Consciousness Documentary

The following is a transcript from the documentary "What is Consciousness? What is Its Purpose?" found here.

What is Consciousness?

In neuroscience and psychology, the concepts of love and fear are more than just emotions. They relate to how the deepest unconscious regions of our brain operate. How the reptilian brain only craves what it lacks and is unaware of what it takes for granted. And how what we believe we lack ends up defining what we love.

By gaining insight into the realms of our unconscious mind and the reality that it emerges from, we are presented with a choice. "The most important decision that we make, is whether we believe we live in a friendly or a hostile universe."

While this quote from Albert Einstein sounds relatable, one can wonder why a man of his profound intelligence would specifically claim this is the most important decision we make.

This documentary answers that question.

Tens of thousands of papers are published each year in the field of neuroscience alone. Our knowledge and understanding of the inner workings of our mind and of our universe is expanding at an astounding rate.

If you seek rational answers to fundamental questions about consciousness, this documentary could change your life.

The human brain is by far the most sophisticated phenomenon that we have been able to observe to date in our universe. And after decades of neuroscience, we still have endless questions about this mysterious structure that holds as many neurons as there may be stars in our galaxy. Yet we do not have to veer far into hypotheticals or resort to superstition to answer some of our deepest existential questions.

One of the most baffling observations has been that some experiments seem to reveal two distinct personalities or streams of consciousness present in our brain, one in each hemisphere. And only one of these two can talk. Under the right conditions, neurologists have even been able to ask questions to each hemisphere separately. Resulting in cases where a person would say he is not religious when asked in conversation. While when this person sees the question in writing, the mute hemisphere responds by writing down its own answer. In some cases disagreeing with the other hemisphere.

Many more experiments that reveal similar results indicate that this is more than a random oddity or hallucination, but instead some legitimate form of split or double consciousness taking place in our brain. Fortunately, this strange disagreement between both hemispheres only occurs when the connection between them is broken. As long as they are connected they try to cooperate and create the perception that we are a singular individual.

So where exactly are we located inside the brain?

If science can pinpoint those parts of the brain that are largely responsible for language, mathematics, specific primal emotions and so forth, what does it say about the parts of the brain that make up the core of what we are? Not only have scientists, despite their best efforts, not been able to locate such a region in the brain. But all evidence even points towards this core not existing.

It has become more and more clear that in this miniature universe of the brain, roughly a 100 billion neurons all act by themselves and communicate with each other as if the brain is an astonishingly complex vehicle without a driver. A computer without a CPU.

In our quest for finding some sort of core of what we are, we could look even deeper and zoom in on the basic building blocks of what our brain is made of. But if we peer into the individual molecules that make up our neurons, our findings become even more counter-intuitive. Not only will we not find any mysterious trace of a soul, we will also not bump into any kind of marble-like structures that high school physics taught us are the tiny particles that everything else is made of.

You might have heard that roughly 99.9% of all solid matter is nothing but empty space. This is true. But zooming into the .1% that should consist of the stuff everything is made of only results in showing us a different kind of emptiness. The electrons, the quarks, all the fundamental particles are not solid objects. Thinking of them as somehow tiny spheres is a convenient simplification, but this does not represent the fascinating reality of this strange quantum void.

The only things that exist here are waves. Waves that behave similar to vibrations of sound or ripples in water. But rather than oscillations of matter, the peaks and valleys of these quantum waves are not made of anything tangible, they are waves of probabilities. Their peaks reveal the areas where there is a high probability of detecting the energy of what we may call an electron. Their valleys indicate that the chances there are much lower.

As bizarre as it may sound that all the building blocks of our universe seem to behave according to chance rather than being intuitively predictable, this is not just a theory. It is a simple fact that can be tested and observed with nothing more than a laser pointer and a comb to replicate part of the famous double-slit experiment. The counter-intuitiveness of this discovery has been the root of popular misinterpretations and metaphysical confusion where it's been described as particles being aware and knowing that they're being observed or the universe being influenced by the power of our thinking.

The truth is at least equally fascinating. The real principle at work is that if we can not know where a particle is, it exists only as a probability wave that tells us where the particle is more or less likely to be found. And only when we take action to measure where the particle could be, the wave will suddenly cease to exist and the particle reveals itself. The particle has no defined location until we make the measurement. This is why we say that light, for example, is both a wave and a particle.

