and feel the water washing over your body, that’s a real feeling! Cognitive psychologists discovered decades ago that our thoughts create our emotions. Typically, positive thoughts create positive emotions, and vice-versa. If you dig deeply into any of your emotions, you will find the underlying thoughts, which can then lead you to the subconscious belief systems that sponsored or created those emotions. For example, this is exactly what happens when we use the Formula for Miracles process to dig into and clear subconscious blocks, and it explains why it’s such an incredibly powerful process for healing, prosperity, and transformation! There are many pieces to the puzzle that create our thoughts, and they involve several complex feedback loops. For example, your subconscious belief systems, your diet, your environment, and the people around you all have powerful influence on your thoughts. This relationship is complex and nonlinear; for example, your subconscious belief systems influence your diet, and your environment influences your subconscious belief systems, and your diet influences your mood and your thoughts. For our purposes here, don’t worry too much about the exact nature of the relationship between your sensations, feelings, drives, thoughts, and emotions. Instead, for now all you need to understand is that your subconscious belief systems (including but not limited to your values and your spirituality) create your drives, and your drives create your thoughts, and then your thoughts create your emotions, and then your emotions then feedback to create new beliefs. This diagram below is an oversimplification, but it’s sufficient for our purposes of Awakening:
Beliefs
Emotions
Drives
Thoughts Lastly, I want to establish a convention so that we can clearly distinguish between You (capitalized) and you (lower case.) The upper case “You” refers to the truth of who and what You truly are; by contrast, the lower case “you” refers to the “false I”, or that which society and your brain has tricked you into thinking you are. We haven’t explained the difference yet, but I want to establish this convention now so that there’s no confusion and you know the difference between You and you. Now that we’ve covered the dangers of Awakening, the prerequisites to Awakening, and established a clearly defined vocabulary, we’re ready for Awakening: it’s time to start revealing the truth about who and what You really are!
30 Days to Awakening
Thousands of Years of Spiritual Wisdom Revealed in Fun, Ten Minute Insights ©2012-2013 Brent Phillips www.FormulaForMiracles.net
Day 4: The “Screen of the Mind”: Sensations, Feelings, Emotions, and Consciousness Our first goal with Awakening is to move towards achieving a crystal clear understanding of the truth of who/what YOU truly are. To facilitate your Awakening, let’s develop a specialized vocabulary by introducing the concept of the “screen of the mind”, and providing precise definitions to the most common contents of the screen of the mind. First, let’s clearly define what is meant by the “screen of the mind”. Essentially, the screen of the mind consists of all the things that you can perceive or be aware of, including but not limited to your own body, other people, thoughts, feelings, and emotions. In other words, anything that you can see, or smell, or touch, or taste, or feel, or think about, or experience or perceive in any way, is an object on the screen of the mind. Feelings are the most primitive and most basic objects on the screen of the mind; babies and animals live in a world of pure feelings. Drives then evolve on top feelings, and then thoughts evolve on top of drives, and finally emotions evolve on top of thoughts. Next, let’s enumerate and clearly define the meaning of these terms to establish our vocabulary of Awakening. The objects that can appear on the screen of the mind include:
Sensations
Feelings
Drives
Thoughts
Emotions
In particular, I want to make a distinction between “feelings” and “emotions”, and introduce the concept of “sensations”, which are a superset that includes thoughts, feelings, emotions, and drives. “Sensation” is a general term I use for any experience or perception. All sensations are perceived or experienced on the “screen of the mind”, in the same way that a movie is projected onto a screen so that it can be watched. (Remember that I warned you that those movie projector metaphors would start to make sense!) Events, circumstances, and anything that happens inside or outside of you must be projected onto the screen of the mind so that it can be experienced or perceived; this is similar to how the people in a movie theater can’t watch the movie until it’s projected onto the screen. “Consciousness” is the ability to have sensations and is that which perceives or experiences those sensations.
