Mind is cause, life is effect
What if your mind is the cause, and your Life is its unfolding results?
How two people can look at the exact same situation and see two completely different things?
Every experience we have can only come from our mind. Nothing could be experienced outside our minds. It has always been this way and will probably continue to be like this :-)
Reflect for a moment: What is the value of the thoughts and information we have in our minds?
Probably more than “a lot” as they shape everything we see, feel, understand, and experience from and toward the world.
Mind is cause Life is effect
Professor Kaoru Ishikawa created the “Cause and Effect Analysis” back in the 60s. His view was: a cause is the element/s that makes other things happen, and the effect is the result/s of that dynamic. Another way of seeing this is: Cause is the why something happened, and effect is the what happened.
The theory was and is today widely used across all industries and essentially in research. It is a simple manner of observing and looking for the real cause of an issue or problem. Knowing the root of a problem equals half the solution, it is usually said in the engineering field.
One cut on the roots equals 1,000 cuts on the leaves… was Thoreau’s poetic thought for the three of evil…
Our mind is the CAUSE and the life we see and get is its effect.
The above statement might not be 100% accurate, and I believe it is almost true. The point is not discussing the percentage of accuracy rather an invitation to you for seeing what might become available, leaning into the idea that the mind is the cause of the results we get. In contrast, the external factors (we consider we dont control over) might be highly dependant on our mindset.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung
Our Mind
There are billions of neural signal cruising our bodies each minute. Each neural signal is a bit of data; your nervous system moves information around like your heart moves blood around. All that “information” is what we call broadly: the mind, most of which is forever outside your awareness.
It is, and there is, more to mind than what we usually associate with the Brain. There is all the nervous system with our 5 (5?) senses included, plus information from guts, heart…Our mind is broader than ‘just’ our Brain.
Mindfulness
A simple and great way Jon Kabat-Zin defined Mindfulness is: Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.
And, unless we train our mind, it does the minimum necessary to fulfill a function. Nothing more. That means that an untrained mind ‘loose’ to see a huge amount of ‘information’ passing unnoticed throughout our consciousness.
With practice, we can eventually come to see that everything outside you is a reflection of your own thinking. You are the storyteller, the projector of all stories, and the world is the projected image of your thoughts. When we react to ‘someone’ we are not actually reacting to that person, we are rather reacting to the thoughts and emotions that we perceive from that person.
In a way, that person I see in front of me is not THE PERSON himself, it is the experience I have from that person. You could be thinking about myself writing right now, but that is not ME; it is your experience about me. If I would be in front of you, you still you dont have ME in your mind; you have your thoughts about me.
What do we really control?
We like to think we control our thoughts, but we don’t.
Let’s suppose for a moment that our thoughts are not the source of our experience, and the environment, our genes, our past,… Are the source of experience. Then, we don’t have other choices than trying to be modifying, fixing, and patching external factors trying to improve our experience of life. And way, way too many people live in this manner.
It might not be straight forward. However, leaning into this way of thinking could shade different views for you. And different results
HOW, how… do I try this?
Try the question How much of “this” is external, how much is my experience, and what thoughts could I think to make this experience feel different?
Simple, and not easy
Two (of many) things that become possible from this understanding are
- When we realize and see that our experience is only coming from our mind, we dont feel and experience drifting or at the mercy of “the world,” “the circumstances”. It is not: “the world the cause, and we get its effect on our lives”. Our thoughts define our experience, and from that experience, we can choose to be and do what we want in the world. Those actions, in return, will shape our world.
- Success, however you define it: being happy, rich, famous, contributing to others, … whatever you define success to be, is achievable if you research and practice the right field-tested beliefs and habits. It is like a recipe: there is a recipe for every result you desire. Looking at anyone who did it, and knowing that all you experience is coming from your mind, you are ahead of the game to ‘choose’ and embrace those behaviors. Reading a cooking book won’t make you a chef, but reading the right book/s and practicing the right behaviors, may.