This quantum weirdness does not just apply to light, it applies to all the particles that everything is made of. It also applies to molecules. If we fire super-tiny rocks instead of photons, they will behave like waves when we're not measuring them.

We intuitively believe our universe consists of solid stuff. But in reality, all of it, from the neurons in our brain to the galaxy we are a part of, is the result of probability waves and particles that pop in and out of existence.

All this weirdness led Einstein to famously say: "Do you really believe the moon is not there when you are not looking at it?". But no matter how weird it is, quantum theory and all experimental evidence reveals that our universe is inherently probabilistic and things within it can not be predicted with 100% certainty.

This doesn't mean that science cannot make accurate estimates as to what is more or less likely. The mathematics and statistics of quantum physics reveal that the seemingly random oscillations that make up our reality are still profoundly consistent patterns. Many of our modern technologies, such as solar panels or microprocessors, would not have been possible if we had not deciphered much of the intricate and unique behavior of quantum mechanics.

But if no specific region of the brain, nor the neurons, nor the building blocks that our neurons consist of can account for the phenomenon of our consciousness, what is the current scientific assessment as to what brings it about?

Over the years, there have been many theories, some of which have since been debunked with modern understandings of neuroscience, others are considered too far-fetched and exotic to be of merit without hard evidence. But there is one general school of thought that most scientists consider to be likely. An idea that is not only logically sound and fits our observations, but that can transform how we think about life. Even though its implications are thus far rarely discussed and explored.

Why Are We Conscious?

This documentary marks the first time all these logical conclusions are brought together to bring into focus what science can really tell us about some of our deepest existential questions. If we look at evolution, it's not so hard to roughly imagine how life started here on earth. 4 billion years ago, a unique series of coincidental probabilities occurred that led to the existence of very simple biological cells that could replicate. These were the first forms of life. And as they replicated, subtle differences between the old cells and the new cells would crop up, mutations would take place. We see it in the genetics of offspring with every lifeform known to us and we can trace it back in the remains and fossils not just of animals and plants, but sometimes even of bacteria of as far as 3.5 billion years ago. Microscopic crystals and fossils provide us a glimpse of life on earth before the first plants or even algae emerged.

Over billions of years of replicating and mutating, these biological mechanisms found more and more sophisticated ways of growing and spreading. The tiniest initial differences such as offspring with a coincidental protein molecule that is sensitive to sunlight would end up with eventually more beneficial mutations over many generations.

4 billion years is a very long time. Enough for extremely sophisticated results such as the human eye to emerge from origins as simplistic as a single light-sensitive protein molecule. As a result, even our most advanced technologies are often still no match for some of the mechanisms that have taken evolution aeons to engineer. But when we begin to contemplate early animal life, and observe its beautiful legacy all around us, wherein we constantly recognize parts of our primal selves, it is tempting to wonder why in the process of evolution there emerged this phenomenon of consciousness that has bewildered and confounded philosophers and mystics since the dawn of humanity's tribal structures.

To approach this scientifically, we can not allow consciousness' elusive nature to be a reason for giving up on trying to understand it. Because if consciousness is not a magical exception and is rather a direct or indirect consequence of evolution, just like every other the scientific conclusion is straight-forward: just like every other feature of the human brain and body, experience or consciousness is a tool that evolution has engineered for us through billions of years of mutations. Conscious forms of life showed a richer capacity for learning and course-correcting.

Evolution favored this development and nurtured it to a point where we became sentient, self-aware and capable of interpreting our own evolutionary drives and our purpose in ways that can even go against our own survival if we so choose.

"You" Do Not Exist

So how would science then describe the mechanism of consciousness? Surprisingly, most scientists do theorize that consciousness is not simply inside our brain.

Consciousness is generally considered to be an emergent phenomenon of the brain. Meaning that consciousness happens when enough activity takes place in the brain in a way in a way that can be compared to how music emerges from a record player. The music is not anywhere to be found inside the record player. Intuitively, we tend to say the music is on the record, but even there we really only find a circular vinyl disk with peculiar grooves, it does not produce any sound or music at all. It is only when the mechanisms of the record player are activated in a certain way that that all its activity produces an emergent phenomenon that we call music.

