The Power of the Conscious Mind


We cannot change most things that go on around us but we can put our mind to controlling our reactions to them. This will put us back in control. A world in which we just follow the tides is an erratic and schizophrenic one, with no consistency. This is very taxing and damaging to the body, mind  and spirit.

What our inner mind wants, also known as urges(id) and  what individuals in the society or the society, as a whole, want of us, including cultural norms, are usually in conflict, resulting in unconscious manifestations, our egos; an attempt to assert selfness and bounce back. Urges that go against our conscience, which bears our moral values, deal with a more severe conflict because it(our conscience) tells us we cannot have it. This is superego.

Since the urges(our inner wants) are usually very strong, as our conscious mind is in the process repressed, we react to the conflict with the external world, unconsciously, with dire social and health consequences. This does not mean we cannot control our emotional or physical reactions, like acting out in tantrums. We can train our brain to be in control, by always bringing to the conscious mind, the long-term consequences of our reactions to others' actions and behaviors.

The brain needs to be constantly and intensely put into use in all our life endeavors, to solve practical and why not hypothetical problems. The more the brain is used, the more active it will stay in use, and there is no asset in life as great as the human brain, as we know it. We all know that when we give up in life, we start making bad choices and we may invariably die as a result. Any medication is only as effective as the human mind allows it to be.

If we let go of this powerful tool of ours, we go out of self-control and succumb to emotional instability . Biofeedback is a scientific treatment based on the power of the brain to control our autonomic actions, by consciously putting brakes on our negative reaction to a stimulus, as we visualize the harm this stimulus is causing to our body. Moral training sharpens up our use of the conscious mind. We can train our brain to forget bad memories, and very often we do. But a diseased brain has lost this control, oftentimes because of the trauma it has suffered and the lesions embedded in it.

Tantrums, impulsiveness, language disabilties, PTSD and other brain disorders have been linked with loss of conscious control.

Dr. Oliver Verbe Birnso, M.D.

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