Hello fellow traveller!
“MindTree” is the word I made up for your collection of special biological programs.
Biologically, what you are is a sophisticated “biocomputer” that has three subsystems:
This biological system isn’t you. It’s a physical pattern that you originate for the sole purpose of being alive on planet Earth.
(It’s up to you why you’d want to do that)
The normal function of your psyche, brain, and body is breathtakingly complex, but it’s all built on a simple, binary “yes/no” function:
“yes, this is supportive of life”
or
“no, this is not supportive of life”
Your biological apparatus is a sophisticated navigation system. It continually checks “is this supportive of life?” and if not, it makes adjustments. It adjusts your attention, your blood sugar, your muscle tension, your pulse, and a billion other parameters. Constantly.
A “problem” is anything that in any way threatens or compromises your ability to be alive on planet Earth.
The moment you become aware of such a threat, your extremely sophisticated psyche, brain, and body instantly respond with a “special biological program.”
That problem-response program runs simultaneously in your psyche, brain, and body. You experience it as psychological and body symptoms.
(There’s always a brain symptom too, but you don’t “experience” that unless you look at a cat scan image)
Sometimes the symptom is a thought and an emotion. Sometimes it’s a repeating thought and a physical compulsion. And sometimes it’s an obsessive thought and a tumour, muscle weakness, or painful ulcer. How intensely your symptom shows up is a matter of scale or “mass” of the problem.
A special biological program (a symptom) is meant to give you a little “extra,” biologically speaking. To get you out of a problem and back into safety.
But we humans have a learned behaviour of seeing symptoms themselves as problems. That leads to new special biological programs. We see those new symptoms as further proof that there’s “something wrong” with us. And the whole thing soon gets out of hand.
First there’s some threat to our survival.
Then there’s some story we make up to explain why we’ve been uniquely cursed with this problem or set of problems.
And then we go around with this life strategy of interacting with the rest of the world as if our made-up victim story is true.
Which sets us up for a host of new problems.
It’s hard to see the forest for the MindTree. Life becomes smaller and smaller as our sphere of existence becomes only a projection of our own problems. The doors and windows of our sensory perception are no longer open to new information. Only to the fake scenery of our ideology and group identity.
The world we create for ourselves is not made out of this robotic “yes and no” process. That’s just the biological mechanism that allows us to be alive on planet Earth.
Your world is created from your desire. It’s created from the real you: not your circulatory system, diet, or statistical “risk factors.”
When I learned there was this difference between me and my MindTree, everything began to reverse. My strategies for interacting with the world around me became more honest. My stories about why I had so many problems broke down. And suddenly surviving became much easier.
(This is now what I teach in my articles, courses, sessions, and these CliffsNotes)
You can know what you are, and you can know what your MindTree is. But your MindTree can never understand itself. It has no idea that it is just a machine for sorting and managing special biological programs.
It thinks that it is what you are.
This sense that your mind is what you are is the root of all your suffering. Thinking it’s all you are, the MindTree strives to find meaning and pattern and form within the chaos of your own mishmash of hoarded unconscious junk.
One day the pain of surviving instead of living became too great for me.
I let go of trying to fix myself, others, and life. Instead, I began ruthlessly questioning what was happening in my head.
“Is this true?” I asked, over and over again.
Slowly, I saw that I was not my problems.
My problems were a sort of badly-sorted collection of mismatched, out-of-context, unexamined ideas with duct tape and barbed wire and bits of mud loosely holding them all together.
Gradually, I realized we are each the creators and experiencers of our lives, not its victims.
You are not your MindTree. You originate your MindTree for solving problems so that you can continue to be alive on this Earth.
Choosing to change your perspective is the path to fulfilling your life purpose, whatever that may be, today.
I’m here to help you do that. 😊
Be well.
Lishui Springford
Seize control. Feel better.