Consciousness is somewhat similar. We can't physically locate it at one point or in one area. And if we zoom in on the grey matter of our brain, we find as much evidence for consciousness as we find tiny marbles inside a molecule. None at all. Yet when billions of neurons fire and communicate with each other, the combination of this enormous amount of activity creates the phenomenon of consciousness.

But it would seem that this is far from a complete summary of what brings it about. Because there is an inevitable consequence that complicates things to an incredible degree. The more this emergent feature evolved in ways that allow it to course-correct and significantly reprogram the brain, the more it became a feedback loop of incredible complexity. When we point a webcam at a screen that displays its input we see a seemingly infinite pattern, the brain does something similar with the activity from its billions of firing neurons, resulting in an unimaginable depth of iterations and permutations that gives rise to what we call consciousness or experience.

Consciousness is a Tool

This experience is not a goal, it is simply the ultimate tool that our brain has for finding its way and coming to grips with the consistent patterns of reality.

We are the unfathomably intricate interplay of what seems like infinite loops of neural processes. Our essence may have had humble beginnings, but it exponentially grew on its voyage down the rabbit hole of boundlessly mirroring itself and learning from each mirror image. Our brain waves ripple and reverberate, creating constant feedback loops of wildly varying degrees of complexity before even a single emotion, let alone a conscious thought can emerge, which then in itself inevitably brings about feedback loops of higher levels of abstraction where it is no longer about the interaction and cascade of neurochemical processes, but also of language, ideas and concepts that then allow such magnitudes of recursive thinking that we become capable of observing and dissecting the patterns of our own existence.

We are incomparably more than the sum of our parts. Which is why our evolution so greatly favored this extraordinary capacity for reasoning and intuition and why it promoted us from biological machines to sentient architects of our own future, tasked with making the right decisions for ourselves and for our species.

We are a feedback loop that is, depending on how we choose to live, to greater or lesser extent aware of its own mechanisms.

The Purpose of Consciousness

We must factor in the brain's remarkable ability for changing itself. This is called neuroplasticity.

Whatever it is that we are doing at any point in time, we are training our brain to become better at performing those actions, for better or for worse. While more pronounced at early age, neuroplasticity and even neurogenesis, the creation of new brain cells, continues to take place throughout our lives, shaping and reshaping the hardware of our consciousness every step of the way.

While human beings have a remarkable capacity for rationality, enabling us to fly rockets to the moon and build incredible machinery that allows us to dissect the fabric of the universe, we are also very emotional creatures. As we grow up, we for a big part learn and shape our behavior through basic Pavlovian conditioning. In the famous psychological experiment by Ivan Pavlov, a basic observation was that a dog tends to salivate as soon as he recognizes learned indicators hinting that he may be rewarded with a treat. Same mechanisms are present in the reward system of the human brain.

As children, we innocently want to understand the world. But if trying to understand things is not rewarding enough, our brain adopts other strategies. An unfortunate phenomenon often observed in psychology and also once famously described by Carl Sagan is that kindergartners or first-grade kids tend to be sincere science enthusiasts with a genuine sense of wonder as they question everything around them. But talk to children in the 12th grade and much of this curiosity has become extinguished.

If our natural tendency to logically question things is discouraged and we are instead rewarded for actions that we often don't see the meaning of, the brain adapts to this and gradually gives up on independent logical inquiry.

Instead, we become disproportionately dedicated to seeking approval of others. Our opinions, our identity, our way of life ends up depending on how we are judged by our social circle and by society at large.

At the time of recording this documentary, fake news, post-truth and so-called 'alternative facts' are much discussed topics. But these are mere symptoms of a much deeper problem. One that goes beyond misinformation and imperfect social media algorithms.

While we may not be aware of it, the Pavlovian conditioning from our contemporary culture deeply defines how we look at life and by extension how we intuitively perceive consciousness. To understand just how much culture constantly evolves while it shapes our behaviors and beliefs, it can be helpful to look at how much has changed even in recent history. Only around 15 years ago it was controversial to ban smoking and cellphones were considered inappropriate for teenagers or for use on public transport. Ten years ago we could barely imagine why anyone would want to put random thoughts along with personal pictures on the Internet for everyone to see. Now just about everyone including parents and grandparents have active Facebook accounts. And in only a few years, taking selfies went from a strange and narcissistic habit to a cultural norm.

