In this article I hope to make the case that we are damaged machines, our consciousness is fractured, that what we call our will, is no more or less than inbuilt or acquired programs and that we are easily manipulated by our fears of being isolated from the group; That the answer to our innate loneliness lies not in emotions but rather in feelings and the heart and, I will provide a few pointers to nudge you in the right direction.

 In previous articles in this series I have isolated each of the three brains within a human being; the physical, emotional, and mental and their effects on health and well worth getting acquainted or re-acquainted with them (see links at the bottom).

With Isaac Newton’s laws of motion, we began to appreciate that we live in a mechanical universe. The quest of science is to have more and more accurate data and reproducible laws and formulas to predict and manipulate the movements of matter in the world around us.

We exist in a bubble that we call the 3rd dimension, and everything within it, made of matter is machine like and devoid of true will, from the smallest particle to the largest galaxy all affect and are in turn affected by other bodies, and had one enough data and infinite computational power one could theoretically predict all future movements and probable course of action for every single atom and stellar body

 Our human bodies created from particles and made of matter are exceedingly complex machines containing three separate yet interdependent computers. The first or physical, often called primitive /physical, brain has encoded in the DNA patterns of ‘instinctive’ responses to its environment for survival and reproduction, which can bypass the other two brains in an emergency.

Our emotional brain uses the nervous system and hormones to alter the workings of our bodies depending on whether we need to fight, run away,  recuperate or procreate. In this process, it will affect both voluntary and involuntary muscles, as well as organs and the immune system. The release of these hormones can at times generate such emotional intensity that we ‘lose control’.

Our Mind – synonymous with abstract thinking, reflection and the words constantly running in our heads, is no more or less than complex software that by itself has no more free will than any version of Microsoft Windows.

It is extremely important to appreciate the power of the mind to affect our health and sanity.

The Herd instinct, fear and indoctrination

When we are babies we are incredibly vulnerable to our environment, we rely on our ‘herd’ to protect us. What happens when our immediate herd (family) on which we rely for safety is experienced as threatening? For example, irritated/ angry/cold /anxious parents, and jealous siblings, etc.,

This is one way in which software programs are created in our young minds to protect us from internal emotional turmoil, and we start a process of submission and self-censorship to conform to our perception of what will maximize our safety within the herd. Occasionally a child will not ‘submit’, this child is then labelled ‘rebellious’.

The process continues as we grow up, some programs within us are created by osmosis out of our need to belong and be safe, and others are rammed down our throats through what is presently termed education.

Ultimately, we end up with a complexity of rules and regulations in our minds that are at odds with the other two brains.  Something has to give, and it does. The connection between our three brains gets severed.

This will happen gradually, our minds begin to censure and judge our emotional and physical behaviour the resulting internal emotional conflict will start to be suppressed by interfering with our breathing. In time, wrong breathing becomes the norm and the suppressed emotions are somatized into our muscles.

These suppressed emotions seeking expression will arise as images from our subconscious. Our mental programs will do their best to remove them from awareness as quickly as possible. In time, we will say things like I have no imagination and or be at the mercy of nightmares. Our minds can become so adept at this self-censorship that when we become adults the process of suppression is so lightning fast that all we are aware of is, for example, that we suddenly have a ‘bad back’ or ‘pain in the shoulder’ and or ‘neck’.

The mind suppresses emotions, which in turn somatize the emotions within muscles, leading to muscular spasms, structural distortions and facia cramping. All the while the years roll on, and we become more and more rigid and inflexible, first mentally, then emotionally and finally physically.

The above is a depressing vision of humanity, and yet it gets worse. We have become damaged and fractured in our consciousness as a necessary means of survival within our culture.  We hardly ever get to experience life with all three brains working harmoniously together. The words in our heads are constantly interpreting the world around us, making critical judgements of self and others and, because we are fractured, we are easily hypnotized and manipulated.

The herd instinct for survival within the group is being abused by external interests; by using fear to generate conformity, and subservience and for a few years now lynch woke culture mobs. And in an ultimate sense, we are herded and hypnotized in the creation and maintenance of a dystopian reality, based on fear, slavery and poverty.

Sorry, I have got carried away with a description of the current state of the world and I wish to offer hope for a better vision for mankind.

There is great confusion presently as to the difference between emotions: hormonally generated fear-based reactions to our environment to keep the machine-ego safe, and feelings. (see previous articles in this series)

Allow me to define feelings as a state of being whereby all our three brains are working harmoniously together and our perception emanating from our heart reaches out to self as well as our environment, and we are one with it. In this state, any or a number of feelings of love, joy, compassion, gratitude acceptance may arise.

