Brain and Mind
And What Are We Manufacturing?
Paul J. Dejillas, Ph.D. – December 19, 2020
Yes, indeed. What are we producing in our thoughts, emotions, and deeds? Are they wholesome or unwholesome? Are they worth living or dying?
"You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall commit murder' and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court" ~ Matthew 5:21-22.
The New Testament is much harsher than the Old. By our thoughts alone we have already committed sin. But how is this possible?
Modern science explains it this way.
Our thoughts, emotions, and aspirations are electromagnetic waves that carry with them information and messages. They can be picked up by others along the way. They are very real; they exist in reality, made visible by our actions and behavior.
The moment you express them, they travel across time and space. As electromagnetic waves, they journey around the world faster than the speed of light, in the process, affecting everything and everybody along the way.
These information and messages can be wholesome or unwholesome depending on the content projected by the individual.
Imagine if the content is all about anger, hatred, vengeance, jealousy, greed, corruption, and depression. It can create havoc and devastation on others and on our surroundings.
Our thoughts and emotions then can aggravate the level of pollution now hovering in our atmosphere, affecting the health of the people across the globe. People will continue to experience pain and suffering that is not only physical, but also mental. Health issues will fill the earth and will prevail our already poisonous air space.
We are known as a world inhabited by people who are eavesdroppers and rumor-mongers. By our CCTVs, drones, Internet, and cellphones, we go outside our home via our Messenger, Skype, Viber, Zoom, or MS Teams to harvest thoughts and feelings of others and at the same time spread ours too.
We love to watch about the latest news, bots, trolls, and memes which evoke negative thoughts and ill feelings triggering us to commit evil deeds.
We feel spirited and energized when we mingle with people having similar wavelength or vibration. Our collective force animates and propels the world. This was how the reign of terror began and how the dark forces had their heyday controlling the minds of humanity.
Information travels instantaneously forward and backward in circular motion. Whatever thought and emotion we throw into the wild boomerangs on us.
As a result, the pain, agony, and suffering we experience inside us spread across the globe. They go back and continue to pester us at an even greater intensity and alarming rate because they are compounded by the pain, agony, and sufferings of others, which we gathered along the way.
This cycle of spreading and harvesting thoughts and emotions goes on and on ad infinitum because we have become entangled with all sorts of negativities that are of our own making. Prevention or cure becomes nearly impossible.
"Oh, Lord, how shall I get out of this troubling mess? Its impact on me has gone so deep now, almost beyond my control.
"It is unhealthy for me to repress my thoughts and emotions. And if I pass these on to others, they still remain within me, digging deeper and deeper into my core being, pestering me night and day. They are bleeding me to death.
"I know there are ways of getting out of my present predicament. Let me reflect on Thy ways, oh Lord".
The Human Brain: Deceptive but a Useful Tool
Paul J. Dejillas, Ph.D. – November 16, 2021
Our brain is divided into two hemispheres, each having their distinct functions. One is rational, the other emotional. In day-to-day life, they often compete with each other for dominance and control.
The idea is to balance the two hemispheres because we have only one brain. Otherwise, we can be guilty of harboring, what psychologists say, “cognitive dissonance”, which is experienced by the person who simultaneously holds two or more conflicting beliefs, ideas, or values.
When this sets in, it causes feelings of unease and tension within us. One becomes torn between keeping with our long-espoused beliefs or getting rid of new ones. In most cases, the individual ignores this and remains undecided when situations call for action. This causes pent-up emotions like anger, frustration, hatred, or fear to build up and difficult to control.
But how is the process of balancing our brain done? This is the $60 million question that need to be answered by each one of us. And the answer is just right inside us.
What are beliefs, anyhow?
They're just accumulations of information and messages thrust unto us from the outside whose veracity we have never fully examined and verified. They're other people's beliefs, not our own making.
Question them. Never swallow any information. Doubt their origin and accuracy before ingesting them. Faith is belief without known, verifiable empirical facts. Dig into their essence. Study them so that, with new informed knowledge, beliefs cease and disappear entirely.
Only then can we say: "I know, that's why I don't believe. I believe only if I don't know and have no way of knowing it. But, even then, I'll refrain from believing it."
Belief is the greatest destroyer of life, yet a necessary instrument, the greatest gift and miracle endowed by the Divine for our meaningful earthly existence. But they cease to exist when they become a reality. What you believe becomes real in every aspect of life and truly experiential.
What's there left to believe then?
The Mental Realm Can Be Turbulent and Insane
Paul J. Dejillas, Ph.D. – December 1, 2021
How do our brain and mind produce thoughts, feelings, and actions? Where are these processes located? Can our feet, hands, fingers, tongue, intestines, lungs, heart, kidneys think, feel, and act? Can our atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, and muscles also do the same? How do they function and operate? The answers are frightening and startling, just as their effects on us are.
If there are such a thing as hallucinations, wild imaginations, fantasies, illusions, mirages, and lies, how do they emerge? How do they influence our thinking, feeling, and behavior? Oh, they are very real and we could be living our life in a dream world, fantasy island, or dark universe. Reality for us has become grim and illusory.
If we are wearing a spectacle, for example, how do the grade and color of this spectacle perceive reality? How do they influence our ways of thinking, feeling, and behavior? And what are these spectacles I am talking about?
We can be deceived also by our other senses of hearing, smell, taste, and touch. We must have been deceived for so long already and we just don’t know it. If so, then, the world we are living in has become a world of deception and manipulation.
Going back to reality is not even aspired for. For once caught in the labyrinth of illusion, there is no more reality. Lucky are we if somebody comes to serve us. But there's nobody out there to save us. For they too are caught in a deep quagmire.
The mental realm is so powerful that they can play a great role in defining who and what we are today. It can influence our moods, attitudes, personality. They can reveal our real identity or cast doubt on our sanity.
