Our brain is very fertile and hundreds of thoughts take seed in our brain all the time everyday. By design, our brain is supposed to protect us from harm from ostensible impending doom since the prehistoric times when we were hunters and gatherers. Hence our brain focuses more on thoughts which are supposed to protect us. It always amplifies the negativity and dangers. No surprise then that our sensory and motor cortices are represented like they are in the brain sensory and motor cortex. The sense organs clearly dominate the neural representation on the brain as seen on the attached image, the ‘homunculus’. Equally the motor function representation is dictated by our desire to protect ourselves and to present and express ourselves to this world.
This is especially true when we go through a phase in life when we perceive the situation overall as being negative. Our such negative thoughts therefore are our own creation. They are scenarios we build in the frontal lobes of our brain. When we collaborate and cooperate with such thoughts and perpetuate them, we start believing them to be really true. But remember, that our brain which generates such thoughts and emotions and makes everything look bleak, is also the same instrument and essentially a piece of kit, which if directed by us appropriately, handled and indeed manipulated and fooled properly, is also capable of phenomenal creativity, intuition and imagination. In the face of extreme negativity, the same human with the same brain and its neuro-chemistry has also in history produced a Gandhi, a Teresa and a Mandela in this world. Self awareness, training and discipline of the thought process is key. If we withdraw our support to such a negative mindset, such thoughts dissolve and do not take root. Such a brain, then leads to free will, pure potentiality and unshackled creativity. So, do not argue with your negative mind. Just direct it to do what you intuitively and self evidently feel is right. Don’t get convinced by its negative arguments. Just listen but make up your own mind!
To initiate this process, in the first instance one needs to be a witness to the random thoughts that just arise in the brain, without letting them take hold. For if you do not let them impact you or judge them for what they are, they just come and go, much in the same way as the waves ebb and flow from the ocean at the beach. When you travel on the road you watch the scenery pass you by, as you look out of the car window. Therefore, do witness the coming and going of the thoughts in the same way. Do not get attached to them. Don’t get defined by them. When you enter that state and make it a habit, you slowly enter the realm of detachment to those thoughts and they affect you less and less. You can then access relatively and potentially infinite capacity of the mind backed by the connected universal consciousness.
The real happiness and stability always comes from within and the core. What one needs is ‘core stability’! And the brain therefore needs capacity freed up from negativity to practice creativity. As I have always said, “The mind that thinks of nothing, is the mind that is prepared for everything.” You can train your homunculus. Yes, you can be a Jedi!
Dr. Manpreet Gulati.