“Feelings” are sensations you directly experience as a result of what’s happening around you at that moment. Feelings may be physical, mental, or both. This is important, so let’s repeat that: feelings are the direct experience of what is happening to you, right now, exactly where you are. For example, if you hold your hands up in front of a fire, you will feel warmth. In this case, “warmth” is a sensation that I would categorize as a feeling (and more specifically as a physical feeling.) Animals and infants live almost entirely in a world of feelings, and only the higher mammals – such as cats, dogs, dolphins, etc. – have a nervous system and brain that are sufficiently evolved to allow them to experience human-like emotions such as anger or jealousy. “Drives” are collections of emotions and thoughts that move us towards a goal, usually one that involves some combination of survival, sensual pleasure, and/or propagation of the species. (We actually have at least seven primary drives, each corresponding to a particular chakra and its “game of consciousness”; we’ll cover these games of consciousness later in this series.) For example, hunger is a drive that motivates us to obtain food, and sex is a drive that motivates us to mate. “Thoughts” are purely mental sensations that (at least for modern humans that use language) usually involve hearing your own voice in your head, or (less commonly) imagining a picture or some other physical sensation. By contrast, “emotions” are sensations that are created in your head by various chemicals (mostly produced in the middle of your brain) based on the meaning you give to things that have happened, are happening, or will happen, according to your subconscious belief systems. (If you are curious to learn more about the biochemistry of emotions, check out Candace Pert’s book The Molecules of Emotion.) Let’s use an example to clearly articulate the difference between feelings and emotions. In our example, let’s say that you buy a lottery ticket. Later, you go online to check the winning numbers, and you find out that you have won 10 million dollars! Thinking you have hit the jackpot, you get really excited, and you start making plans for how you’re going to tell off your boss, quit your job, buy a big fancy house, and go on a dream vacation. But notice that nothing has actually changed in your immediate circumstances. In fact, the only change that’s occurred in your life is seeing some numbers on a screen; everything else, including your excitement, is entirely in your head! More specifically, because you believe you have won a ton of money, your subconscious mind automatically responds by getting happy and excited, because (if you are like most people) your mind is full of thousands or millions of subconscious programs that tell you that money is good and having lots of it will make you happy. But again, note that nothing has actually changed in your immediate circumstances – hence, the happiness and excitement you experience when you think you’ve won the lottery is an emotion, and not a feeling. To continue this example, let’s say that you later go back and double check the winning numbers. Sadly, you find that you made a mistake and you didn’t win…oops! Perhaps it turns out that while the numbers you picked would have won the jackpot two weeks before, those numbers are not winners this week.
When this happens, it would be natural for you to immediately become disappointed and unhappy that you didn’t actually win 10 million dollars, and you may even get quite upset with yourself for your mistake. Again, this experience is pure emotion - not feeling - because nothing actually changed in your immediate circumstances; note that the difference between winning and losing the lottery (at least at first) is entirely in your head. In particular, notice that the genuine feelings you experienced before (when you thought you had won the lottery) and after (when you realized you hadn’t) are identical. For example, the temperature in the room feels the same. However, the emotions you experience are completely different, because emotion is a mind/body sensation synthesized from the meaning that your mind has (subconsciously) applied to what’s happening in your life, according to your (subconscious) belief systems. Hence, neither your initial excitement about winning the lottery nor your disappointment at realizing you didn’t win the lottery are genuine feelings. Instead, they are both emotions synthesized in your brain as a direct result of the meaning your belief systems have applied to having (or not having) won a lot of money. Please note that I’m not saying that your excitement and disappointment, or emotions in general, aren’t real. Emotions are absolutely real! But they aren’t feelings, since emotions are synthesized in your brain as a result of your subconscious belief systems. By contrast, genuine feelings are created by what’s happening in your immediate environment and circumstances. For example, when you step into the shower and feel the water washing over your body, that’s a real feeling! Cognitive psychologists discovered decades ago that our thoughts create our emotions. Typically, positive thoughts create positive emotions, and vice-versa. If you dig deeply into any of your emotions, you will find the underlying thoughts, which can then lead you to the subconscious belief systems that sponsored or created those emotions. For example, this is exactly what happens when we use the Formula for Miracles process to dig into and clear subconscious blocks, and it explains why it’s such an incredibly powerful process for healing, prosperity, and transformation! There are many pieces to the puzzle that create our thoughts, and they involve several complex feedback loops. For example, your subconscious belief systems, your diet, your environment, and the people around you all have powerful influence on your thoughts. This relationship is complex and nonlinear; for example, your subconscious belief systems influence your diet, and your environment influences your subconscious belief systems, and your diet influences your mood and your thoughts. For our purposes here, don’t worry too much about the exact nature of the relationship between your sensations, feelings, drives, thoughts, and emotions. Instead, for now all you need to understand is that your subconscious belief systems (including but not limited to your values and your spirituality) create your drives, and your drives create your thoughts, and then your thoughts create your emotions, and then your emotions then feedback to create new beliefs. This diagram below is an oversimplification, but it’s sufficient for our purposes of Awakening:
Beliefs
Emotions
Drives
Thoughts Lastly, I want to establish a convention so that we can clearly distinguish between You (capitalized) and you (lower case.) The upper case “You” refers to the truth of who and what You truly are; by contrast, the lower case “you” refers to the “false I”, or that which society and your brain has tricked you into thinking you are. We haven’t explained the difference yet, but I want to establish this convention now so that there’s no confusion and you know the difference between You and you. Now that we’ve covered the dangers of Awakening, the prerequisites to Awakening, and established a clearly defined vocabulary, we’re ready for Awakening: it’s time to start revealing the truth about who and what You really are!
