If you are like practically every other human being, you are probably most familiar with this part of your mind. Sometimes it is call the Reasoning Mind or the Intellect, but those terms don’t adequately describe its function. Its job is to take raw information from your sensations and feelings and give it meaning; to analyze and organize that information; to provide guidelines in the form of ideas and images for the Creative Mind to work with; and to give orders to the sub-conscious Mind. The last two functions have the most direct bearing on your experience of life, for it can be said that the Creative Mind brings about events and circumstances while the Subconscious Mind generates your behavioral responses to those events and circumstances. Both, however, do their thing according to the policies (ideas, images and orders) of the Conscious Mind.

Do you realize what I’m saying? It is that you are the source of your experience. The kind of person you are, the kind of work you do, where you live, the people who are prominent in your life, the nature of your relationships, your sense of happiness or unhappiness – all of these have their origin in the ideas, images, decisions and orders of your Conscious Mind. What about your childhood, you may say? What about your place of birth, your parents, your race, your early environment? Surely these didn’t have their origin in this Conscious Mind? You’re right, they didn’t. The time, place, and circumstances of your birth and early years had another, higher source. But from the moment you made your first interpretation, your first analysis, your first organization of facts, or your first decision about the world you were born into, then your Conscious Mind began its work. Well, you might say, what about my parents, my teachers and friends? They played a big role in shaping my life, didn’t they? Of course they did. But their role was and is limited to being part of your experience. They may have exerted an influence, but you are still the one who made the interpretations and decisions about that influence and those ideas and their related images are what guide your life.

The difficulties that most people have with their Conscious Mind are that they either over use it, under use it, or misuse it.

You over use it by worrying about past or present situations that you either can’t change or have no control over, by constantly analyzing and judging, by giving things more meaning than they deserve, and by making decisions based on your emotions.

You under use it by pretending that you are at the mercy of your habits, by allowing yourself to get locked into a dull and joyless routine of living, and by refusing to think about what you can do to make life better for yourself.

You misuse it by blaming others for your circumstances, by making up all kinds of excuses and logical reasons to explain why you can’t improve your lot, and by giving conflicting orders to you Conscious Mind.
Two exercises will help you become more aware of your Conscious Mind at work.
Exercise 1: During the day, listen to your “inner chatter” the interior conversations your Conscious Mind has with itself. Be aware of how you make judgments, critiques, and analyses of your own actins and what goes on around you. Notice how often you take a situation that has already occurred and review it mentally over and over, making criticisms, evaluations, and justifications. Think about how much good this does you.
Exercise 2: During the day, be aware of how many times you make pictures in your head of the future. Think of how many of those pictures represent positive events and how many are negative and think of how often you make decisions about how to act, decisions that are based on the emotions stirred up by those pictures produced by your Conscious Mind. Think about the fact those mental pictures of the future tend to attract similar experiences when you have repeated them often.

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