Your Mind is Here to Change/Part 3
“There in the deep well of your own psyche you will find what you have always been looking for: protection, purpose, confidence, and clarity.” ~Miles Neale, PsyD
You can listen to an audio version here.
The quote above says it all. We are far better resourced than we imagine ourselves to be and that word “imagine” is key. In practices of applied neuroscience, we explore and acknowledge the images that we associate with our troubling narratives. If we can imagine one set of circumstances, we can imagine another: in other words we can learn!
Changing our mind is not about changing beliefs, it is about changing the processes of our experience. In other words, we can change our relationship to the experience by being curious about it, by allowing its right to exist within us and relate to it as a part of ourselves, which it is!
If I’m angry, I can notice it, be curious about it, sense if I can locate it in my body, I can get to know it. I can change how I relate to the anger. I can change how I orient myself.
As I said in part one of this series, Awareness Heals
Our emotions have everything to do with changing our mind because the self images we have the most difficulty relating to are the most emotionally charged.
Our experiences may be challenging to shift but they are not permanent.
Moshe Feldenkrais physicist and somatic educator when speaking about our fears for example, suggested that we only have two fears that are “hard wired” as humans: the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. What a curious idea!
If I follow that logic, then where do the other fears come from? We learn them. Perhaps they have traveled through generations but somewhere they were learned and passed along. There are circumstances where a strong fearful response is what saves our lives. Our fears are a form of protection and our fears deserve respect because they make up part of our self image.
All of our fears and difficult emotions deserve our respect.
On the journey to changing our minds we have to be straight up with ourselves about our rage, grief, betrayals, our limitations and the limitations of those around us. This is challenging!
Like any good pilgrimage, and especially the one to our unconscious, all aspects of our selves have to be respected. The result of honoring such parts of ourselves is we offer others an authentic presence.
Throughout this three part post, Nelson Mandela has been present to me. When he left prison on Robben Island in South Africa after 27 years, he forgave those who had wrongly imprisoned him.
Even more subtly, he came to know his internal jailers. He needed to be aware of how the outer jailers still lived within him in order to be free. His commitment to his inner process gave him agency.
To be a free person we have to be willing to change our mind.
Mandela knew he could change his mind. Those of us up to the task can change our minds. It is a courageous act that our world depends upon.
