Submitted by Urban Mage on
Your brain process information in a way that generates a mind biased towards negativity. Being negative is a defensive attitude that becomes an attack mentality designed for protection. In its quest to avoid getting hurt, to get what it needs and to avoid danger your mind looks for potential threats and problem as an automatic (unconscious) default mechanism.
The predisposition to focus on what is wrong results in a habit of having negative expectations, automatic criticism, judgments and condemnations, which lead to impatience, irritation, frustration and burst of anger, rage and hatred. This emotional reactivity is projected at others and internally at yourself with the intention to intimidate in order to have control. Negativity simultaneously creates fear and aggression, which becomes cowardly or tyrannical behavior for the sake of self-preservation.
To mind your mind means that you take conscious charge of it, because if you don't your mind inevitably directs itself to execute only survival programs. When your mind is in charge of you, the quality of your life stagnates and eventually deteriorates into a monotonous life of habits, many of which are harmful, and deplete your vitality. A life aiming only for survival undermines your human potential.
A midlife crisis is an example of what happens when the mind alone is making decisions that lead to unsustainable situations. Chronic depression is an example of what happens when your life has no inspired purpose, or when you have accumulated so much false information about you and the world, that the strong negative emotions it generates have to be suppressed. High levels of stress is another symptom of a life led by a mind that is itself out of control, obsessed with fearful and negative thoughts, while attempting to control external circumstances. Finally, all forms of addictions are symptoms of when the mind has reduced life to a series of compensatory behaviors to avoid mental suffering and emotional pain. Your mind needs commands from a competent internal authority that knows what is important to pay attention to, what to act on, and when.
You have a mind
This statement is empowering and liberating. Its significance is thatyou are not a mind, and that your mind is your tool to learn to focus your attention. Your mind is not your true identity, it is a superficial one required for functioning and communication. It is very likely that you have been raised in a family and a culture where it is taken for granted that you are your mind. Because most people lack access to the experience of transcendence, especially when they face difficulties, they settle for continual thinking and emotional reactivity. Transcendence is when you identify with universal qualities of being as you act to respond to challenging circumstances. These qualities include: being present, unconditional love in the form of compassion, patience and kindness, creativity, inner peace, strength, power etc.
What is mind?
Mind is a phenomenon produced by the exchange of information between the brain and the nervous system. Mental activity generates your ego identity. When you take yourself to be a mind you are reduced to your body, your thoughts and the feelings and emotions you experience, which makes up your personality.
When you think outside the box of scientific materialism, and you accept another scientific fact from leading edge physicists, you are confronted with the reality that beyond the smallest particles of matter, the atoms, there is a non-physical dimension of energy and information known as the quantum field. This field is the source of ideas that shape the physical world. The quantum field is a non-physical, intelligent, organizing principle that scientist calledconsciousness and Spiritual traditions call Spirit. Incidentally, all of the wireless technologies you enjoy exist because we have learned to tap into the quantum field to send and access information.
Summary: an idea is an inspiration that can become a new creation when it is given enough attention and is acted upon. Ideas originate not from a brain, which is only a receiver of information, but from a non-physical/immaterial space which itself is intelligent and creative. You have a mind that helps you focus attention in the physical world. You are an extension of the quantum field experiencing the physical world.
A greater identity
So, if you are not your mind, then who are you at your core? The answer is you are awareness, specifically, a presence of awareness. This presence is known as the Higher Self or the Soul in spiritual traditions. Between your thinking mind (your ego), and the Higher Self (aware presence), is where you and I find ourselves.
I borrow from Hal and Sidra stone, Ph Ds, the term aware ego to mean, a high functioning sense of self that bridges the unconscious with the super-conscious. In my understanding our aim in life is to become ever more conscious of our Higher Self and our lower self, the ego, so that we can integrate them and function in harmony. The ego is meant to be a servant not a master. The Higher Self is the inner authority whose wisdom we are called to learn to trust to guide us in life.
Overcoming the negativity bias
The negativity bias is a biological animal instinct the ego uses to classify every experience as safe or dangerous. Danger experienced is memorized and placed into a priority file for instant access. The objective is to be prepared and automatically know what to do when encountering any similar situations. The limitation of this mechanism is that the memory files become core beliefs, which act as unchangeable, rigid instructions/rules on how to behave, and how to interpret what happens. Eventually the ego doesn't see what happens, it sees what it believes because it instantly compares what it perceives with what it has memorized, and automatically assumes the similarity is true and real.
There are many problems and limitations when you are not aware that you see what you believe. For example, if your ego believes face piercing and tattoos are bad, it will automatically have a hostile, condescending attitude towards people who have them. Beliefs are necessary mental programs for functioning in the world, and they must be challenged for validity and updated regularly.
