How can we describe the mind??
Mainly I refer to the explanations about the mind from Dr. Dan Siegel in this text. He is doing interesting work and I like to share a bit. Also, in certain places I have woven in my own explorations, ideas and experience.
The mind is a self regulating and self organizing system of information and energy flow.
We can say one important part is located in the brain. It is embodied, many circuits are happening there, and when observed from this direction, it is located inside, it is a mechanism.
It is sharing, relational and therefore in between you and people, you and the environment and you and the planet.
It is a system with 3 features:
open
non linear: small input can have huge effects, outcomes and results (everyone knows how a little thing as just one word can cause a big upset for the whole day)
capable of being chaotic and unpredictable
The mind is one particular aspect of a complex system, elegant, refinded with a cloud like function.
It has emergent properties.
One of which is a self organization process which regulates energy and information flow.
summarized again:
mind is embodied
mind is relational (in between)
mind is a selforganizating process which regulates energy and information flow
The process includes:
monitoring
modifying
How do I monitor?
Monitoring we can strengthen and stabilize through mindfulness practice and observation techniques. Ways we can strengthen our monitoring skills include:
Meditation practice: sitting, guided, walking etc
Mindfulness practices
Appropriation of knowledge about consciousness & mindfulness practice
Breathwork
Working and reflecting with a mindfulness teacher
Journaling observations (through journaling we connect the implicit and explicit memory, the left and right brain etc.)
Learning with sacred plant medicine and focusing on monitoring / observations
How do I modify?
Modifying energy and information flow means that we extract energy and transform it. Assuming in our case we want to modify our energy in the direction of health, the following are ways we may do so:
talking: changing air molecules / changing air patterns / air molecules are moving (intention & focus)
focus & intention on thinking / changing thought patterns
moving the body
altering what we put out
acting with healthy intentions
becoming aware of what we put in
conscious practice of different types of energy work
rituals, ceremonies, shamanic work
learning with sacred plant medicine and focusing on "modifying" (transformation)
If we say that the mind is one part of a complex system and the mind regulates energy and information flow, what is information?
Information is an energy pattern with meaning and symbolic value.
There can be energy without information, for example when we talk "gibberish". When it`s something that we can´t extract, that we can´t put into a box of meaning and carries no symbolic value for us.
Most people can extract information from an energy pattern, though perhaps some people cannot. For example studies show that some humans with so called “autistic characteristics” cannot extract the same information, which the “norm” of people does.
When we strengthen monitoring by stabilizing mindsight / our "mind awareness" , we gain more (mindsight is a term from Dr. Dan Siegel):
Insight
Empathy
Integration = linking different parts, creating harmony, integrating systems (happens also in the brain / frontal cortex / certain fibers are connecting), learning to use different ways to think, experiencing larger range of perception, connecting past / present / future etc.
Integration:
A system that differentiates it´s parts, that allows different parts to be unique, specialist in what they do. For example, left / right side brain, cortex: lower part/upper part, two people in a relationship are different and can be integrated, past – presence – future, rational thinking & open thinking, western modern understanding & ancestral knowledge,... etc.
Honoring differences!!
Sustainable change only happens through integrating consciousness: integrating learning and healing experiences in your system. Integrating it vertical and horizontal. From my personal view integration can even happen on more dimensional and universal directions.
Integration is the process we call promoting compassionate relationships between differences in the brain and linking them together. In addtion I like to invite you to explore, that integration can happen inside of the brain on a micro level and it can happen in your surrounding or even globally, on a macro level.
Mathematics of complexity says, a complex system is itself organizing to do something called maximizing complexity, which is basically creating harmony or optimizing itself.
Organization happens by being:
flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, stable...
It integrates a system!!
Isn´t this fantastic?? I love to play and imagine what is and even could be possible.
Because I love to connect the western understanding with my learning in the Shipibo Tradition, here is something what I want to mention in addition:
In the Shipibo tradition, while a Shipibo shaman is singing an ikaro to you, they are also performing energy work, working with an energetic network that is connecting you to something bigger. It is a network of energy and information flow, which connects you to something unlimited and universal.
I perceive this energy network like a connector to every living being, as well as a self organization process. I see it in you embodied and I see it relational between you and other humans, environment and the cosmic energy.
Much of the energy work during ceremony is happening on, or in, or with certain energetic patterns which are connected to your individual mind and with the bigger mind, the collective mind, universal consciousness, higher wisdom or however you like to call it.
In Shipibo the thoughts and individuell mind is called “shinan” and the bigger web of knowing they call “ani shinan” (big mind).
From my perspective as an apprentice in the Shipibo tradition, I can see the explanation about the mind absolutely coherent with my experience with the energy work in the Shipibo Tradition.
This is why I love to call the work from my Shipibo Maestros "high technology work".