STAY CONSCIOUS

STAY CONSCIOUS

The brain is the organ that sub serves thoughts.Thoughts dominate us with positive and negative emotions . Day to day events that happen in our life  control our thoughts , emotions and actions. Behaviors of others and our reaction consumes much of our thoughts.  All these are situations around us that   effect us and we seem to have no conscious  control over them.
        Take the case of a girl who trusts her friend   and  shares  with her all her personal events that happen in her life . When she sees her moving with friends who are inimical to her and also avoids her ,the question  of  mistrust and suspicion raises  its  ugly  head and she is confused and helpless on how to deal with it .  It forms a constant conflict  in  her  mind  and  she  dreads  whether  her  secret  will  be  revealed  to  others.   It might sometimes  be her pure imagination and a negative  thinking.  A secret is only a secret when you hold it, yourself. When you reveal it ,it is no longer one. This is pure logic.
         These sort of problem in their varied form appear in our life. If the girl had not revealed  her secret , will such a problem arise ? What was the reason that made her reveal it ? What was wrong in trusting a friend?. Wasn't it a good trait to trust someone?  All these various conflicts and confusions both positive and negative that we accumulate over a period of days ,of several events  are the harbingers of constant stress  that we suffer in our life. Was she conscious when she revealed it ? Was it compulsive or impulsive?. Was it a need to compulsively reveal by sharing?
          Relationships are sometimes good and bad too. They help us and sometimes  hinder  us also. Either we believe them wholly or not at all .To strike a balance is seldom possible. The more positive interactions occur , the more we become closer and the less we distance ourselves. Sometimes such  people whom we trust often betray us . So, we need to draw a line on whom to trust and whom not to.We need to consciously figure it out ,on and off.
             Events happen in our life very often as we involve ourselves in our pursuit of our life .Mostly they are enriching . Sometimes adverse circumstances  not of our own making can affect us .Often inadvertently  without any intention or motive we get involved in situations that create a dent in our life .We then blame  everyone including God  and except it as our fate.  We do not believe we had a conscious  choice to avoid it .
           The more we interact  with people ,the more likely we will have problems  with them .One problem leads to another .Either we learn to live with it or we  leave them for sure .It is possible with friends, but with close family members we can neither leave them or live with them.  One woman summarized her relationship with a close family member " I would rather live alone, than with that devil".
         A study done several years back on couples who loved , married and  who had lived together for 3 decades showed that 90% of them felt that they would not have chosen their partner if given a second  chance again by God . They had pulled along so far  for the sake of the society and their children and for financial reasons. What is it that made them hate their partners after living together for so long ? Don't we feel bad when we have to sell a house or property after living in it for so long? . Don"t we feel bad when our pet dog of a decade long association,  leave us ?
        Why  is that we cherish our assosiation with inanimate objects and animal than with our life long living partner?. It is something seriously that we have to ponder about .Is it because of our expectation that increases year after year?. Is it because we have only the policy of  'take the maximum from our partner ; give them little or nothing back?. Is it because we see the parts of him that affect us most , than the whole person?. He/she  may be too good with others but not with me. Well ,all of us surely will have a valid reason and justification on the way we react. They may be partially or wholly true also. Is it because the inanimate objects and the pet dogs do not retaliate ,retort or refute?. You can also do what ever you want with it .
                It is these thought that arise as repetitive doubts for which a logical answer evades us . The emotional component tend to recur and bring back the mistrust events in all its clarity. The flashback especially after a traumatic event appears real and seem to be occurring  in the  present as images.
                So, everything that happens around us depends on how we view it and react to it .The view and our reactions depends on how we think about it .Our thoughts also  depends on our peripheral perceptions.  These are ingrained in us from our childhood .It forms a pattern and an engrams in our brain over a period of time with probably a circuit that reverberates even to the  cue of the same event. But we can change the pattern over time if we make conscious efforts to do it.
       We generally react the same way except when emotional overtones that are personal, change them. Thoughts almost always occur following this ingrained pattern of thinking . Are those conducive  or do they retard us?  How  we manage those thought decide on our positive or negative reactions .Negative and helpless thought accumulate as we find it difficult to erase  or remove  them.  This pattern of passive thinking without being conscious makes us vulnerable further. If our thought are in turmoil like a boat in the rough water, then we have to consciously  bring it back to settle down to  take a decision, whatsoever.
          Are we trained from our childhood to consciously and actively think and act? Are we asked to repetively  read out our rhymes without a conscious effort? If we make the child read it in reverse then she will do it with some consciousness what she had been doing so long without thinking . Are we allowed to think actively , by not acting out on what we are compulsively asked or reminded to do? Are we allowed to actively ask, reflect and recognise our thoughts and our reactions ? Are we allowed to feel our emotions as they occur and reflect on them actively to find the thoughts behind it?  Mostly we are not. The reason is as adults we have not done them ourselves, as we are not taught to do it in our childhood. We have formed a pattern which we carry out passively, not consciously  and pass it  down to  our future  generation. Further we are unable to manage all the negative thoughts and bring it to conscious level .We prefer to ignore it as we are not trained to accept them as any other thought.
            Most of us know all these contradictions that occur in our life .Given a chance we dole it out free to all our well wisher ; what we fail to recognize or accept in ourselves. Mostly we recognize  after it happens and then find some justification to lessen or totally ignore it .We make the same mistake again. We  see everybody doing the same thing and we move on with confidence. We play to the gallery.
           The wrong pattern of thinking occurs in people  who have certain deficiency that are life long, like obesity , color and caste consciousness , physical disability and poverty and their consequences. All their thinking and reaction further  revolves around it, at least indirectly.  This passive  thinking can lead to further psychological problems and a viscous cycle of expecting sympathy and recognition , lesser responsibility ,indifference and financial dole, can result in  maladaptive functioning and diminished coping strategies.
               What is the solution to all these? Are we to lead a full life with intellectual  ability, physical  capacity and a financially independent social life, bringing harmony within and without or are we to lead a life with sympathy, inability, incapacity and financial dependency  on others though God has given us every thing that every other person has? The conscious  choice is ours through active thinking. Though we require a lift in our life during childhood and adolescents , can we expect the same later on? .
         How can we summon all the mental  resources God has given to benefit ourselves? The core cause of our success or failure depends on our thinking .
        Most of the time we have noticed that our anger stems  impulsively suddenly following an emotional  upheaval preceded by a skewed or biased  thought,  linked to events in the immediate past or some conflict that is personal. Thereafter  we tend to feel sorry or justify our action or say " I dont know what happened to me .I was not myself . It happened without my awareness.I was confused".
            What we require is proper thinking.  The thought process should be conscious , not compulsive, impulsive or passive tinged with sadness , fear , malaise , or past incidents of vengeance or  revenge . It should be focused, just as it occurs in the present , based on what we discern with our God given unbiased peripheral senses. It should be reflective with predominant  logic and reason .it should be whole in the sense that both sides of the coin should be visualized  and analysed.
            If we accept and recognize this capacity in us which we all  are endowed with, in abundance and constantly harness and train our mind then we can achieve it . It is not something impossible . The simple way is to stay conscious and focused  in our thinking .We need to practice what we should think calmly in the present. Even when we fantasize or imagine things it should be conscious. Stay conscious of your thinking and actions  and enjoy a stress free happy  life through active and positive thoughts.