Discussion: Will the Real You… Please Stand!
August 28, 2020
Generally, we go through our day with chatter or active thoughts going on in our heads constantly. So much of our day is on auto-pilot. Then we wonder what happened to the day or the week. Fall will start next month, with decisions of where we will spend Thanksgiving or will we be the one hosting the dinner. Do you ever stop and wonder what or who is running your life? Friday at Sundown, let’s stop this evening and reflect for a moment on our life. We know our outer life only shows us a reflection of the inner life. Our belief and our thoughts mirroring back at us… Us!
Grandma Marie taught me to read before I started school. To my surprise, when I started school and found out I was basically the only student in my class who could read more than Fun with Dick and Jane (and Jack and Jill running up and down the hill). My public school education stated when I was six years old (there was no kindergarten during my childhood); I wondered what had these children been doing with their lives… being children, I guess, lol. Ok, in all fairness we are talking about many years ago, because now our children are reading at 2 and 3 years old. I rarely read novels and my library shows it. Early in life I wanted to know what made the body work and especially the mind, which leads me to what I want to discuss today… that our conscious and subconscious minds are what makes up our belief system.
Our conscious mind act as a conduit to the subconscious mind from the day we are born. Consciously, we are not aware of this process going on within. For this reason we automatically move through life. We are aware regarding our everyday activities as they program us to move throughout day. Still, there are those behaviors that seep through into our life that have us saying “Where did that thought come from?” Meanwhile, we wrestle with our inner self, trying to justify actions that seem foreign to us, not realizing they are coming from self.
Examples: Have you heard someone say, “Man, I don’t know what happened, that’s not me”. “I don’t know why I keep doing the same stupid thing over and over”. For the ladies, we can’t understand “why do I keep picking the wrong guy (I’m sure that men voice this regarding their choices as well). It’s hard to know all that has gone on inside our mind starting as a child. This lends to the statement, “What’s in you will come out of you”!
Let’s look at a definition regarding the conscious and subconscious mind; using a definition I looked up believing it is appropriate for this discussion… Your subconscious mind is an unquestioning servant that works day and night to make your behavior fit a pattern consistent with your emotionalized thoughts, hopes, and desires. It is your life’s storehouse. The subconscious mind doesn’t question what is coming into it and accepts everything as truth.
The conscious mind: First it identifies incoming information, observing and categorizing what is going on around you. The second function of the conscious mind is comparison. The third function is analysis and the fourth function is decision. An explanation in connecting the two minds together; Sigmund Freud believed “that things the conscious mind wanted to keep hidden from our awareness are repressed into the unconscious mind could still have an influence over our behavior”.
To repressed mean an unconscious hiding of something inside of us. Example (i.e.), repressed memories of abuse as a child (esp. sexual abuse) and suddenly becoming aware as a young adult of those abuses. Repressed memories of abuse may still affect behavior of difficulties in other areas of the person’s life (esp. relationships). Memories locked deep in your mind can influence and affect your behavior without your conscious awareness. It's amazing how we neglect self by saying “That’s just how I am” causing a loneliness that we live with though you are standing in the center of a crowd. We proudly say “that’s just me”, building a wall around the heart where you can’t get out and no one can get in. Your childhood standing guard over your adult life with daily affirmations of “You are nothing or you will never amount to anything” or “remember you are a victim”.
To wrap this evening discussion up and using what I have already stated as a springboard, I want to share my thoughts about our belief system. These are my thoughts and you may totally disagree, and that is okay. What is a belief system? A definition I believe suitable is “we define it as an ideology or set of principles that helps us to interpret our everyday reality”. Our belief system works out of both our subconscious and conscious minds. Now, personalize this to what do you believe? Our world for the moment has changed and may never be what we knew as normal. Remember, I made a statement early, our belief and our thoughts mirroring back at us… Us! Not what we speak per se, but what we believe is locked inside us where no one can see.
What flows from the subconscious to the conscious and then into our outer world? Our beliefs are being bought out into the open. When you look at your own world, has your belief been shook or strengthened? Our elders used to thank God for being “clothed in their right mind or clothed and in their right mind”. Mainly, thanking God they could think for themselves. We consciously act out of the subconscious mind, putting out into the world what we truly believe. Do we stop and think about what are we feeding our conscious mind? Now that our parents no longer have a say of what goes on. What am I saying to me? That belief system we have built connects us to the world.
It is time to clean house (our mind). For many, because we will need all that is within us to fortify us for the new day. Memories of an unhealthy childhood steal our today from us. Not forgiving locks us to the ones who hurt us, keeping us at a standstill, right beside the pain. Looking with jealousy and envy at someone else’s grass we deem greener than ours, we are losing sight that we are both using a different fertilizer (what is coming out the heart and mouth). Many people dominated by yesterday, missing today and blind to tomorrow!
We have got to let it all go of all that is not working for us. Take a deep breath. Since our physical legs hold up of body, I see belief as the legs holding up our inner self. It’s what I believe that keeps me standing.
With what is going on in our world today, life has put a demand on us and wants to know what we believe. It can be isolation from loved ones in the hospital and you have to sit on the outside. Approval for unemployment and you haven’t received a check, yet. Life has put a demand on us to say loud through our life, verbally or non-verbally, “What do you believe?” We can no longer carry those unseen weights in our lives, especially those of the past. We need to let it go and hold on to this new season of life that is there for each and every one of us. The weight will be too heavy if we don’t. So listening to current news reports we hear daily, we have got to pull together and be there for each other. It’s not too late to do some spring cleaning within and let the real you stand up.
Thank you for joining me for Friday at Sundown. Remember… Just Breathe!
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