Knowing its dynamics will help us understand whether we are genuine and real to ourselves and others or simply confidence tricksters. If we're in a world of dreams, we must wake up.
May the darkness of sin and the night of heathenism in us vanish into nothingness so that the ember that's within us may grow to illumine every corner and aspect of our being.1
The Mind is a Smart Traveler. But Someone is even Smarter
Paul J. Dejillas, Ph.D. – November 19, 2021
The mind is not an organ to be caressed and loved, but an organ to be tamed and stilled. Our mind can travel very fast, even faster than the speed of light and the ride can be rough and bumpy. One moment, the mind is here, the next it's on the other side of the world.
And the travel can be two-way. When our mind travels outside, it siphons all kinds of vibrations out there and brings them inside us. Whether wholesome or repealing, we tend to identify ourselves with them. We become the vibration.
Then, it bounces back outside to influence others out there to become who and what we are. What becomes of the inside, is replicated and magnified a thousand times outside. Corollary to this, what becomes of the outside, becomes us in the inside.
It's an almost endless cyclical motion of traveling with only two destinations, inside and outside. In the process, the mind becomes bigger, stronger, and more powerful. We become either loving or conceited, depending on the quality and level of vibration we project outside and inject into us. So are the people outside.
But the mind, as we know already, can't be trusted at all. The travel, in fact, is illusory. We can't travel with the mind outside because the brain that triggers the mind to travel is inside us. Even if our thoughts and feelings can travel around the world, we cannot go with them because we are here and now, our feet stationed and fixed on the ground.
Our conscious Self is ever present and alive, simply watching and observing the restlessness of the mind. Ever in the state of awareness, it remains unaffected by the outgoings and incomings of the mind. Indeed, life is all about living the present moment and we can choose to be always aware of what the mind does or not.
Living unconsciously is what can be tragic. For we become ever subservient to the dictates of the mind. We become simply automatons, obeying the rules of physics. We're on autopilot mode, not listening to our inner Self.
The Mental Realm
Paul J. Dejillas, Ph.D. – November 9, 2021
(a) How do our brain and mind produce thoughts, feelings, and actions? Where are these processes located? Can our feet, hands, fingers, tongue, intestines, lungs, heart, kidneys think, feel, act?
(b) Can our atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, and muscles think, feel, and act? What are their functions and operations? We might have been deceived for so long and we don’t know it.
(c) If there are such a thing as hallucinations, wild imaginations, fantasies, illusions, mirages, and lies really, how do they emerge? How do they influence our thinking, feeling, and behavior?
(d) Can we be deceived by our senses? Can our eyes, hearing, smell, taste, and touch deceive us? How?
(e) Our brain is divided into two lobes or hemispheres, each having their distinct functions. One is rational, the other emotional. Which is dominant in you? The idea is to balance the two hemispheres because we have only one brain.
Otherwise, we can be guilty of what psychologists say “cognitive dissonance”, which is experienced by the person who simultaneously holds two or more conflicting beliefs, ideas, or values.
But how is the process of balancing done?
Our Memory Recall
Paul J. Dejillas, Ph.D. – October 30, 2021
Our mind may recall a problem we encountered in the past and brings it in front of us. This is our power to recall and remember things and events that happened long ago or just recently.
It's ok. It's natural. Our past come and go, just as the clouds appears and disappears. Clouds never stay. The problem lies when we're too fixated with our past that we're no longer able to live the present moment.
It can become worse if we go and travel with our mind. Mind, by nature, is restless and never tires. It travels anywhere and everywhere, anytime it likes. The problem is, it does not have any clear and definite destination to go. It can lead our life astray.
In so doing, we miss the several opportunities and potentialities that the present must have offered us every second as we travelled with our mind.
This can be aggravated if we add into it all our insecurities and worries about our future. Our insecurities and worries only exist in our mind, in our thoughts and feelings. What was once one problem has become two. And the union of the two begets more problems and so on, ad infinitum.
Our life can also become like a carousel that is turning round and round in an endless circle, by resurrecting the events occurring in the past and imagining what life would be in the future in an ever-spinning fashion.
The individual living in this kind of world has a serious, even deadly, mental issue. Its mind is turning round and
"Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel…"
The individual has get out of this labyrinth, rather than brood over and over its problems again and again. Remember that we are the cause of all our problems, not others.
Let's deal with our problems ourselves by solving them. Others may be able to help us. But they can only do so much by prescribing us a list of things to do. Yet, in the end, we are the only ones who can do this "to-do-lists".
So, what about the solution? Let me quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti himself:
"If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the solution."
Empty Your Mind
Paul J. Dejillas, Ph.D. – September7, 2021
"You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of" (Matthew 12:34).
How I wish these words of the Lord are not spoken to us. But we can never be sure. We're not as spotless and clean as we think we are. Inside each one of us is a Pandora's box filled with mounds of worms that are continually eating us alive daily.
Let's do some serious house cleaning. Let's deal with our anger, hatred, jealousy, worries, insecurities, and fears. We cannot just ignore or suppress them. Rather than sweep them under the rugs of our unconsciousness, let's throw these deep-seated wounds out of our mind.
Let's open our Pandora's box and deal with what's in there one by one. What gives rise to my anger and hatred? What triggers my worries, insecurities, and fears? Is it an individual person, a thing, or an event?
Once we have emptied our minds, let's fill ourselves with love, compassion, and joy, allowing them to overflow in us so we can share these to others, especially those who have done us wrong and those we have done wrong.
Above all, let's learn to forgive ourselves so we can move on. What we have done to others and what others have done to us in the past made us what we are today. Let's move on and continue our cosmic evolutionary journey, wherever this leads us to.