Mind Ecology

By Liz Temple

The environment of our mind, like the immediate and global environment we live in, needs ‘pollution control’ for us to experience peace, happiness, confidence and mental health. In fact, our immediate environment and global environment reflect our mind ecology and vice versa. With this in mind, it is our individual responsibility to control the pollution in our own mind once we know how.

What is mind pollution? 

Like global pollution, mind pollution is anything that harms us or prevents growth and creates pain. It comprises our thoughts, emotions and beliefs. 

Our mind is like a factory that produces beliefs, thoughts and emotions.  It produces not only a desired end product like a factory, but also pollutants in the form of limiting beliefs, negative thoughts and emotional pain. As an end result, our behaviour is affected, and we then can have an effect on others in our surroundings, thus spreading the pollution. 

Like low emission cars, if we change our mind ecology to produce less pollution, we will increase our efficiency and have more capacity to produce good results in the form of peace, joy, creativity and self-esteem.

Getting Started 

Like the river that has been polluted from the factory output, there are ways of dealing with the pollution. If the river is treated further down, perhaps with dilution by another river, that would help the fish to breathe, but it would be better also if measures to reduce the output of polluting chemicals were taken. 

Closer to home, just to maintain order, our mess and dirt has to be kept on top of in the form of housework on a daily basis, and the rubbish thrown out. There are some cupboards and store rooms that are rarely opened. If our house starts dirty and cluttered, we have to start clearing and cleaning outside the cupboards. Otherwise, if we were to empty those out, without a way of disposing of the rubbish, we would be swamped and overwhelmed, as we still have to live in the house. 

If we are ‘de-polluting’ our mind, like the dirty house, we need to find a way of dealing with the end products; i.e. the thoughts and emotions, on a daily basis, in a healthy way. We need to build up our ‘emotional fitness’, so that when we are ready, we can revisit the old experiences and clear out the negative beliefs formed from them, or we can take on new experiences and embrace change. Once the cupboards of our mind are completely cleared, we can really experience clarity and mental health. This may seem like a tall order, but there are amazing energy therapies being discovered, which speed this process up, and make it much easier, and also help deal with the everyday difficulties.  

Like the river that ends up smelling badly, with a few dead fish showing up, or the house that gets too messy to live in, we often don’t notice that our mind is struggling until it creates a crisis in our lives such as illness. By this time, we might be ready to admit that things need to change, so it’s not a bad thing. What is ‘bad’ is if we carry on with the polluting ways and expect medical treatment alone will sort the problem. Anti-depressants and other treatments have their uses, (though please consider homeopathic treatment), as long as they are used just enough to ‘dull’ the pain and help us ‘step back’ and find a way of making changes from within. 

Is This ‘Positive Thinking’ Rewrapped? 

Positive thinking is fantastic, but if you don’t do anything about the negative thinking, it’s just like trying to add flowerbeds to a waste heap. It’s not enough on it’s own to get into the habit (though it’s better than nothing!). Good habits can grow, as good things come from them, but if the old bad habits are not let go of, there is constant competition for space in your life, like weeds and flowers in the flowerbed. Usually, the oldest habits will win over the newer ones, as the newer positive changes have not had a chance to become established. There’s no doubt that perseverance with any new regime will eventually pay off when more and more good results are experienced. That’s how diets work! This also explains how the use of positive visualisation and affirmations can work, but how much easier it should be if all the weeds are rooted out and the soil adjusted to favour the flowers? The following strategies are a way of favouring and nurturing new good habitual thoughts and emotions. By letting go of self-destructive beliefs and the fear that produces the emotional pain, we can uproot the weeds, making room for the flower seeds to grow and get established. 

But a Leopard can’t change its Spots 

People are born with a not particularly clean slate. They inherit character trait potentials from parents and ancestors, and from conception onwards have experiences that shape them. We could argue that personality can’t be changed; that some people are too sick or too polluted; that some people need a personality transplant!  This might be true for some but not many. Maybe the challenge of the experience of pain gives us the opportunity to change the spots!  Some of the most spectacular ‘changing of spots’ have been with those with the apparently most severely polluted minds, like criminals who make complete turnarounds; severely abused people who become great inspiration to others, and millionaires who have come from poverty. If people like these can do it, who couldn’t? Probably what all these have in common is a clear intention and determination to change, born of so much pain that there is no alternative but death or self destruct. They may not have had access to the latest self-help books or good therapy, but they have followed their inner wisdom and have been open to opportunities that ‘magically’ come their way after their intention is set. 

