theaspirationalmind.com
Theoretical Background
I am not academic nor spiritual nor fixed to any particular motivational movement. I do try to explore a wide variety of sources of information on what it means to be human and I have had extensive training in the application of cognitive and hypnotherapeutic methods used for therapy, coaching, and personal development. The ideas that I present here come from many years of endeavour to understand different psychological modalities/disciplines and to combine the best of these into some sort of a framework that can provide a sound practicable platform for understanding what it means to be a human being, how to get some clues for meaningful self-care, and how to open up new potential approaches to some of our most common uncomfortable and dysfunctional states of mind.
The Human Mind
I broadly define the human mind as our internal experience of the collection of processes in our brain and body that influence our behaviour and that we are aware of in one form or another. Further, I suggest that our mind is hosted by the physical brain and includes conscious, semi-conscious, and non-conscious processes.
Historical Models of the Human Mind
There are many day-to-day descriptions, or models, of the human mind. The various models, quite reasonably, tend to be based on our inner experiences with additions to cover particular religious or cultural beliefs. These models also may include a number of different elements or parts of the mind with some form of description for each of those mind-parts.
Buddhist and other traditions may describe numerous mind-parts reflecting a range of experiences available through meditation, including those available in a Super-Conscious Mind. Other spiritual theologies may associate particular points inside and outside the body with different cognitive experiences. Shamanic experiences include trance states described in various ways but pointing to extended or altered states of mind.
Ancient and more recent historical religions also explored states of mind where it was almost an assumption that humans have conscious awareness but also some ability to access something else to our betterment.
The major religions include descriptions of influences attributed to a god or other spirit-based sources and may refer to a soul, deemed to survive our current life.
Psychological Models of the Human Mind
There is also an historical underpinning of our contemporary appreciations of psychology and, in more basic terms, the understanding of our lived-experience of being human.
Perhaps the most common mind model, and the one that underpins many therapeutic practises, is of a Subconscious Mind and a Conscious Mind. This typically describes the Subconscious Mind (also called non-conscious or pre-conscious) as producing and managing emotions, urges, habits, etc. (sometimes including chaotic or scary mental themes). The Conscious Mind is deemed to be reasonably rational and logical. Some approaches also include an Unconscious Mind, perhaps to hint at a mind-part that produces influences but is totally unreachable from our Conscious Mind.
There are also extensions to this basic model. Freud, for example, defined the Ego, Id, and Superego to better understand certain experiences and behaviours.
Scientists (I believe) tend to refer to 'Non-Conscious' or 'Pre-Conscious' Mind as a more general term for observable brain activity that is not part of our experiential awareness and with much less association with the production of feared thoughts and feelings.
It was this same two-part approach (Subconscious and Conscious) that, I suspect, led some thousands of years ago to the concept of
Yin and Yang
as a metaphor for the inner experience (interoception) of being human. This combination of two apparently very different parts of our 'selves' perhaps reflected the experience of a reasoning conscious internal process combined with seemingly chaotic impulses coming from some hidden part of ourselves. A conscious part and a non-conscious part.
The concept of two principal components of mind became the basic conscious/non-conscious model that led to the foundation for modern
Psychoanalysis
,
Psychotherapy
, and
Psychiatry
. This basic model led to an explosion of interest in, and exploration of, applied psychologies notably including the two very-effective approaches of
Cognitive
and
Behavioural
therapies. These extended our understanding of how to interact with our own conscious thoughts and our non-conscious reactions to life.
More recently, newer psychologies such as
Evolutionary Psychology
and
Social Learning
have identified how we may have been influenced by the pressures and opportunities of survival to produce a dominant cultural-species.
Neuroscience
highlights multiple brain pathways for memory, cognitions, emotions, and background processing that imply alternative processing capabilities and speeds, working in parallel and also working creatively and potentially at odds with each other. (My apologies to actual neuroscientists and others for my naive understandings of contemporary research).
Early 2023: A New Way to Imagine the Mind
In early 2023 I experienced a period of almost overwhelming intuitional creativity. Almost every morning I would wake with a mind full of inspiration and fresh enlightenment, and I'd try to make sense of these and write them down as fast as I could. For a number of years I had been puzzling over many aspects of motivation, purpose-work, therapy, habit-management, and approaches to mental self-care. At last it seemed that I was putting the vast puzzle of the mind together in a new way. The more I worked with this new model, the more I learned, the more I understood, and the more applications I was able to envision.
The result is what I call the Aspirational Mind. The Aspirational Mind not only offers a fresh and productive way to understand the way that our mind works but it also includes a fusion of nearly all of the various current and historical psychological approaches. This is my attempt to pass on this development to others who may wish to make deeper sense of what we daily experience as human beings.
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