30. COVID: Why Hiding the Mind?

October 8, 2020 Minding Corona No Comments

Since March, I try to focus medical colleagues and other people on the mind in COVID progression, as yet to little avail. This is utterly weird.

Weirdness

Imagine being as convinced as I am that optimally lending attention to mind→COVID is probably the best we can do, given that a strict population-wide quarantine is not possible in the West. Imagine, meanwhile, having written a book about it, based on other books of mine and a doctorate. Then, the fact that, worldwide, no attention goes to mind→COVID may usher you into a sense of utter weirdness.

Welcome.

Mind?

‘Mind’ is the totality of mental processing in a human being, consciously and nonconsciously. Scientifically, there is no doubt that mental processing is mostly of the second kind. Yet society worldwide – perhaps particularly in the West – is organized in the sense of not taking this into account.

Of course, one cannot consciously decide to have a mental influence on disease progression, such as COVID. In AURELIS-talk: There is no ‘Inner Strength’ in consciousness. This may be a significant reason why there is no mind→COVID in the general picture. Indeed:

Without nonconscious processing, it would be a preposterous idea.

But it is not. Contrary to this, it makes the COVID reality that we are living through preposterous in many ways.

The broader picture is that there is supposedly little mind in anything health-related. [see: “The Problem with Corona is the Problem with Medicine“] This makes the COVID case less weird, but only within a much broader field of weirdness.

Trying to ignore the nonconscious within an ever more complex society with ever more complex technology leads to ever weirder situations. This is much more dangerous than even the virus. It pervades healthcare, education, and more. Even politics: conservatives versus progressives. They will never understand each other without delving into the importance of nonconscious processing.

Then why hiding the mind?

This is about more than simply ignoring the mind. It is something more active, which I still don’t get very well. It is an anxiety that may show itself quite aggressively sometimes.

In any case, if it would only be an intellectual issue, it would have been resolved already, in three steps:

Take the above.
Say: “Hey, guys, the reality is such, not so.”
Problem resolved.

But it isn’t.

Some usual suspects

Innate into a human being – indeed, any complex organism – is the propensity to look for the concrete. Abstract thinking is more complicated and less pragmatic if your job is to survive here and now. Conscious processing is more concrete; nonconscious processing, by nature, is less visible. It requires abstract thinking to think about the nonconscious, although it is spontaneously active every day, all day long.

In a way, it is so spontaneously active that it becomes transparent, like glasses that you wear and you forget most of the time that you are wearing them. Looking right through them, it is difficult to see them. [see: “The Basic Cognitive Illusion“]

People generally tend to go with the flow, in a conservative way, especially in times of stress. The present is, of course, a time of stress for many people.

For many, there is status and money involved. Never to be underestimated.

A very broad perspective

This may be the main reason for hiding/ignoring the mind, related to the fundamental nature of mind itself and how it has evolved regarding attention (awareness).

After a very long time in the history of evolution, we are heading towards a ‘third wave’ of attention in which mere-ego is no longer at center play. Instead, we can cultivate open awareness in which one acts as a total person. Viewed from ‘second wave’ (with much disregard of nonconscious processing), this provokes an extraordinary amount of anxiety. Without proper support at a grand scale, this may become much more pronounced than it already is. [see: “Three Waves of Attention“]

Humanity may not even survive the transition.

Fortunately, with proper support, the picture changes dramatically. For instance, in COVID, my personal (intuitively, not scientifically based) assessment is that we can still attain a vast diminishment of the disaster that lies ahead, even with only some of the support that I am talking about.

But we are where we are.

This anxiety becomes a prime source of energy within the COVID whirlpool that racks immune systems and economies. The same anxiety also inhibits many people from adequately dealing with the transition. This is a vicious circle by itself. The more intensely people resist it, the more it creates anxiety and stress, so they resist even more.

Many resist even the sight of it in COVID and more. They actively hide when there’s a slight chance of making full contact with inner (nonconscious) self.

Very much sorry, but this looks like a rabbit seeking refuge from a fox inside a paper bag

when the fox is already inside the bag.