A Highly Suggestible Mind

Lately I was made aware that the mind, also everything else, was highly suggestible. Not only that; it perhaps referenced to the fact that everything else was truly connected and affected by one another - this invisible law of the universe that I paid no close heed to until I did.

A few weeks ago I put some dried octopus inside an airtight container full of freshly dried peanuts. The nuts were very dry and crispy, and in contrast the octopus was a little wet, slightly exposed to air for quite some time. When I opened it a week later to eat the octopus, to my surprise it was so crispy I hardly believed it. The same thing happened to a few rice crispies I put inside a box of braised chicken. When I opened the box the crispies were shrivelled next to nothing.

That made me realize that the environment pretty much affected the minor population so that it conformed to the majority. Had the crispies doubled the amount of the chicken, or the octopus was more than the peanuts, the opposite would have happened - the minority would follow the exact condition of the majority.

Not everything could be defined this way, of course. But then it made me think - is everything really that easily suggestible, therefore manipulated?

As with the mind that affects the physical body and often vice versa, as a child's environment helps shape the way he or she grow up, every word and every thing that we've gone through pretty much affects the way we are. Memories, experiences, thoughts, incidents - all of these also shape us into what we're becoming, some unconsciously, some we let happen, and some we build a wall against so they don't get through (but in some ways I believe they do).

A few days ago I was talking to a professional in her area of expertise and she talked me down in a way that I thought was not very respectful. Everyone around me was saying how I should have been angrier than I was, and a highly suggestible mind like mine at that moment was swayed, even though in the end I chose a stand against it. Again, the fact made me think that we could choose to conform or not to, but then the environment around us will affect us to the extent that we allow it to.

Just musings I never really thought about and put into words now. Not sure if it makes sense now that I'm writing about it, but hey :-) a mind is indeed suggestible!