Healing Involves Four Rooms
“Eventually you will see that the real cause of problem is not life itself. It's the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes the problems.” ― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
Just as you have a physical body of flesh and fluids, you also have a mental body that includes your thoughts, beliefs and judgments. It is mistakenly believed that our thoughts originate in our brains, but the mental body does not have a physical home. The way we perceive the world and ourselves, societal influence, and the analytical mind all reside in the mental room. Think of this space as the area between the physical and emotional rooms. You experience something with your physical senses. The way you process information in your mental room determines the emotions you feel as a result.
This is where you set limitations, establish prejudice, and store memories. It’s also where you can reprogram the conditioned emotional and physical responses you’ve stored from past events. The mind and body are so intricately linked that once a physical response occurs to an external stimulus, the subconscious mind will remember it and repeat it each time that stimulus occurs.
For example, let’s say you witnessed a car accident as a child. It was a terrifying sight. You were in the car with your family, on your way to get ice cream. It was upsetting, but you didn’t know how to process it so you mostly forgot about it. Logically, you would think that sitting in the back seat of a car would trigger the emotions and physical anxiety of this memory. However, the mental room doesn’t always store memories in a logical way. Instead, as an adult, the thought of eating anything frozen is a turn off. You never really examined why you hate frozen treats, until one day the memory of that car accident comes back to you and you take the time to remember and process all of it. Every detail. And that’s when the light turns on. The child in you wanted someone to talk to you about death, but it didn’t happen so the memory of the trauma was compartmentalized as a physical aversion to ice cream.
Exploring your mental room does not require that you go back through every tragic incident or physical accident of your youth. For now, become aware of the constant flow of thoughts in your mind. Practice observing the thoughts with curiosity, as if you are listening to someone else. I wonder why I think that way? Why am I so disturbed by this? In the act of becoming aware, take the time to write about your thoughts. When you notice you are angry, sad, nervous or even happy, ask yourself what about the situation evokes this response. Your ability to focus, to communicate, and to create are dependent upon the health of the mental body.
Affirmation: I desire to heal myself by becoming aware of who I am. I love and respect my mental self. I recognize my thoughts as incomplete and worthy of questioning.
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