Meditation Emotion and Mind

I think we can all agree that even though the human brain or mind has a huge capacity to store sort and process information the mind does have limits. I am not suggesting that these limits are easy to comprehend or measure. That being said, I recently wondered why relaxing your thoughts, emptying and quieting your mind is a part of every meditation technique, which I have encountered, in one way or another. A series of conversations with my wife helped clarify the thought. I think that the mind, when busy with cognition and the logical processes we call thinking, is too full to properly or successfully deal with or comprehend our emotions. In an earlier blog post I noted that the mind allows us to recognize and comprehend what we perceive, below the level of labelling them. What I mean here by labelling is using language or forming mental images causing the brain to take on secondary oscillations of much larger patterns than the basic oscillation of recognition and knowing. Some people think linguistically and aurally and others pictorially and some in a combination of both. This cognitive ability fills the mind with oscillations of that our senses are telling us and allows us to associate this information in a manner that allows us to do what we do and formulate plans about what to do next. The application of the cognitive process we use to communicate forms many oscillations throughout the whole brain instead of the few parts required to recognize the thing or thought. One of the things we aim to do when meditating is to disconnect this linguistic process, which we do not require to comprehend what we perceive. When meditating we may hear a dog bark. We try to get to a state what allows us to recognise the dog as a dog but to do so by saying to ourselves that was a dog or even, “that was Mutt barking” or picturing the dog as “dog” or forming the image of “Mutt” in our mind. We know it for what it is but we do not label it. I think that we do this because it allows more room in the brain for us to allow emotions to surface into conscious thought. When we try to drag them up we label and cognate the emotion taking starting to take form, and this takes up too much resource in the mind to allow the emotion to fully surface. This prevents us from being able to fully examine and come to terms with what we feel and why we act when these emotions are triggered. Things like, “I am inadequate” or “I am not very smart” or “I wish I could be as smart as…” or “I wish I wasn’t so bad” and all the other emotional baggage we carry. This list is not a complete or comprehensive one either since we all seem to carry many negative images of ourselves. This negative aspect of self feeling or belief of self creates fear or anger responses in us. It is these deep emotions we try to address while meditating. If we allow our minds to still, the deep feelings of our worth, the feelings about our connections to others, what we think and have set for our goals and how we actually feel about them can all surface and be acknowledged. Once in the conscious mind we can examine and let them be what they actually are instead of letting them partially surface and trigger actions, such as an angry response, leaving us to wonder later why we became so angry. Allowing the emotion to surface and live in the conscious mind helps us place our emotional response into a proper perspective. Initially we may still have the angry response, but it is more likely that we will, at first, recognise why we respond how we do, and control it more appropriately, returning to a calm state more quickly. Over time we may even have dealt with the underlying emotion enough to avoid the angry response completely. In a book by Jordan Peterson called “The Maps of Meaning, an Architecture of Belief” the author states that we act and create plans to move us toward our goals prior to being able to articulate the actions we take to progress toward the goal. That it is through imitation of our behaviour and the behaviours of others in response to our actions that we eventually make out actions concrete enough to be able to articulate them. I think that he is correct in stating this. I also think that Dr. Debono is correct when he states that every decision we make is emotionally driven. This does not mean that logic is not a part of decision making. What it does mean is that we decide to do an action when it is both logically based and “feels” right. Meditation allows us to better comprehend, if not control, our underlying emotional make up. This allows us to make these decisions with a bit more understanding if not control. For example, we may not truly want what a goal we’re pursuing. When we know what we really feel about a goal, uncovering the emotive force that is hindering us from achieving the goal, will help us understand why achieving that goal was either unsatisfying or seemingly impossible to achieve. Knowing what we actually feel now about the goal now allows us to act more in accordance with what we really want or need based on our deep seated emotions and desires.