Manomaya kosha your mental self
“We are rarely who we think we are. Or are we? Manomaya kosha is the mental illusion over our true self.”
- Ericka Thomas
Transcript
Manomaya Kosha
We are rarely who we think we are. Or are we? Manomaya kosha is the mental illusion over our true self. Our Work IN today we’re discussing our mind, its monkey aspects, squirrelish behavior and how to untangle the truth of who we are.
Welcome back to our series on the koshas. We've discussed Annamaya, our physical body layer, last week we talked about pranamaya kosha our energetic/breath layer and today we’re diving into Manomaya Kosha. Mano= mind Maya= illusion. Manomaya is all about our thoughts.
Who do you think you are? How do you know? Thoughts…we have something like 90,000 of them every day. Although I’m not sure where that number comes from or what poor undergrad had to count those in order to find it. Can you imagine? Anyway that’s what they tell us. 90,000 thoughts give or take on any given day.
They used to say and I’m sure you’ve heard this at some point that we only use about 10% of our brain. That’s ridiculous. We are using 100% of the brain. We need every single neuron. But I might believe that only 10% is used for thinking.
That begs the question: what do you think about everyday? Well, what experts say is that just like many other things in our brain and body many of our thoughts are habitual. 90% actually are the same thoughts that we had yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Thought habits are important because they create what yogis call samskaras. Basically deep ruts or patterns of not just as a habitual thought but also show up in behavior, belief systems and emotion via the HPA axis and the fight flight freeze stress response.
It takes a whole lot of energy for the brain to think and handle everything else going on in the body at the same time. The majority of the calories we eat go straight to the brain. It makes sense to recycle thoughts from an energy balance standpoint. And that’s not a problem unless those thoughts are negative and self destructive. That also isn’t necessarily a problem unless you actually believe all of those thoughts.
When we’re talking about the koshas and the layers of self our thoughts are right up there with our body as defining who we are. But are they? Are our thoughts who we are? When we study the koshas, and we’re doing that right now, manomaya kosha is a veil. It is an illusion that covers who we are. Meaning that we are more than our thoughts.
And that’s a good thing but how do we know that?
Well, have you ever had a conversation with yourself about anything? I do it many times a day. I’m sure you have too. Sometimes it feels like a staff meeting of squirrels. Who are all those voices in that internal conversation? Are they all you? Or are some of those voices, some of those thoughts echoes from other people in our past?
The thoughts we think over and over are not all ours. Some of them we might have collected from other people over the years. Maybe your parents told you who you were. Maybe teachers or coaches told you who you were. Maybe friends or bullies told you who you were.
The higher the energetic (emotional) charge in those moments, no matter what age you were, the more likely they are to be locked into our memory. Energetic/emotional charge raises the importance of anything for our brain, thought memory, experience, whatever. And that is one way our Pranamaya kosha and the energy of emotion overlaps into our mental self. And while we can’t think our way out of physical responses to stress and past trauma it’s important to acknowledge that our thoughts can influence that response positively and negatively. Our thought patterns are very important on the path to healing stress and trauma injury.
“Positive thoughts are a biological mandate for a happy, healthy life. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi: Your beliefs become your thoughts Your thoughts become your words Your words become your actions Your actions become your habits Your habits become your values Your values become your destiny”
― Bruce H. Lipton, The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles
There’s something in psychology called internal family systems. And is a theory that says that our mind creates a family structure internally as a way to deal with past trauma and stress and big emotions that we didn’t have the capacity to deal with in the moment. It says we have managers and firefighters and exiles within our thoughts. This is not to say we’re all split personalities. This theory suggests that these are different aspects of our self that give us thoughts and act in ways that protect our self but in the process they can seem like they ARE who we are, when really they are separating us from the wounded parts of ourselves and from our true self. Becoming more aware of these different internal family members is the first step to reintegrating them. It’s a theory and I’m no expert on it but it is interesting. Because we can all talk to ourselves right? And our thoughts can reinforce some not so great things about who we believe we are.
So what do we do with our thoughts if we don’t like who they are telling us we are?
I like to ask myself the questions from Byron Katy’s work. Before we simply accept any particular thought as true doesn’t it deserve a little more…well, thought. Especially if we believe that our thoughts define who we are.
I love Byron Katy’s work and I highly recommend looking into it if you’re at all interested in personal growth. The questions in the work are simple.
Is it true?
Can you absolutely know it’s true?
How does this thought make you feel?
Who are you without this thought?
Some of our thoughts are true in one moment but we keep them and continue to apply them carrying them forward in time. The brain can’t tell time. That takes too much energy. It just assumes what was true once is true forever. But we know better.
Just because we have a thought pop into our head doesn’t make it true. And also what is true for me isn’t always and doesn’t have to be true for you. I think this might be the source of a lot of angst in society. Integral systems theory is a meta theory from Ken Wilbur. Literally tried to create a theory of all things. And within that theory he suggests a system of evolution of conscious awareness that we’re all participating in in real time. Part of that evolution is developing an awareness and ability to hold more than one belief system as true in our mind at the same time. In other words your truth and my truth can both be true. I know it boggles the mind. Go to the show notes to see a visual of this theory. It’s pretty cool.
Ken Wilber’s Integral systems theory stages of development
Before we can get to this elevated way of thinking about ourselves and others though we need to tap into another kosha. And that is vijnanamaya kosha. Our wisdom layer. Which we’ll get into next time. But the overlap (because there always is one) between Manomaya kosha, our thoughts and our wisdom layer is the noticing thought. The thought that you are noticing your thoughts. That is the overlap. Without that we really can’t do much work in this kosha. We need enough of an awareness to start to notice things happening, in our body, with our breath and in our thoughts to be able to take more baby steps toward understanding our true self and find real world resilience.
Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
― Lao Tzu
Like the breath and the body and in spite of the fact that many if not most of our thoughts are habitual, we do have conscious control over our thoughts if we want to exercise it. With that noticing thought we can catch the negative thoughts and counteract them with a turn around. A replacement thought.
This is where sankalpa(positive intention setting) mantra and affirmations can be a tool to direct our minds' attention through the reticular activating system. When we can clarify and articulate a desire or a new way of thinking we are telling the brain to spotlight anything that supports intention. Going one step further and connecting our intentions to elevated emotions like gratitude and joy tell the brain a couple things. 1. This is important, pay attention to it and 2. (specifically with gratitude) something wonderful already happened (remember brain can’t tell time) so lets find more of that
Now we’re priming our brain to seek out and notice anything that fits that intention profile. That’s how manifestation works.
We can change our thoughts. Carol Dweck and her work on growth and fixed mindset is an excellent rabbit hole to explore. But I think I’ll leave this here because we’ll talk more about how to make some of those changes next time when we’ll move from our thoughts into wisdom, Vijnanamaya kosha.
Thanks for listening!
If you're looking for ways to handle the effects of stress, physically, mentally and emotionally through the body head over to savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin you’ll find all the show notes for this and other episodes plus lots of free resources. And if you’re in a place where you are ready for more and you live in the Dayton Ohio area I’m taking private clients for trauma informed yoga and trauma release exercise in person and online. So book a discovery call and we can have a real life conversation. And of course I’d be ever so grateful if you would take a moment to like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you’re listening.
Thanks again everyone and as always stop working out and start working IN.
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Hey there!
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a health coach and trauma informed yoga professional bringing real world resilience and healing to main street USA.
I offer trauma release + yoga + wellness education for groups and individuals…regular people like you.
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