Mind and Existence

                                               Jimmy Henderson (Hons) Phil, MA (psychology)

‘Sometimes we feel like unwanted infants abandoned on the doorsteps of the world by a mother we cannot truly know. In her place we create gods amongst our own kind, leaders in the fields of politics, sports and entertainment, to whom we look to fill our own emptiness’.

J. Henderson

   The human mind provides one with a conscious experience of the outside world and that which we regard as reality. It is also the place in which one is able to create inspirational thoughts and ideas, but it can also be a sand-trap containing self-defeating beliefs and unhelpful emotions such as anger or resentment which can clog up thinking and muddy one’s perception of the world. Unfortunately, everyday life does suggest that the present reality of many individuals is marked by fear-based thoughts and actions. All around people are struggling to come to terms with their own mortality, often experiencing their lives as fleeting, impermanent and meaningless, and feeling disconnected from the core of their beings, or their authentic selves, that which represents their humanity and their highest moral and ethical ideals.

   These experiences all suggest that a loss of ‘authenticity’, or an inner communication with oneself, may be one of the underlying reasons for the present anxiety and feelings of meaninglessness felt by many at this time. This anxiety is most eloquently framed by the eastern sage Jiddu Krishnamurti, who spoke of an ‘emptiness’ that accompanies the experience of being human, that which he called the loneliness of self. Krishnamurti believed that this sense of emptiness produced an existentially-based ‘sadness’ which appears to have its origin in the unconscious knowing that we are presently ‘less than what we should have become’. 

   Understanding the role of our human minds and consciousness is therefore also important in addressing deep existential concerns such as the meaning and purpose of life and indeed, the nature of man and reality itself.

‘This inner loneliness may always remain. But within that space that one can discover one’s true self.’

J. Henderson