Mind as a Self Organizing System

As I write I trust that words will come to mind. As you meet a friend for coffee, you trust that words will come to mind, as you drive to meet, perhaps a blind date, you trust that words will come to mind. That’s a lot of trust folks. Most of us have that trust. It is true that some do not and they suffer painfully.

We trust that our minds will well serve us. We can do that because our living brain continuously, spontaneously organizes ‘data’. 

Just as surely as any ecosystem organizes itself to sustain and refresh life, our brain organizes information to sustain and refresh both our very lives and our ability to navigate the business of living.You can work with that naturally occurring, self organizing process to enhance it’s benefits! 

Just as we have benefited from an appreciation of the self organizing character of the innumerable ecosystems that comprise our physical world, we will benefit from an appreciation of the innumerable ‘info-systems’ that comprise our mental world.

For starters, our minds have much in common with Google. Our minds respond to things that function as keywords. Someone recently said, ‘ah, the smell of sweet wood’ and my old phone number, Sweetwood 8-2490 came to mind. Remember when we used words as part of phone numbers?

Play with keywords for yourself and see what they bring to mind. I think ‘kite’ and I’m reminded of quaking in my boots in the fourth grade. My science project, a kite, wouldn’t fly. Freud called keywords, ‘associations’. I find it much more useful to think of ‘keywords’, rather that ‘associations’, because then, all that I have learned and am learning about information management as I improve my computer skills, cross-fertilizes my understanding of my own mind.

Think ‘Google’. Of course, Google is an information management system. Think of ‘mind’ as a living Google. Play with keywords. I say to you ‘high school’ and what comes to mind? I say to you ‘New York’ and what comes to mind? You will note that people, objects, sensations, all manner of things act as a keyword for you during the course of your day evoking thoughts, feelings, actions, etc.

If you are now in awe of Your Phenomenal Mind, I have achieved my goal. By the way, hang on to that feeling of ‘awe’. The chemicals that accompany the feeling will heal much that ails you.

By Diane Kern, owner of Phenomenal Mind Studios in Walnut Creek, former college professor, psychotherapist and now, Instructor of Raja Yoga, the yoga for mental development. Seewww.phenomenalmind.com.