LESSON 2:

Lesson 3 >

The Brain Creates Its Own Understanding - This Understanding Is Full of Invisible Mistakes

The brain creates its own thought-made version of the physical world and also adds past understanding that it has learnt into that world.

A healthy human understanding of life doesn't contain any misguided or incorrect information in it. In this state of understanding, we get a steady flow of fresh, helpful and clear thinking that allows us to do what we need to do stress free.  This gives a person a very clear perspective of life and we are designed to do this naturally and automatically.

However, if the brain creates incorrect thinking that it believes to be true, psychological suffering occurs.

Psychological suffering signals that a person's conscious and unconscious understanding of life has become misguided and has mistakes in it. Incorrect understanding that you are unconscious of leads to a distorted experience of the world, yourself and life in general. This leads to a sense of threat being created that we call anxiety or psychological suffering. It will also mean that you stop thinking in a creative and rational way and will lead to unhealthy behaviours.

The Impact of Unconscious, Unhealthy Understanding

For instance, if you believed unconsciously that you weren't good enough, this would have a massive impact on how the world is experienced and what looks possible for you in it. It's likely that believing you're not good enough would lead to the world looking threatening. It would mean that you would have very low self-confidence. You'd be judgemental of yourself and constantly monitor your behaviour and others. It's likely that you wouldn't push for new opportunities, so you probably wouldn't earn very much and that could bring a lot of other challenges. Basically, this belief would make life stressful all the time. 

However, if this person truly realises that this belief is simply a thought – something that was made of energy and was never solid, fixed, true or real, then they would immediately feel happier and lighter. 

This would alter their understanding of life, which would alter their experience of reality. For humans, the world that we experience can change drastically in a second. In a distorted understanding, it looks like a threatening and awful place. However, as soon as the distorted thinking gets corrected, the world will look fun, safe and inviting again.

This process of cleaning up our understanding of life happens as unconscious believed thinking become undermined. Instead of looking real, these thoughts start to be seen clearly and just look like thoughts. Our understanding is then fresh and belief-free. We are no longer suffering. 

One of the most fundamental misunderstandings in life is that thought content starts to be taken seriously and believed in as real and true.

It can be very easy to miss the real reason for psychological suffering because our understanding of the world is largely unconscious and it's made of thinking that changes all the time. The important thing is that we recognise the signs of unhealthy understanding and we don't trust our experience of life if we see signs that it is unhealthy.

We then need to check the health of our understanding, we listen to the way that we feel and we take a look at what is occurring in our experience of life.

How do we know when a person's understanding is healthy and helpful? 

Feelings let you know. If there are experiences of feeling peaceful, relieved, content and loving, then beliefs aren't part of the reality that the brain is generating. Life will feel like it has slowed down and you will feel very present. 

Legendary sportsman like Roger Federer and David Beckham are great examples of doing something with healthy, accurate understanding. The weren't creating rigid, judgemental thinking about themselves or the game. Consequently, they played with a natural, healthy understanding of life that was quiet and very helpful. As a result, they had excellent reactions, didn’t injure themselves much and had a natural flare and grace. 

How can we tell if our understanding is harmful? 

You'll feel serious, negative, angry, insecure, anxious and stressed. Life will feel busy and the world will seem threatening.  

It can be very helpful to take 5 mins to close our eyes and sit quietly from time to time, especially first thing in the day. This will give us a very clear picture of what understanding our thought-made reality is using. And if it feels unpleasant or uncomfortable to sit quietly for 5 minutes, that's a very strong indicator that our reality is being made from harmful thinking.

If you notice that your reality has an unhealthy understanding, just be grateful that you've seen it. Then consider if your unhealthy understanding can be placed in a bucket. You'll see that it can't, so it's just thought content that never really existed.