When only two brains are operating, we experience the world from within emotional fear, we are reactive in the world, only our perceived survival needs matter, we are alone (in ourselves) and seek the comfort of the herd, isolated, tense, stressed out.  At this level, knowledge may be acquired, but understanding is missing. We are at the mercy of accidents and life goes quickly by, for we are divorced from the experience of time.

Why be in our hearts?

Because we relax, are connected both to ourselves, and our environment. From here, we can observe ourselves and the world around us dispassionately. From this place, we have the opportunity to begin to clear the suppressed emotions that we have been accumulating for most of our lives.

When in our hearts’ people around us also relax, for those around us do not get the sense that they will be judged by their behaviour, words or actions. The thoughts in our heads go quiet and our experience of the world gains depth.

It would be great if we could be in this state without effort, but this is a journey that requires a lot of inner cleansing and forgiving of self and others. To get the ball rolling, let me share a very powerful exercise that will reap huge dividends when practised regularly.

Meditation exercise

Seat or semi-recline in a comfortable position whilst maintaining hands and feet uncrossed and eyes open (not essential, but it will help with mind wandering).

Focus on your feet and sense them, including toes (30 sec. approx.)

Focus on your hands and sense them, including fingers (30 sec. approx.)

Focus on your heart area (60 sec. approx.) including hands and feet

Focus on your tongue (30 sec. approx.) to include the heart, hands, and feet

Focus on your lower abdomen (30 sec. approx.) to include the heart, tongue, hands, and feet

Go back to the heart area as the centre of attention yet incorporate the sensation of the lower abdomen tongue, hands, and feet  (stay here for approx. 2.5 minutes).

Do this daily if you can, there will be times when you are overwhelmed with emotions/images/memories.  Others when you will struggle to stay focussed.  Allow your body to release at its own pace.  And learn to cultivate a connection with your 3 centres.

Learn to connect with these seven areas in your daily life – to be grounded and connected

I will be making a guided meditation in the near future that will be useful to some of you

So what is missing from the above article? That when we focused on the machine we threw out the baby with the bathwater, for yes we are machines, yet there is something so much greater and wonderful within each of us.

Souls are the interacting bedrock of this 3rd Dimension, they are the ‘Will’ and ‘breath of The Maker of All’ behind all animate and inanimate matter, and each of us ‘coalesced’ with a fragment of soul when 4 months in the womb. Whilst this integration of body and soul reached 88.4%on average shortly after birth, it regressed so that by the time we reached 12 years of age our integration was down on average to approx. 17%, some of it due to unresolved traumas from previous lifetimes and some purely due to the collective disharmony inherent in our culture.

To integrate with our souls and open up our hearts, we need to climb to at least 32% of integration simply to experience sporadic moments of heart openness. This is also another way of saying that our 3 centres, however fleetingly, need once more to operate in harmony with each other so that our soul fragment may express itself unhindered in this lifetime.

How else can we hope to open up our hearts?

• If you are in a relationship, before going to sleep focus on your partner, review what makes you laugh/ brings a smile to your lips /what you appreciate/ allow warmth to seep from your heart as you taste the uniqueness of his/her presence.

• Experience and cultivate gratitude for all you have – home /work/ friends /environment, and especially your body.

• Whenever you catch yourself judging others, turn your light back on to yourself, be curious as to how you put yourself down, and laugh at your mechanistic behaviour, feel warmth for your damaged and inconsistent self.

To come – How we keep ourselves sick

Previous articles on this topic:

Have you had enough of being sick? Time to connect with your mind, Part 4

Have you had enough of being sick? Time to connect with your emotions, Part 3

Have you had enough of being sick? Time to connect with your body Part 2

Have you had enough of being sick? Would you like to learn how to be healthy?

Why is ill health so confusing? Why do so many of us end up with the sense that we are victims and powerless despite doctors, hospitals, ‘health centres’, ‘health shops’, therapists of all types, and let’s not forget—chemical drugs designed to take control of your body’s functions to ‘allegedly’ keep you healthy. You would be forgiven for assuming that sickness is the natural state of humankind.

What if I were to say that physical illness is the result of internal conflict between the mind and emotions? That the rigidity of our mental belief systems will in turn create emotional inflexibility and, in time, physical disease? In our lack of self-awareness, we block the innate instinctive sense of what is good or bad for us.

