I used to love playing a code-breaking game called ‘Mastermind’. I later studied psychology with the hope of cracking my own code, to better understand myself and live my best life. What I have come to realize is that most of us are slaves, slaves to our beliefs and mental constructs. Try as we might, we just can’t liberate ourselves from them. We are trapped in a slave mind, when we should be living from a mastermind – in control of our own thinking, instead of dominated by it. For this shift to happen, we need to appreciate the nature versus nurture debate. Currently, so much of who we are is a result of our environment and nurture. Through nuclear family pressure, formal education competition, and organized religion conformity, we have been programmed to do many things, without the ability to simply be. Therefore, do not be surprised if your life is not working out the way you expected or hoped. Remember, a slave existence is rarely pleasant!
The missing link to bring about our emancipation from slavery is to learn to nurture our nature. Unfortunately, this has never been taught in any modern formal education system, but was once on top of the agenda in the informal education of ancient cultures, when we lived more intimately with the forces of nature. In those days, we understood our mutual interdependence on one another, the climate, fauna, flora, and earth’s natural resources. In hunter-gatherer times, people could meet their food and shelter needs within a couple of hours a day, giving them time to simply be. The elders were able to pass on useful knowledge about nurturing your nature, ensuring health, strength, and wellbeing. Practices like conscious breathing, emotional regulation, mental flexibility, and meditation, along with the benefits of cold-water exposure, and the consumption of certain plants, herbs, and fungi, were widely taught. Unfortunately, with the arrival of agriculture, and later factory farming and the industrial revolution, people were forced off the land and into urban settlements. Schooling was introduced, and the separation of children from their families and communities resulted in a breakdown of communication and a loss of many life-enhancing practices.
It is time we went back to the drawing board of our highly evolved natures. By reconnecting with yourself, at a body, heart, head, and soul level, you are literally recovering your ancient roots. These roots go back to the beginning of existence, more than a billion years ago. Despite the mass extinctions that have characterized earth’s natural history, a remnant of life has always remained. When you tap into your nature, you tap into the overcoming energy of a million generations. You graduate from a slave mind, the product of a civilizing culture that represents a superficial blink of an eye, to a mastermind that is in touch with the collective wisdom of the ages, back to the origins of life itself. We are each meant to live abundantly, like an expanding galaxy carrying the very stardust that formed our planet, not like obedient prisoners awaiting parole. It comes down to personal choice and responsibility to take your own awakening seriously enough to leave no stone unturned in your own liberation struggle. The massive escalation in physical disease and mental illness in the last 100 years, and the search for solutions, speaks volumes about the phase our species is in. With AI (Artificial Intelligence) about to change the world completely, we cannot afford to remain enslaved any longer. With the myriad problems facing us individually and collectively, we need to awaken to our instinctive creativity, confidence, and clarity.
Understanding the structure of the human brain will help us unlock its potential. The brain consists of three major complexes, based upon evolutionary history. The oldest and most primitive part of the brain is known as the Reptilian Complex, located in the brain stem, just above the spinal cord. It has to do with our survival instinct, our fight or flight response to threat or danger. We have this part of the brain in common with most creatures. The next part of the brain to evolve is the Paleo-Mammalian Complex, which is the seat of emotion. Referred to as the Amygdala, it is a pair of almond sized structures found in each hemisphere of the brain and is part of the Limbic System. The Limbic System drives our behavioral and emotional responses, especially when it comes to behaviors we need for survival, like feeding, reproduction, and caring for our young, as well as the fight or flight responses. The Reptilian and Paleo-Mammalian Complexes work hand in hand, forming the Old Brain. Then came a period of massive development of the brain, the Neocortex, which is our conscious ability to reason, analyze, create, and speak languages. It is known as the Neo-Mammalian Complex or New Brain, forming most of the human brain, making us the very capable and competent species, Homo Sapiens. Now, one of the biggest challenges standing in the way of our individual and collective liberation is that the Neo-Mammalian complex only fully integrates in each one of us at the age of 25 years. So, everything that happens to us from a nurturing/environmental perspective in the first quarter century of our lives has a profound impact on our brain structure, particularly our old brain. Hence our susceptibility to programming and enslavement. Added to this, psychological wounding and trauma make us highly defensive and reactive, as our fight or flight instincts, along with certain emotional flooding, takes over.
Without the ability to properly process ourselves, and find healing for past hurts, we present ourselves as vulnerable victims, open to exploitation by so-called leaders and populist politicians, whose agendas are also uninformed, survival and fear based, rather than enlightened. But once we learn to properly engage our new brain to master our old brain, processing both our instinctive and conditioned responses, we transition from Slave Minds to Masterminds. If you would like to crack the code in your own life, nurture your nature, and liberate yourself from mental slavery, please read the following blogs:
https://www.brianblem.co.za/emancipate-yourself-from-mental-slavery/
https://www.brianblem.co.za/harnessing-the-wind/
https://www.brianblem.co.za/fuck-fuck-fuck-i-feel-so-fucked-up/
https://www.brianblem.co.za/developing-mental-flexibility/
https://www.brianblem.co.za/meditation-the-fine-art-and-science-of-detachment/
https://www.brianblem.co.za/the-great-escape-locus-of-control/