The Growing of the Conscious Mind in Children
To celebrate the birth of my third child yesterday, a brief (bottles/ baby and child #1 & 2 to focus on at this time…) couple of thoughts as the seed of something bigger.
What struck me was: is it any wonder that we have a constant challenge with concepts of ‘ourself’ or ‘me’. Why is it a surprise to us that we find it hard to ‘manage’ ourselves (if that is what we try and do)?
I sit and see a homosapien offspring aged 1 day. A beautiful bundle of potential; at this stage though just a bundle of nerve endings and other-than-conscious reactions. Initial genetic pre-set programmes around food and reaction (crying) to more extreme sensory inputs (noise/ light) – I’m sure there are a lot more listed by experts.
And then the conscious overlay begins. Thoughts and knowledge. Habits, beliefs, states and behaviours. Sets of reactions and responses based on our map of the territory.
I can’t shake an image of layers of ‘material’. Like strata in a rock; residues from the ‘time and tide’ of life compacted by the heat and pressure of the moment/ that moment.
And then initially apparently so hard to mine out those conditioned layers in order to change.
