A metaphor for the mind – The rider and the wild elephant

Do you remember that cool movie scene from 300 when the persian army attacked the greeks with those fearsome huge war elephants? It will from now on hold a special place in your memory, Steemit Neo, since it symbolizes the essence of how our minds really work.

So, coming back to the scene, do you remember how impressive, shivering and awe-stricking their attack was? Because at that moment, The riders will was in ALIGNMENT with the majestic beasts’ agenda: to trample and mash up the Greeks. ..and the result was a spectacular show of force…

A stark contrast to minutes later in the film when hundreds of arrows pierce the elephants’ skin and the beast gets scared…. It wants to run… it topples Its rider, who’s helplessly trying to control it by smacking it with a tiny stick or something, and it just goes its own way…needless to say who lost the battle….

So that’s a pretty accurate image to describe the relationship between our rational conscious mind , the one we foolishly call “ourselves” and the subconscious mind, the one really running the show.

When the intentions of the conscious mind are in alignment with subconscious the result is a magnificent display of effectiveness. When the subconscious has somehow acquired a different agenda, the conscious mind doesn’t stand a chance to impose change and helplessly assists the unfolding of events that confirm its failure.

If you’re imagining that it was me who came up with such an insightful metaphor you’ll be disappointed…. and immediately after, surprised. The connection was made 2000 years ago and the credit goes to whoever went by the name of Buddha.

He tried to find a vivid way to explain how the small rational self tries to assert over something much larger and more powerful than itself and at the same time holds the laughable illusion of being in control of it.

And indeed science nowadays proved this intuition right. The conscious mind processing power has been approximated at about 2000 bits/s Compared to it, the subconscious mind performs about…say 4 billion bits/s . Do you see the problem now?

it's like your pocket calculator is trying to control IBM's supercomputer...

We try to discipline our lives based on our force of will.(conscious).

We want to learn and improve by memorizing and remembering more things (again, conscious ).

Lastly, we want to change, to become different, better people by the power of conscious initiatives, using conscious processes.

And who is actually doing the disciplining, learning and changing processing of information?

Are we still surprised after 2000 years that it doesn’t work?

The rider has the wisdom to know the way, but the elephant actually takes you there, so he must decide to go there himself.

Instead of helplessly sitting on its back while it’s dragging you –albeit kicking and screaming- in the wrong direction, why not learn some training skills?
And not with the pathetic little stick the guy from the movie used, which we can call “the force of will” but by subtly nudging it with some corn or banana or whatever elephants eat and enjoy.