Whether you realize it or not, pleasure and pain influence all of your choices, which drives your behavior and that in turn determines your life experiences.

Hard-coded in our DNA is the drive to survive.  Our survival instinct is almost definitely the number one program running in our complex biological computer network often simply called our mind.

Our mind encompasses our brain, our nervous system and our DNA. It is a sophisticated biological computer network that has the power to learn and evolve. It is so powerful that it puts any other computer system to shame.

Despite all of its inherent power and awesomeness, the mind is not without its shortcomings.  Importantly it is not fool proof, far from it.  As a matter of fact, a mind left to its own devices is destined to run into trouble sooner or later. The question is when, not if.

What really stops all of us from going crazy is consciousness, our ability to be self-aware.

Without conscious guidance the mind would run off the rails constantly. It is after all just a computer system, though a very clever one.

The problem for many people is that they have become so identified with their mind that they have effectively become enslaved by it.

Don’t believe me? Check it out for yourself. Why not start by recounting all of the times you have reacted irrationally in the last week.

And before you start blaming it on hormonal imbalances, guess what, hormones are part of your mind’s messaging system.

Our survival instinct is not the problem. Neither is our desire to avoid pain and seek pleasure, which stems from our survival instinct.

The problem is  that we have forgotten our true identity as spiritual (conscious) beings and identified with our mind instead. This in turn makes it difficult to correct our mind’s flaws. Instead we fall victim to suppressed emotions, flawed beliefs and other gremlins lurking in the dark corners of our unconscious (invisible) mind.

The solution?  Start separating from your mind and realize that our are not part of the computer program. You are the programmer and it is up to you to fix any programming errors that arise. To do that properly you need to find the courage to explore the vast unconscious (invisible) parts of your mind. It may be scary at first but it is the path to true power and freedom.