Well this question is quite common in terms of spirituality, so I started to dissect this question more. In order to have better clarity of the question , I went ahead and spent time thinking about what I am and how I am made as a person .
I usually like to have intuition in my examples.And hence to start off my explanation ,I believe I am made up of 3 main parts :
1) My physical body
2) My mind
3) My consciousness.
1) The easiest of all to explain is my body, which I can see in my eyes and is visible to others. It has numerous voluntary controls and sometimes also has involuntary actions which have their own scientific explanation .
2) Next comes the mind, to explain this all I have to do is close my eyes for a minute. A wave of thoughts come rushing , all of this is happening is my mind. The process is so fast that there is no sense of control in the mind. The mind takes in information from the memory in the brain and this leads to the creation of more complex thoughts .
3) The next best part is what I am calling the consciousness. I truly believe that the inner voice within me is a separate entity that feeds the mind. Consciousness is the real me. If I have the ability to control the consciousness in order to send inputs to my mind, that I believe would reveal the “true” me.
The above diagram is a vague explanation.But as I mentioned before, let us consider an example and see how understanding the above 3 parts can help in a real life situation :
For this example let us consider the relationship between a guy and a girl that is on the verge of a breakup .
For this case :
– Let us assume both of them are loyal and faithful
– Both liked each other
– There was a mis-understanding that brought a conflict into this relationship.
– The relationship is getting bad as each day goes by .
Now let us understand how the relationship turns bad once the conflict comes in . This is a very interesting case. The relationship at first might have been triggered by physical attraction. Recall that a person is made of 3 parts , but a large majority of relationships see the first part. We usually like the way the other person looks, their voice etc. So, once the relationship is started that way, the brain keeps collecting memories with the person. Let’s assume the relationship was good for 2 years , and now the brain is loaded with 2 years of memory.
Now when a conflict comes in or if a person is doubting the loyalty in the other person, what really happens is that the mind starts taking information from the brain , mixes this information in different combinations and will also use information from past experiences like MOVIES , articles we read in newspapers, sad stories in news feed , other relationships and create a negative thought that would make a relationship go on a downward spiral.
So as you see from the above paragraph, the mind is always there and yet there is no control over it which makes the thoughts go very negative , we will start making bad statements to the other person. So, this provides an explanation as to how relationships progress.
Now enters the consiousness. Most people don’t know that they have control over the consciousness. It’s so obvious but it’s not at all visible. When the mind is cluttered with random thoughts and when it is mixing this with previous info and making even more negative thoughts , a person who knows the power of consciousness and mind can provide positive inputs to his/her consciousness. For example they can start telling their inner voice and mind that they truly trust the other person and they don’t want to compare the situation with movies or other relationships. This might sound crazy, but if you have control over your inner voice and guide your mind to think that way, you can easily sort out the problem and come out of the negative loop.
So that was the kind of intuition I wanted to provide. Again, summarizing my thoughts ” your inner voice is the real you ” , your brain just stores info , your mind takes input from the brain and consciousness and creates complex thoughts, these thoughts are made into action by your body which create the sequence of events around your life. So if you have control over you and when you understand the question ” who am I ?” , things are so much easier to control around you.
It actually feels good to decipher the root causes of any problem and that control on the initial consciousness can make things so much better.
I agree with what you are saying for the most part, but it hard to disengage the mind from your consciousness. If I feel depressed about something, I know that this feeling will pass and also know that I am thinking it over too much ( that is my conscience). But it hard pull away the mind from the conscience and in turn your body.
Yeah. That’s true. Hence the whole point is if we train to a point where the consciousness can control the mind and command it, we will be super human beings , but yeah like you mentioned it is a hard thing and it does take plenty of time to reach that sweet spot 🙂