mind
thoughts, feelings, images, past present, future - everything is within our mind
Mind is scattered throughout the body. Our whole body is aware and thinks - not only the brain. Other nerve centres like the solar plexus and the gut plexus remember, calculate and communicate. Thinking even extends beyond the body when we store and manipulate ideas outside ourselves on paper and in machines.
For some the mind creates the body. For others the mind is one of the body's activities. Here, body and mind are taken to be processes rather than things and not really separate. Thoughts, sensations and emotions are biological activities driven by electrons moving around.
In human cultures mind and knowing are mostly in words but other animals, trees and even rocks also maintain their integrity with complex internal processes that interact with their environment and influence their future. In this sense they could be described as having mind and perhaps even intelligence even though they might not talk or drive cars.
intelligence
The human mind has evolved to interact with a complex and intelligent natural environment and monitor its vast landscape of images, smells and sounds. It withers away in monotonous barren urban rectangles, routines, the deathly E flat hum of motors and the perfumes of degrading asphalt, plastics and burnt car fuel.
A high IQ can be an intellectual disability in this environment where specialisation and blind conformity are more valued. .johnbrasted.com aims to increase comfort, awareness and effectiveness - real intelligence.
memory
How sure can we be that our ideas represent reality? Memory is fragile. It depends on our biochemistry which is readily disrupted by stress, social pressures, drugs, diet, disease, ageing and death. No wonder human undertakings can go haywire.
Memory is conservative. It channels our thoughts along our well trodden paths. We only perceive what memories of previous experience prepare us for. Someone who has not seen photographs before may not recognise what one represents without practice.
understanding
Intellectual insight by itself does not necessarily bring change. We do not always change just because we want to or because we understand our problems in words. The rest of the mind and body has to come to understand as well. And focus on doing something about it. Ideas, like seeds, take time to grow.
The exercises and links on the mind, body and stress pages help shed trivial and useless preoccupations and access the intelligence of the body and emotions to expand understanding. The universe is bigger than the capacity of the brain and its languages. The whole mind is needed.
copyright (C) John Brasted 2008
updated 19. Nov. 2011
