Does the Mind Use Thoughts to Trick You and Distract You?

[Joseph Maynor]

This is kind of a contemplation exercise where I am genuinely interested in your take.

1. We have a Mind acting deceptively as a premise.
2. What is this Mind?
3. Who is this "you" that the Mind is deceiving and distracting?

Edited October 6, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Rilles]

As far as I can see its deceiving itself.

[Joseph Maynor]

17 minutes ago, Rilles said:

As far as I can see its deceiving itself.

More detail please.  You would not write just this one line if you were contemplating this for real.  You would have one line written on your journal page?  Can you write a decent paragraph addressing this? 

Nobody really wants to contemplate I find.  I've always loved to contemplate, and I think that's one of the things that separates me from other people.  Could I freewrite 10 pages on this? -- probably not now.  5 pages? -- I don't know.  1 to 3 pages? -- definitely. 

Anybody should be able to freewrite 1 solid page on this topic if you really tried hard and put love into it.

Edited October 6, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Rilles]

Who can the mind deceive but itself? There is noone for it to deceive. The mind plays games with itself. “I was lost in the mind, I shouldnt be lost in the mind, Oh shoot! Im still talking, I should stop” This is all mind, but then who is watching all this happen? I dont know but the watcher cannot be deceived it can only watch.

Im fairly new to this so there might be errors in my views.

Says my mind. ☺️

 

I prefer to write in short bursts, thats just my style, I feel that if you can say something worthwhile in a one or a few sentences that’s powerful enough. It gives room for you to contemplate it itself. 

Edited October 6, 2018 by Rilles

[Artaemis]

I spend hours contemplating but I'm generally spontaneous and independent in my contemplation. I don't like to be ordered to contemplate certain topics unless I have permission to explore them freely, without particularly staying on topic. Its maybe the reason why I don't generally jibe with forums, they can feel restrictive. This forum being the only exception, as long as I am left to my own devices. There's a freedom in expression that is fostered in this forum that I don't see in many others which I think can tap into realizations and self exploration.

Edited October 6, 2018 by Artaemis

[Hellspeed]

It's a trap!

[Consilience]

This question reminds me of one of the topics Rupert Spira talks about a lot which is the "knowing" aspect of awareness. That awareness "knows" itself through being, almost like awarness is self aware, it knows it is aware by being aware of its own awareness. Here's a video where he discusses it: 

 

"What is this Mind?" 

This mind is simply more contents within consciousness, but our inner "knowing" has mistakenly identified a disctinction within this experience as itself. Rather than knowing all of consciousness to be the True Self, awareness has known a duality (the mind) to be itself. The mind also has self preservation qualities about it. That is to say, the mind operates in ways in which it propagates its own survival just as DNA does. In this regard, mind is acts in line with Darwinian Evolution just as the rest of the body does. So as the "knowing" of oneself to be the mind continues, so too does the power of the minds ability to hold that light on knowing onto the mind. Ultimately the mind seems to be a mechanism of survival, acting in ways to manipulate the light of knowing, as Rupert discusses, to shine on it and only it. I'm also not really differentiating mind and ego here, so I would say mind = ego in this context.

 

Who is this "you" that the Mind is deceiving and distracting?

The inner awareness that permeates all conscious experience. But this awareness has an intelligence about it, or seems to. This awareness seems to have not only awareness of any conscious experience, but also self awareness. Awareness OF the awareness, or KNOWING of awareness. And to reiterate, this knowing is what the mind hijacks.  

[Consilience]

Btw I just re-read my post and its worded in a very declarative way as if Im spouting answers. I actually am very open to being off the mark, or completely wrong haha. This is an interesting topic and is quite confusing 

[Shin]

The mind distract you a lot Joseph ?

So much that sometimes I'm wondering if you aren't making fun of us ?

[How to be wise]

11 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Who is this "you" that the Mind is deceiving and distracting?

That’s quiet an irrelevant question. Whoever or whatever it is that is asking the question, the answer to the question is what matters, not the ‘who’ who is asking that question.

[Your place at Heart]

Think of it from the orange scientific perspective, Your brain is full of neurons which are cells that require oxygen and food to survive. You can literally believe whatever and lie to yourself with all kind of lies positive or negative and you will act them out in life. Think of whatever you want and they become short memories and with reinforcement, these memories become long-term and think of every memory as one neuron cell that is alive and functioning and is biased just like humans and want food and oxygen for itself. The more you say I am loser, or stupid or nobody wants me, or Feminists are source of all evil, Islam is evil terrorist ideology, or I am sexy, I am hot or whatever you want to believe. Those memories and data you gather about specific belief grows and hence since every 1 neuron contains 1 memory, now they became 100 and 1000 and 10000 and 1000,0000 and 10,000,000 or 100,000,000 the more you reinforce this belief and those neurons all work to make beliefs alive by surviving themselves with more thoughts in your mind and those cells are biased and want to survive so they enter a war within you, will filter out any open-mindedness because open-mindedness means their death as living entity and they make you hate, fear, worry and cause you all type of psychological fears and worries just so that they can survive. The moment you stop feeding those beliefs and you are mindful of they wont go done without a fight, they will disintegrate over time of no use and this is called neuroplasticity. Self-inquiry and meditation and observing of thoughts create new living entities that will literally work for you and not against you and those new memories will fight older patterns and hence you achieve spiritual moksha. You can even make your new patterns produce DMT in your pineal gland and you experience Prophetic, non-dimensional, nonphsyical realms, open up things you weren't supposed to know inside your physical body and abilities.