There is another level of sickness, to do with -Karma carried over from previous lifetimes. Although the end result is the same, i.e., we acquire mental programming growing up that leads us to the suppression of certain emotions and the creation of illness.

In this article, I will share the power of the mind to shape and unwittingly be responsible for ailments yet to come, via its suppression of our emotions, as well as manipulated patterns of thinking regarding food, health, and its dissociated perception of reality.

First, be aware that our minds are at the heart of our individual and collective confusion and inner entrapment. That the words in our heads interfere with our perception of ‘Reality’ and are mainly responsible for our sensations of isolation from others and our environment. We could compare the words in our heads to subtitles in a film that impede our direct experience of engaging with the world.

Second, the words in our heads because they run pretty constantly in the background and because we are half asleep most of our awake time, go unquestioned, we identify with them and assume these words are ‘us’. Nothing could be further from the truth, for these words are automatic repetitions that will reflect indoctrinated and biased programming.

If you have read the preceding articles (see at the end of this article for links) in the series, you will appreciate what a complex mechanism human beings are, for we are 3 brains in one. Here is an analogy: we could liken the body to the computer’s motherboard, the mind (beliefs)—the software, and the emotions/hormonal system—the electricity that powers the machine. A computer depends on its programming software, which depends on the physical chips already hard-wired into it (DNA-herd instinct, amongst others).

‘The Terminator films’ highlighted one of our greatest fears of technology: that the machine will become “self-aware” and totally selfish, i.e. that it won’t want to share this world with humans who must be eradicated/controlled. This is a projection of our damaged egos that envisage other (damaged) humans as the greatest threat to their survival and to be viewed with suspicion.

What is missing from the above paragraph is that with self-awareness we are no longer blind, fearful reactive machines at the complete mercy of our programming.

Mechanics of the mind

Human brains are created with three separate and interactive centres. The physical (to which the enteric nervous system also belongs) has “hard-wired” programming in its DNA. For example, if a baby is on a table that has either thick plastic or glass sheet on top that protrudes way beyond the edge of the table, when allowed to roam the baby will not venture beyond the edge because, with his/her ability to judge depth, it instinctively knows the danger.

 The emotional/hormonal brain is the powerhouse to move the physical (fear/flight). It is hard-wired with two major settings: fear (sympathetic) and calmness (parasympathetic) which manage a large range of glands that have the power to control the body via the release of hormones in a feedback loop that achieves homeostasis moment by moment.

The mind uses memory, observation, indoctrination, and beliefs, learnt as well as gained by osmosis, via its imperative need to belong to the group (herd instinct), particularly when younger, and channels the emotions as per its own programming to prep the body for survival (whether objectively real or imaginary).

Unfortunately, badly written computer code will affect programs adversely, and even make them unusable or ineffective from their original intention.

When two brain centres are working in sync, we have partial self-awareness, i.e., we can learn stuff but we are unlikely to understand it fully. When all three brains are working harmoniously, we have true self-perception and what we learn ‘we own’ and becomes part of who we are. Our attention to our physical, emotional, and mental processes allows us to alter some of our programs by the mere act of self-observation.

Emotions within us are hard-wired for spontaneity, effervescence, and lightning response to our environment. Modern culture does not favour spirited children, we like them to behave, “walk, don’t run.” “We like to -shape their minds.” We do this by filling their heads with indoctrinating beliefs about religion, morality, conformity, and jingoism. “Do as you are told” “stop daydreaming” and, of late, the new kid on the block-“Woke culture” indoctrination.

In a traditional healthy culture, the children would learn from their parents by osmosis, which gave the parents pleasure in interacting in this world. The children, in turn, would do their best to learn and be proficient and, gain satisfaction that they might be appreciated for their efforts.

The parents’ calm, loving composure, self-awareness, love, loyalty, and care for their family and their neighbours would become the bedrock of the software program.

The above is uncommon, for the biological and sociologically programmed machines we call our parents were themselves raised by damaged and pre-programmed parents. Additionally, we are actively subjected to the popular media (TV, news media, etc.), which in a semi-hypnotic trance (only two brains functioning) we absorb without question.

The power to create and co-create perceived reality

 If you have ever doubted your power to affect your world, think back to all the times you visualized and desired something strongly, and then note how long it took for your desire to manifest. Our minds control our emotions and, when steered in the desired direction, the power of our emotions will manifest in our thoughts in our environment.

