Get out of the mental - 1
FEBRUARY 22, 2023
Table of contents
For a long time, I had this demanding dream from time to time. A dream that is different every time, but that always tells the same story. I have to gather my things – scattered I don’t know where – in a kind of race against time. I have a plane, a train or a bus to catch but I am unable to get to the airport or the station because something is always missing. I am alone, I get lost in my research, I see the clock ticking anxiously… in short, I feel like I am in a labyrinth from which I never find the exit. And each time, I wake up, powerless, with the unpleasant feeling that I could have gone on looking for a long time…
One night, however, while I was in the labyrinth, I managed to ask for directions for once. This unprecedented situation made my consciousness emerge. I suddenly realized with a sigh: “Oh no, I’m in that kind of dream again…”. Without really believing it, I followed the indications I received, and against all odds… I finally found the exit. I could hardly believe it when I woke up and realized what had just happened. It’s simple: I was so relieved that I thought I had escaped from prison. A mental prison that I would have entered a long time ago…
In these two articles, I will try to explore the nature of this prison and the path that allowed me to stop the repetition of this story. In other words, I will talk about the mental, its strategies and the acceptance, in fine, of its limits, giving way to a deeper connection with the soul.
The strategies of the mental (not to get out of the mental)
Before getting into the heart of the matter, I would like to talk about the origin of the mental. Where does it come from? What is its purpose? As I see it, the mental is a part of the soul. It was originally designed to allow us to interact on the human plane, through our senses, creating an illusory separation from our Self so that we could experience ourselves both from within and without [1]. Although this is not a natural way for the soul to function, it was meant to serve our experience in matter, allowing us to act in this space-time.
The brain- mental
The mental is thus on a mission, so to speak. It has taken as its companion the best processor that exists in the physical world, capable of counterbalancing and embodying its ethereal nature: the brain. Together, they wanted to offer us the most captivating experience possible in this reality, and only in this reality. A complete immersion in biology, in the understanding and interpretation of what surrounds us and what animates us. A kind of incarnation inside ourselves, allowing us to have sensual and sensory feelings that can only come from being in a physical form.
The price to pay for the mental was its voluntary sidelining. Rightly or wrongly, it lurked in a corner of the soul. It closed itself off. A physical separation from the soul also took place in the brain through the cerebral hemispheres.
The mental-brain thus remained blocked in space and time, breaking contact with all that is beyond it, in particular its connection with the soul. This is when it produced and maintained suffering. For living in a physical form when mental perception is restricted is inevitably linked to suffering…
Let’s see how the mental goes about restricting our perception. A quick review of its strategies…
The mental works by association
The mental is rather literal, it spontaneously makes associations with things it already knows or has already done [2]. One association leading to another, we can very quickly find ourselves lost in a labyrinth, if you know what I mean…
The mental uses qualias, that is, subjective contents, contents that can only exist in and for a consciousness that experiences them. Thus, we cannot enter another’s consciousness to know his or her qualias, any more than we can make someone understand our own qualias. That said, even if the qualias are personal, our perception is indirectly influenced by the qualias of others [3].
The mental likes to conform
I remember a time as a child when I didn’t know which hand to write with. I made up my mind to try both possibilities until I could feel which one I would be more comfortable with. My father was a left-handed contrarian and, although I probably didn’t know this information at the time, I think it was an unconscious part of my dilemma. Still, my grandmother, at the time, openly laughed at me when she saw me doing it. She couldn’t understand how I could hesitate on such a question. At the age of six, I decided that my life would probably be easier if I did what I saw being repeated around me. So I decided that I would be right-handed.
Years later, as luck would have it, I met a naturopath who thought my body was definitely left-handed, even though I was “right-handed”. What you have to understand here is that if my mental once won the conformity test, it did not change anything for my body. This is precisely what makes me say that this story was all about conformity. The mental likes to feel “normal”, and if what is considered normal at one moment is not normal at another, it will usually adapt to conform to this new normality [4].
It may be possible to conform for a while, but at some point, something is bound to change because it is not in our deepest nature… I will come back to this.