Edited October 6, 2018 by Your place at Heart

[DrewNows]

This may be mental masturbation in a sense, but a fun topic.

Relatively new to this contemplation exercises, i recently learned about this---the mind (that which gives rise to thoughts/beliefs/memories) with the ability to conceptualize and contextualize perception. We are conditioned from a very young age to find/seek out problems to solve. This conditioning is very strong and we are easily persuaded into this division from experience to experiencer. We then become psychologically fragmented to create the "me", experience, and an endless sea of problems. Nourished and feeding as @Shiva says, creating a strange loop. 

 

[Berjohansen]

What is aware of the mind decieving the person? Anything «you» can observe is not what you are

 

that said, you probbably could write forever about it, the whole meaning of the mind, ego, emotions and so on is to enternain us just enough to hide that we are in a short lived dream of separation from god/scource

Try creating more egos/enteties in your mind and see how quick you can watch your ego watching your spiritual ego watching your thoughts.. its all about entertainment, it will let you do whatever as long as you dont look for your true self. 

Edited October 7, 2018 by Berjohansen

[LastThursday]

Oh go on then, I’ll take you on. Warning: deep deception and circularity follows…

I’m taking this on from cold, not ever having really thought too deeply about it, so what follows is a bit of a stream of consciousness ramble and a genuine from ‘first principles’ type of thought process.

What is Mind?

I think to have any chance of answering any of your questions I need to start with which definition of ‘mind’ I’m going to use (question 2 first).

Firstly, I’m going to divide the world ‘out there’ from the world ‘in here’ and have an ‘interface’ between the two. Both ‘out there’ and ‘in here’ and the ‘interface’ belong to the entirety of the things I am conscious of.

The world of ‘out there’ is the set of happenings which are either: autonomous (things I have no direct influence over or happen of their own accord), semi-autonomous happenings (things I can set in motion, but then continue to have a life of their own without further influence from me), and consistently spontaneous happenings (things that appear without my conscious effort, but are consistent with other autonomous happenings) and lastly, are vastly parallel (a very large set of consistent, simultaneous, interlocked happenings). 

The world of ‘in here’ is the set of happenings which are either: transient (they persist for a short period only), inconsistently spontaneous happenings (are not causally related to other happenings), are closed to the world ‘out there’ (do not influence the world ‘out there’ in a direct fashion if at all), and lastly are restrictedly non-parallel (the happenings are sparse and only loosely interlocked, if at all, and happen largely sequentially).

The ‘interface’ is the set of happenings where the world of ‘in here’ mixes (influences) with the world of ‘out there’. The world of ‘out there’ can be changed or guided or re-arranged by the world of ‘in here’ by the ‘interface’. The world of ‘out there’ can in turn influence and change the world of ‘in here’. The ‘interface’ belongs to both worlds and allows a bi-directional exchange of happenings.

From here on I will call the world ‘in here’ the Mind. The world ‘out there’ is Physical Reality. The ‘interface’ is The Body. A ‘happening’ is simply something that consciousness is aware of and has a separateness from other ‘happenings’, in other words a happening has a unique set of attributes which sets it apart. I will call a ‘happening’ in the world of ‘in here’ a Thought.

The Deceptive Mind

Again we need a definition of ‘Deception’ to work with. Deception is deliberate ‘covering up’ or ‘hiding’ of Truth. Truth here, is the bare happening without further interpretation or judgement. Truth is the first instant that a new happening becomes apparent to consciousness. Since every happening either in Mind or Physical Reality or The Body is unique (if it wasn’t it wouldn’t be recognised as a separate happening), each happening in itself is always Truthful.

How does the mind conspire to hide Truth? Despite Thought being largely sequential and inconsistently spontaneous, there is a special sub-class of Thought(s) that acts as a type of glue. This glue works by sticking together different Thoughts and making them ‘consistent’ and ‘persistent’ with each other. Consistency involves a kind of logic of relationship between two Thoughts where they share some commonality or common attributes. Persistency involves two Thoughts which are labelled as being the same or sharing a large number of common attributes. In other words these Glue Thoughts act as a kind of comparative logic between two otherwise acausal Thoughts.

The Glue Thoughts are where Deception first arises. Since every Thought is unique they cannot be compared with each other - otherwise they would not be unique. When one Truth is equated with another Truth then this is a type of ‘pointing’ or ‘indirection’ or ‘misdirection’. This is the essence of the Deception. Not every Thought in the Mind is a deception but those that create a sense of causality and persistence are.

One of the consequences of the ‘pointing’ of one Thought to another, is that it is possible to have a circularity of ‘pointing’ where each Glue Thought in turn creates a chain of causality which eventually arrives back at the original Thought. This will set up a self-sustaining chain of Thoughts which persist outside of Truth. The chain persists, but the original transient Thoughts are long gone – all Mind happenings being transient. The chain is composed of a Truthful set of transient Thoughts which point to other Thoughts, but the ‘pointing’ itself is wholly deceptive and hence so is the chain.

There is a large interconnected web of chains of Thought which create a sense (more Thoughts) of causality and persistence, this is The Ego. As such The Ego is a Deception. But The Ego itself is composed of Truthful Thoughts (each taken individually).

It is therefore The Ego that is the actor who is deceiving.  The ‘you’ that The Ego is deceiving is therefore the Truth of each happening. It is not even possible to say that the happenings are being observed by the spark of consciousness, as this is itself a type of ‘pointing’ and hence a deception. A painting is no more than its brushstrokes.