The purpose of life is life – and the purpose of our mind is to make life better. But why does Zenja separate between life and mind and why is this so important?
Because much of what we do, think, and often even what we say is ruled by the purpose of life. By the survival instincts of our body designed to keep us alive. Instincts, which we developed in the stone age and before.
If we are not aware of this, then our active mind takes a backseat to the purpose of life and lets our body run our life on autopilot.
Lightning fast responses
To serve the purpose of life, our body is triggered constantly by what happens around us. By what we see, hear, feel, smell or taste. Everything is immediately analyzed to ensure it doesn’t threaten our survival.
That’s way too much information to deal with actively. Because keeping our body alive requires lightning quick responses. Not carefully considered thought processes.
To lighten the load on our brain, and to achieve these fast response speeds, our body takes care of most of our reactions automatically.
On autopilot.
It analyzes all this information in the back of our mind rather than with an active thought processes.
Anything deemed to be safe is ignored before we even notice it. If a potential threat is identified, our body responds with automatic fight or flight actions based on our existing knowledge and experiences.
Our body automatically makes us either want to run away or it makes us want to fight the threat to ensure our survival. Without putting our minds fully into gear.
Because chances are we’d be dead by the time we fully engaged our brain and actively thought through all the options available to us, when faced with a threat to our life.
Anything new is a threat
These automatic responses serve us well, if our actual survival is threatened. But here is the problem:
Our body sucks at separating real threats to our life from the non-life-threatening situations we encounter in modern life.
To maintain its high response speed, our body simply treats anything new automatically as potentially dangerous. Even if that is just a different opinion or some new information, which runs counter to what we already know.
If we allow the purpose of life to be in charge in modern life, then our autopilot will find life-threatening situations everywhere. It will constantly respond automatically to save us. In politics. In discussions with others. When we read or hear something new on social media, on Netflix, in the news, at work or at school.
Afternoon snack
Our autopilot has no time for careful thinking. If we hear a a new opinion our autopilot responds, as if we were suddenly being ogled by a saber-toothed tiger looking for an afternoon snack. And our body tries to protect us from that opinion immediately.
Either by pulling up memories and thought fragments, which allow us to quickly fight off the new opinion. Or by automatically comparing the new information with something we already know, so we can dismiss it as a threat.
Arguing loudly on autopilot
This is not just something that happens invisibly to the rest of the world in the back of our mind. We can argue loudly against a different opinion on autopilot. Or place a comment on someone else’s social media site dismissing their views without ever properly thinking about it.
Just as we would be able to run away from a tiger on autopilot or shove a knife into it to ensure our survival.
Depending on how self-aware we are, we might not even notice that we are doing these things on autopilot. We may even feel as if we are in full control.
The only giveaway is that we respond way too quickly to have had the time to actively consider the new information.
Too busy to listen
For many of us this means we will rarely engage with other opinions or new information with an active mind. We may not even completely hear or read, let alone fully understand them.
Put simply, if we allow the purpose of life to rule in modern life, our body becomes so busy defending us from perceived threats to our survival, that we stop listening, as soon as we have identified a threat.
No matter how good the arguments on the other side or how important the new information may be.
Life over mind
That’s the power the purpose of life has over the purpose of the mind, if we allow it to rule unchecked.
It makes sense in a way, too. Our living body doesn’t need us to think actively to survive. And our mind can not survive without the body.
If you find yourself disagreeing too quickly with an opinion in a discussion, it may well be because your survival instincts responded faster than your active mind.
Knowing more is no protection
Especially highly educated people often make the mistake of thinking that these automatic responses do not apply to them.
Which is of course totally wrong.
Often the opposite can be the case. Remember how the body automatically pulls up memories and thought fragments to fight off a threat? And that new information feels like a threat?
Well, the more you know, the more information is available in the back of your mind, which your autopilot can draw on. And that can make you even more stubbornly refuse new information automatically. Because you never get around to consider the new information thoughtfully.
The purpose of the mind
These automatic responses are of course a problem in a world, where our success depends less on our ability to fight off saber-toothed tigers and more on our ability to think actively.
Fortunately the fact that our body engages all these automatic defense mechanisms doesn’t mean that we have no control over it.
On the contrary.
Just being aware of the purpose of life is the first step towards taking control. It allows our active mind to keep an eye on our automatic reactions, so we can reign in our autopilot when required.
Because to succeed in today’s world we must rise above the autopilot and auto-responses of our body. We must learn to listen, to analyze and to think purposefully before we act. In short, we must goZenja.
Because while the purpose of life is simply life, the purpose of our mind is to make life better for those living today and tomorrow, and for ourselves.
And our mind can not fulfil its purpose, if it is not in control.