The part of the brain that classifies everything by assigning good/bad, right/wrong, and safe/dangerous labels is the left-brain. The left-brain is very efficient in its logic and reasoning style, and uses language. The inner conversation that goes on in your mind is your left-brain talking to itself. Your aim is to learn to listen and not identify with the thoughts, just be aware of them, and choose if they are true or not according to what you know through common sense. Mind chatter is usually senseless.
Unfortunately when the left-brain is allowed to dominate the decision making process it ignores the non-rational intuitive capacities of theright brain, and it excludes greater parameters for making decisions such as, how will my actions and attitudes affect others?
When your ego, encounters any situation it automatically reacts to it defensibly, it is its job. Your ego comes pre-programmed to focus on preserving its own well-being. You have to have a way to know when you need something in order to be able to get it. All egos function in the same way: judgmental, critical, aggressive, territorial, self-centered and in greater and lesser degrees, having negative expectations, which maintain a low level of anxiety that feeds negative thinking.
What can you do to override the negativity bias?
The most important action you can take to overcome your ego's negativity bias is to learn to live a heart-centered life. This requires that you master the discipline of mindfulness, meaning learn to pay attention and that you masterforgiveness. In order to pay attention you need to recognize the difference between all forms of mental activity including: thinking/analyzing, memory, fantasizing, hallucinating, and being aware, which is the effortless capacity to observe.
Everyone who is identified with ego is unconscious of the fact that behind the thinker there is an ever-present observer. Mindfulness means cultivating the capacity to observe the mind's thoughts and the body's sensations, feelings and emotions. The importance of being aware instead of identified with thinking, and whatever is being experienced through the body, is that what you are aware of internally has no power over you. In fact, you can decide how to interpret what you are aware of moment to moment, this is empowering! My suggestion is to interpret what you perceive with an attitude of curiosity and humility: mmm, this is interesting¦.
The next most important action is to recognize harmful patterns of behavior in you, and master interrupting them. These include: self-judgments and self-criticism that lead to becoming aggressive or fearful as a default mechanism, particularly when encountering challenges, the habit of procrastination, obsession with worry about the future by having negative expectations, attachment to past painful experiences that keep you resentful, unforgiving and paranoid and indulging in addictions.
One important fact about the brain is that once it has learned a behavior it can always execute it. The implication of this is that you never get rid of a bad habit. What can happen is that you learn new habits, and practice them so that eventually they get incorporated as natural behavior. For instance, you can train yourself to be kind, forgiving and appreciative in order to interrupt a lifetime habit of judging. You can learn to assume responsibility, and be accountable for all that you experience, and stop being the victim that blames and rationalizes excuses for what happens in your life.
In order to succeed in transforming your harmful behaviors you must realize that you are letting go of a familiar identity, and becoming a different version of you. This your ego will resist because from the ego's point of view familiarity means safety, even if it hurts.
Next is an essential new habit: learning to notice what is good, what feels good and consciously reflect on it. This means to take time to enjoy it, acknowledge it, taste it and visualize it in your mind, after all, this is what you unconsciously do with negative experiences.
Since the brain overlooks what is good or moves past it quickly, it is your duty to retrain your attention to purposely notice and experience the good. A time-tested practice is to look for what you can appreciate in any circumstance. This is a simple and powerful way of interrupting focusing on what is wrong.
Another way to cultivate mindfulness is to deliberately have fun. Establish habits of engaging in activities that feel good and lighten up your mind. I use exercise as an opportunity to enjoy my body, eating is a wonderful opportunity to exercise appreciation, tasting what you eat is a way to practice mindfulness and the enjoyment of nourishment.
A must complement to all of the above are a practice of sitting to be still to meditate as well as cultivating an attitude of Self-reflection, meaning that as you interact with the world notice how you are being internally. Both of these require that you appreciate slowing down, stepping out of the thinking mode and claim the space of inner awareness in which your mind exist.
Finally, when you make your guiding principle for your actions to be: do no harm (including not harming you!) and being of service to others, you are inviting the presence of your Higher Self to guide you in making decisions. Practice taking a pause, and ask for guidance before you speak and do anything. You will discover that you don't need to think to know what to do, just learn to pay attention, ask for inner guidance from your Higher Self, trust it and act on it. When you ask for guidance sometimes you just know, and other times you do hear an inner voice. One time in my late twenties I was stressed and in a hurry driving to get things done and for three consecutive blocks I heard an inner voice telling me: turn left, I argued against it and on the fourth interception a car ran a stop sign and collided with me. So, learned to listen!
When you make it a habit to follow your inner guidance you will discover that your deeper nature is to be peaceful and loving. Your Higher Self will not encourage you to attack or harm anyone, yet it will give you the courage and strength to speak up and protect your and others innocence against injustice and harm.
Written by Osiris Montenegro
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