Everything that surrounds us was created by the mind Part 1

Buddhist teaching tells us that everything that surrounds us was created by the mind. This theory is perhaps a little hard to understand and believe for most people. Most people can, however, agree that all things created by mankind came from the mind of some individual or group of individuals. The devices we use; the clothes we wear; the cites we live in; the laws that protect us and bind us; all began first as thoughts. To a large degree, we create the world we live in by our day to day thoughts. True there is always the environment.  Like a labyrinth, it sets up opportunities and obstacles for us to navigate through. It is the choices we make on a day to day basis that ultimately will determine the results of our living.

Like the hand that is dealt with us in a poker game, our attributes and environment our set up for us.  To be sure that the environment and social profile will vary for every person and it may be argued that some environments are more conducive to success.  Let us for a moment take a look at the game of poker. In this game, several people sit at a table and five cards are randomly dealt with each.  Some will have better hands than the others. Does this mean that the person with the best hand has already won the game?

Thankfully, there is a little more to the game than this, otherwise, it would be quite dull.  Each person takes the game in its own direction.  Some people keep the hand they have. Other people discard some cards and take others. Some people may choose to bluff. Some may choose to fold.  It is the decisions that they make during the course of the game that contributes to their success or their demise.

Like poker, we are dealt a hand before we go into life. We are born in a certain time in history, in a certain culture and social standing.  We are either man or woman and we have certain physical attributes.  This is our environment and social profile. It plays a key role in shaping us for our future.  It may be successfully argued that some environments and profiles are more conducive to success than others.  It matters, little, however, because what you have been dealt with is what you have to play the game with.

The mind is like a computer. We are programmed from the moment we come into the world by the forces that surround us.  Our physical attributes give us dispositions to certain tasks. The people and images around us condition us with values and knowledge.  Our experiences reinforce what we see. However, the outcome is never certain.  People born in the most difficult of environments can at times be more successful than those born in most better environments.

We navigate through opportunities and obstacles of life,  like wandering through a labyrinth. It is the choices we make on a day to day basis that determine where we will be in the future.  It all comes down to clear thinking. The better choices you make, the better the outcome will be.  The clearer the mind and the more certain you are of your objectives the better chance you have of getting where you are going.

The choices you make are based on the clarity of your thought and the information available to you.  Both of these elements are dependent on the clarity of mind to some degree. Let us for a moment take a look at the process of accumulating information.  As the pace of this world grows ever quicker and the volume of information increases we have to make choices as to the things that we listen to and those that we ignore.

Every moment of our lives we are bombarded with a multitude of information that comes to us through our senses. Even in the most tranquil of environments, to a lesser degree, this is still the case.  Our subconscious takes it all in as a video recorder.  This can be displayed by going into self-hypnosis and bringing back events of the day.

On a conscious level, however, we do not remember everything we experience. If this were the case we would not assimilate all of the information.  We selectively decide what to pay attention to by what is important to us. To the football player, the blade of grass that brushes across his shoe as he passes the 25-yard line in a full run is not paramount.  He doesn’t pay attention to the bald-headed man in the third row eating a hotdog, although he may be clearly in our field of vision.

In varying degrees, we always make a value judgment as to what we will see and what we will not.  In a very real sense, we interpret our environments rather than seeing them as they really are.  A newborn child spends the first three months of his/her existence seeing his/her surroundings as a blur of colors and light.  The reason for this is that he/she has not learned to distinguish between the different objects in the environment.

Let us for a moment take a look at the way that we perceive on a purely physical level.  Light waves bounce off an object and hit the retina of our eyes. These are translated into electrical impulses. The impulses are sent to the brain.  The impulses are matched up with existing patterns in the brain that have been built up from past experiences.  It is an accepted theory now that memory is stored by neural patterns.

If this were not the case, the brain could not contain the immense amount of information we accumulate in a lifetime.