Individually, the average person has a very weak capacity to manifest their desires, for they are mentally and emotionally fractured and conflicted. They are like leaves in the wind, where the slightest gust will lead their thoughts and desires in a different direction. Unfortunately, whilst individually the ‘sheeple’ are weak, the collective power to manifest is still strong. Hence, the importance in our political and commercial world is to control the narrative of the populace, to manifest the desired vision – of the few wolves.

There is a far greater power available to those who have a level of three brain integration and access to heart or love energy to manifest perceived reality. Unfortunately, at this moment, they are few. (I will share more in the next article where I will focus on feelings and the heart.)

The greatest tool available to the mind to control emotions is judgement. Judgement is strong in our culture. The courts of law, religions, sects, and groups, be they political, artistic, food-related, scientific, ‘woke’ etc., all assume the power to criticize, judge, and find us wanting. The punishment is to be cast out of the group, to lose our so-called friendships, our ability to earn, etc. Our DNA is hard-wired to be part of a ‘herd’ for safety. We fear the isolation, and condemnation of the group. And so we learn to be self-critical and self-censor ourselves to conform. The Japanese have a saying. “The nail that stands out gets hammered first.”

They teach us to police our own thoughts, internal imagination, emotions, and even physical expression. Our cultures have a zillion laws and regulations to ‘control’ our behaviour. Our religions, scientific, medical, and historical narratives have all been high-jacked and, enshrined with visions of a pseudo-reality that is heretical to question lest we be labelled an anti…whatever or denier, the implication being that we are not of ‘sound mind’.

As individuals, it is very hard to extricate ourselves from such pressures to conform and ‘to think outside the box,’ and YET, the word freedom implies just that!

You have really depressed me now! How can I help myself?

Our minds are the greatest obstacle to inner freedom because we are not fully awake. We go through life in a semi-dream state and the words in our heads speak with the non-questioned authority that they come from ‘our essence’ or soul if you will.

There are very few tools available to help us move beyond the rigidity of the ego from within the ego. Here are some:

• We should enshrine and tattoo this one on our foreheads: WAKE UP and be an observer of your body sensations, posture, your emotions, and the thoughts that run incessantly in your head and your imagination. -Set up an alarm reminder for every hour. When it goes off, focus on your physical body sensations and posture in relation to others, your emotions, and the thoughts in your head. Remember the last time the alarm went off? How long were you present for? Less than one minute? More? Give yourself permission to experience a pang of regret.

• No one likes to be criticised. It is very hard to be relaxed in the company of a critical busy body. It is very hard to be at peace with oneself when we are being self-critical. Agree with yourself, from this day forward, you will stop putting yourself down. No more: I am bad, unlovable, ugly, fat, etc.,

• From this day onwards, focus on positive affirmations regarding yourself as well as others.

• From this day forward, you will be ruthlessly honest with yourself—no more self-lying. Own your emotions without judgement, however unpleasant. i.e. I am envious, angry, disdainful, fearful, cowardly, etc. Self-observation is a tremendous tool for change as long as we are honest with what we observe.

• From this day forward, be mostly honest with others. When you catch yourself saying words that are untrue yet you say them for the sake of belonging to the group or making yourself appear important, wealthier, or less of a loser (‘I have been there!’), own up! Say to the other person, “That is not true.” “I don’t know why I said it. ” Show your underbelly! If they are worth knowing, they will understand.

• Words have tremendous power to create as well as reinforce existing programming. Words have the power to alter our or others’ perception of reality or not. Never belittle yourself with words and emotions such as “I am such a sh*t.” or “I hate this”. Delete all negative words from your thinking and talking. Aim to always speak or think of yourself with affirmation. For example, people often say, “Oh I could never learn that!” You might say, “Yes, I think I could learn this if I were interested enough.”

• Last, learn to laugh at the thoughts in your head, they gain importance because you don’t question them. They are tape loops of built-in programming. We can not fight them, but we can dismiss them by laughing and not taking them seriously. Practice leads to proficiency.

I appreciate that I am only skimming over this vast subject. However, if you are new to these ideas, I hope they will be fertile ground on which to build your expanding perceptions and experiences. Self-observation is the foundation that leads to change.

In my next article, I will focus on feelings and the heart, and I will bring together the mind, body, and emotions, focusing clearly on how we can extricate ourselves from the rigidity of ego identification.

Previous articles in this series:

Have you had enough of being sick? Would you like to learn how to be healthy? Part 1

Have you had enough of being sick? Time to connect with your body! Part 2

Have you had enough of being sick? Time to connect with your emotions! Part 3

See also: 3rd chakra – lower mind