The mental seeks to reproduce
For the mental, everything must be reproducible to be true. Isn’t this how science works? For the results of an experiment to be valid, a scientist must be able to reproduce it over time, again and again and again with little or no variation. The scientific method also involves separating the subject from the object, erasing the subject, ideally completely, and failing that as much as possible. These methods are thus supposed to guarantee that scientific knowledge describes an “objective reality”, independent not only of the knowing subject [5] but simply of the observer [6].
The mental overshadows creativity
Can one be creative by functioning by reproduction? No, but we can pretend to be creative! For example, the mental is perfectly capable of convincing us that painting by number is a guarantee of creativity.
Except that true creativity does not come from the mental [7]. It is a deeper connection that can only manifest itself when the mental is eclipsed, even temporarily and even if we are not aware of it.
The mental loves distraction
Seek to get out of the mental and the mental will get excited and say, “Great! Let’s go beyond the mental”. Well, what it will really say is, “No, no. We’re not really going to do that. We’re going to pretend to go out of the mental, from inside the mental, but we’re not actually going anywhere.” You probably won’t be aware of it, but the mental will deploy a whole arsenal of distractions – even spiritual ones – to divert you from your goal, which it will never be able to achieve anyway…! Because it has never been possible to get out of the mental from within the mental. I know something about it, I tried! However, it really happened in my experience when I least expected it: during a rupture of an aneurysm which left my mental speechless, so to speak [8].
But most of the time, the mental will remain on its throne while entertaining the gallery (in the best of cases…). What wouldn’t it do to experience again and again that exhilarating feeling of being superior to everything?
The mental likes to arrange (even what does not fit together)
The mental wants to offer us a unique and unified experience of things. This is why it spends its time aggregating, like the pieces of a puzzle, all the data that reaches it: sounds, images, feelings… Even if it means taking a few liberties in the process! It receives these data in fragments and slices that do not necessarily coincide with each other. But it has this phenomenal capacity to use all kinds of wood, to use even the things that do not correspond and to arrange them together. It can put together pieces of a puzzle with parts that don’t fit or colors that don’t even match.
It wants to offer us a whole, but not necessarily a truthful whole. It may well deceive us under the pretext of “doing its job”.
The mental can allow (but a little bit)
It’s a matter of survival. The mental wants to keep control, it wants to manage everything. However, in order to have peace with that part of us that feels that “there is something else”, it is ready to negotiate.
Thus, it can let go of some ballast, grant a little freedom. A conditioned freedom, of course, because it should not go too far. There will come a time when the mental will say, “Hey, I’m in charge. I’m the boss here. We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing. There’s an outside force that’s trying to throw me off track. So I’m going to allow it, but only a little. It’s for your own safety, you understand? Let me tell you what to do and what not to do instead. The irony is that he doesn’t want to allow but still needs permission… Maybe starting with the permission to get out of the mental…
The mental constantly defines and validates the human being
Where does all this leave us, you may ask? To the fact that we have become entirely dependent on our mental. We desperately need it to validate us. To justify ourselves. All the time. It’s a never-ending game in which we find ourselves constantly frustrated.
The real reason for this frustration is simple: our deepest identity does not come from the mental, it comes from the soul, and we know this at some level, even if it is unconscious.
So the only thing we can hope for is that the mental has limits. But if it does, can it cross them itself? If not, how can we get out of the mental?
This is what we will explore in the next article (online soon). We will go to the frontiers of the mental and even beyond…
Notes & references
[1] This is the dynamic of awareness. It is based on a double movement: outward (observation) and inward (feedback), thus offering the human being the incredible possibility of experiencing himself both from the outside and the inside.
[2] More generally on the subject of mental associations, see Idriss Aberkane’s lecture Le cerveau excellent [The excellent brain].
[3] According to the dynamics of the connected universe by Nassim Haramein. You can consult the article on quantum consciousness for an introduction.
[4] See for example on this subject Asch’s conformity experiment.
[5] To go further, you can consult the article Objectivity, the blind spot of science.
[6] The role of the observer could well be much more important than expected, as quantum physics shows. For more on this subject, see Physics and metaphysics.
[7] The mental allows creation but is not creative, see the article on the principle of mentalism on this subject.
[8] For the details of this case, you can read My Story.
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