Where does the mind come from? Part3 of How Do I Get Out of My Own Way? (iteration 1)

“The being creates the mind to protect the being. The mind grew out of the being, originally a protector of the being, becomes a parasite. The language of being is descriptive, the language of the mind is evaluative.” Brad Branton Radical Honesty.

This quote lines up pretty cleanly with the basic interaction I’m hoping to describe with “how do I get out of my own way?” The feeling exists that there appears to be some sort of construct, some psychic barrier about/within my experience. I’m probing it, trying to find the weak spots, loopholes, gaps, or inconsistencies. It’s a hell of a process since the mind is not static but continuously moving. It is adapting to my inquiry and trying to fight back. Responding with a flood of inconsistencies so great that a secondary challenge of sorting through them arises.

However if this quote from Brad provides a snapshot of how I came to get in my own way it doesn’t fit the brief of helping me understand the why it is so. To protect the being from what exactly and for what purpose?

Ingeborg Bosch ads to this concept with her description of the division of consciousness in response to some life threatening and un-process-able input. What I read in her explanation is that the immature sense of being in infants/babies/children has no inherent way of dealing with the intense sensations that arise from within, so it just turns away from what it cannot bear to be in contact with.

I recognize this intense physical feeling I’ve come to describe as “change or die.” Where I feel that some situation, information, or feeling is so intense it threatens my very ability to exist. If I as an adult feel overwhelmed by sensation, how would a child experience this?

We can get some crucial context by looking at the biological layer of this. In Behave Robert Sapolsky explains that the cognitive portion of the brain, the frontal cortex develops over the course of adolescence, reaching maturity only at the age of 25.

“First, no part of the adult brain is more shaped by adolescence than the frontal cortex. Second, nothing about adolescence can be understood outside the context of delayed frontocortical maturation.”

So this intense fully formed limbic experience is perceived within the not yet developed frontal cortex. Leading consciousness to turn away from this overwhelming sensorial experience which it cannot contain, and thus a mind is born to protect the being. The mind then creates all of the patterns as “a wall of defense is built around this life threatening truth” of unbearable sensation.

Back to the point: there is a tension between the being and the mind, is the mind such a bad guy after all? I’m less sure with this frame.

Thanks for reading! What sensations/thoughts/feelings/experiences do you find unbearable/overwhelming? What trigger them? How does their appearance feel in your physical body? What do you think when they arise? What feelings emotions come up? How do you behave/react in response?

Coming next: The patterns of behavior that get in my way