Choices in Life 

What shapes our life are not so much the positive choices we make, but what we ‘shut off’ in our lives due to limiting, ‘sabotaging’ beliefs. We are all capable of more, but these “Yes, but I couldn’t” aspects create a huge obstacle and hold us back. It’s like driving a car with the brakes on. It takes a huge amount of energy to fight against the sabotage. So setting an intention on its own to improve things can work, but its hard work as the brakes are still on.  

It’s probably true that there will always be brakes, but they are as essential for us at times as they are in a car! Sometimes we will see the evidence of ‘braking’ in the form of tension and emotional pain, or we will seem to come up against a lot of obstacles that appear to be outside our control, but we are only ‘human’! We can despair about this and get disheartened, or we can use the opportunity to have a search within ourselves for the sabotaging beliefs, and deal with them. 

Examples of Sabotaging Beliefs that prevent Positive Changes 

-         It’s too much work and/or responsibility  

-         I don’t deserve it

-         It will change me and I’ll lose friends

-         I’m not clever/ creative/ interesting/ strong enough

-         I’m scared of the opposite/ I might get above myself

-         It’s always failed before. IT WON’T WORK

-         I am sick (mentally or physically)

-         I’ve been through too much/ I am too damaged

-         I am only a woman/ child/ uneducated

-         I don’t have time/ I’ll read this again sometime!

-         I’d have to look at myself and I might not like what I find

-         There’s no easy way/ The mind is too complex and should be left to the ‘experts’

-         My brain chemistry is defective

-         I’m just plain scared of change! 

How many of these are you agreeing with right now? 

Letting go of these beliefs completely might feel impossible, but, in reality, none of them are set in stone. They are never constant or 100 percent absolute. Like the car that is in first gear, we can move forward with these beliefs ‘suspended’ at least for the moment we want to move, and work on letting them go more to move into second gear. We don’t have to go from zero to a hundred miles per hour by letting our foot off the brake! Having said this though, there are now many energytherapies that speed up the acceleration without even having the need to identify the sabotaging belief. This increases our choice hugely. We can choose to take the ‘high road’ or the ‘low road’; the conventional or the alternative. 

Most of us would choose a combination of the two. The conventional might allow us to have more insight into ourselves, but the alternative makes it easier. It is not always necessary to know how something works, though some of us need that amount of control to feel safe! We could, however, let go of the belief that we need to know what is behind some of our behaviour! How many of us need to know how our computer works before we turn it on? And when it goes wrong, how hard is it to find a good engineer who won’t charge the earth and blind you with science? The mind is not that complex! It is possible to use self-help techniques without too much risk you will mess up, especially for simple emotional problems. People with diagnosed illness might need individual therapy, but most of the techniques that are described here have had good effects on them too.

The information that follows is based on tried and tested principles from the conventional and alternative health worlds. 

The Mind Ecology Approach 

The environment of our mind needs a bit of maintenance, just like our immediate and global environment. If you are still reading this, you probably are suffering from mind pollution, and recognise that it needs to be cleaned up a bit before starting the maintenance programme. One way that works is to start at the daily pain, and work back. The emotional pain acts as a signal to us, just like physical pain does, that something is wrong. In this world of low pain tolerance, we often forget that it might just have a useful function, because we’re too busy running away from it and looking for the latest pill to take it away. That which is outside of us, (even homeopathic!) can’t work as well as finding the root cause of the pain at that moment and dealing with it from within. Then the pain can be prevented from growing. The weeds can be spotted before they grow too big and take over the flower bed! So don’t despair when you feel emotional pain. It’s only the weeds!  What follows, in Minding Your Mind and the rest of this web-site are ways of keeping them under control so there’s room for the flowers to grow.