In the previous two posts we touched on Earth and our physical selves, Water and our emotional selves so now we come to Air and our thinking self. Our minds are where we give containers to the well of emotions, drawing boundaries, using reference points we’ve learned from our past to guide us.
Here’s what intrigues me most about our mind. We don’t know what the physical sensation is that we are feeling until we interpret cues from the world around us. In other words it takes us and many signals to decide what something means. That’s why Air is considered the learning curve of one to many. Earth is ‘self discovery’, Water is growth on the ‘one to one’ level, and then Air is where we learn and play in the ‘one to many’ arena.
Back to making the meaning of a physical sensation. 25,000 years ago we saw a wild animal approaching and our bodies went into high alert. The males were both hard-wired and taught to see that as a chance to prove themselves greater than the threat so their minds mostly interpreted their heart rate speed up, breathing quickening as excitement before a battle or chase.
Females were mostly wired and taught to interpret it as a threat both physically and mentally so they felt more of the flee or freeze instinct. That was how the culture interpreted the clues about their surroundings. The cues came from the world around them, that’s how they got the ‘right’ meaning of what to do with the sensations they felt.
Today we live in a world were the threats are rarely physically (for most of the civilized world at least) and our culture has definitely seen some shift in male/female traditional roles. So the meaning we give things is totally being rearranged on a constant basis while our information input is at an all time high point in history. I mean really, the amount of media we consume in a day is staggering, right?
The impact of that on us and personal connections…?
Our brains or the Airy part of us are tasked at an enormous level. Which is why we see the spike in medications for sleep disorders, upset stomachs and anxiety or stress related pressure.
Air is our 10,000 foot view in our operating system. It sees the biggest picture, the longest view and plans accordingly. The challenge with that is there is SO much data, it’s on overload and there aren’t enough major social cues on how to handle it effectively. We see all that could go wrong based on what our past tells us and we’re having trouble putting it into recognizable ways to ‘get it right’!
Which is why people go searching for the groups to belong to ranging from churches, social organizations, cults, clubs and cliques. It’s a way to bring down the data into something meaningful in a more manageable bite size. In groups there are recognizable boundaries that help people navigate the overwhelming data our minds take in on a daily basis.
Our social cues are still feeding us information on what something means and how to survive based on what others have experienced as well as what you have seen and experienced. It’s just a much more complex world of data to draw from.
Therein lies the challenge however. Our brains are incredibly moldable. Which is why the brain fiercely protects status quo by quietly locking us into repeating patterns that limit what we do, experience, understand and live. We see or feel something and then our mind puts a container around it called ‘meaning’. When we are on overload we drop back to old patterns.
That meaning with a right/wrong, good/bad filter then stops us from going beyond what we already know. The really big shift comes when you start questioning the containers we call beliefs. One by one you can start challenging the status quo and expanding your life, your loves and how you live. We are doing it now in global politics, religion and personal privacy to name a few areas up for redefinition. And what about love, hmmm?
People tend to date or relate in patterns. With the power of Air in hand, knowing you can shift your patterns with applied rules to retrain your brain, you can take that pattern and open it up. Suddenly that history of being ‘hurt’ or feeling you have to protect yourself in love can absolutely pivot into a powerful new place to experience MORE love. This is way too deep a topic for one post. Air can continue the conversation forever, truly. So we pause for now. Send me your questions and I’ll do my best to answer them.
Always a pleasure to talk with all of you…Until next week!
Lisa Greenfield
TruthinHand.com
