The mind's coup de grace

While we may call the brain the mushy organ behind our eyes, I call the mind its own abstract manifestation and all its manifestations, however abstract.

The mind’s greatest ability lies in the leverage it has on itself. It’s susceptibility, perhaps tendency, nay its necessity, to fool itself, or embrace delusions. I use the word delusion here purposefully. ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ sounds too clinical, like an illness to be medicated, but delusions meet my criteria for a knowledgeable ignorance for the sake of its own good.

The Placebo effect is well-known, but I posit not appreciated or applied to the extent I am partial toward. The difference between a healthy and ill body, a whole or broken spirit, or a genuine smile and a fake frown lie mostly on the mind’s interpretation of its environment and status.

The truly facinating power of the mind isn’t to derive truths or create empirically accurate abstractions, but to believe them. Wholeheartedly. And thus give them the power over us they didn’t have innately. A ‘fact’ is actually more true to us once we are aware of it and believe it. A ‘fact’ without belief hardly exists.

Not to say Cancer is defeatable solely with meditation or that a 40-inch vertical is just one strong thought away. But sanity slips a little at a time, with only the mind as its sheath to keep it in place. And the ability to build or destroy is mostly out of our hands and in our minds. A truly self-aware mind should be terrified of itself.

Is there a limit to the strength of the mind-body connection? Can one get physiologically stronger just thinking and believing it?… but why? how?

Are the mind’s efforts to build stronger than those to destroy? Is sanity is only a destructive thought away?