Keeping this in mind may then make it less surprising when we consider that up until around 300 years back, people would brand a great deal of our most commonplace routines as selfish, decadent and morally corrupt. As trivial and innocent of an act like buying a box of our favorite cereals would fall into this category. While society gradually improves and evolves over large periods of time, our culture takes many twists and turns along the way, some of which move us closer to valuing facts over fiction, some of which do not.

Nevertheless, our conditioning lays much of the groundwork for the operating system of our brain. In a constellation of brain regions known as the Default Mode Network, information is constantly being processed even when we are seemingly at rest. This is partially why social conditioning can have a profound impact on us while we are unaware of it.

Our current mainstream culture is generally defined as individualism, which finds its origins in the industrial revolution not long ago. And just as in previous eras, we go as far as to sometimes rewrite history to fit our current narrative and we repurpose ancient sayings such as "Carpe Diem" to support our beliefs.

The complete sentence of the old Latin poem roughly translates to "do what you can today, to make tomorrow better" and it had no connection with indulging in personal desires.

We've Been Lied To

While our scientific progress can tell us a lot about the brain and even to significant extent about consciousness, our culture is currently not so much geared towards trying to understand what we are. It is instead more focused on celebrating the pursuit of fashionable personal interests. Ranging from material possessions to impressing our social circle, from momentary thrills to romantic adventures.

The individual's desire and its freedom to pursue it is currently our most cherished ideal. Many aspects of our society, most of all our economy, rely on our pursuit of these popularized objectives. Aside from rare exceptions like a futuristic tv series about a unified humanity working to advance the species, culture has a way of submerging us in signals that make us believe, without question, that the way we currently perceive things is simply the way it has always been or at least the way it's meant to be. Not so long ago, we believed people of color were always inferior, the world was always flat and the gods always controlled the skies.

In a cultural setting such as this, the brain's reward system becomes, in a sense, disconnected from its purpose. Throughout evolution, the ways in which our DNA has mutated and our brain has expanded have all been part of the same process: all these mechanisms simply try to overcome the obstacles in their path.

Life fundamentally tries to align itself with reality, genetically and biologically, instinctively and intellectually. As children, the way we try to align ourselves with reality is by imitating others, parents, friends, teachers and various cultural influences. The older and the more aware we become, the more capable our brain becomes at independently recognizing patterns and making abstractions. A duality arises.

We possess the intelligence to grasp the consequences of our actions and of our inaction. Yet our Pavlovian reward-seeking urges pull us in other directions, such as living up to the expectations of society and family. We feel fragile and dependent on the judgment of others because our reward system values their approval more than logical deduction. We feel little satisfaction or even discouragement when acting upon our own independent rational judgment. This confusing duality is a natural consequence of a society wherein we never really grow up.

We seek the approval of our guardians when we are young. And we continue to seek approval of whichever forces take over as we grow older. We become eternal validation-seekers.

What Drives You

Neurons cluster together to create hierarchies that end up determining the things we value most.

In recent years, neuroscientists are even beginning to come up with mathematical formulas that describe the exact way in which these hierarchies are formed and how they process information. Different clusters of neurons talk to each other in a beautifully organized fashion, to, among other things, figure out whether or not the reward system should be activated. A process that largely depends on our conditioning and differs for each person.

Learning what someone's reward system is primarily drawn to, often makes their behavior surprisingly easy to map and understand. We can much better comprehend the cold-heartedness of a career-fixated individual if success or social validation is what he or she craves more than anything else. Or the sacrifice of someone who spends all their resources helping siblings or parents if this person's core drive is family. The blindness of a person who primarily chases romantic adventures or the carelessness of a hedonistic thrill-seeker.

We often create many additional rationales around our actions to obscure our fundamental motivation. The collection of these rationalizations is what constitutes our identity.

Throughout our lives we may encounter milestones where our core value changes as a result of a paradigm shift or an identity crisis. Analyzing one's own actions over the years through deep reflection or the practice of writing down an overview of one's key choices in life can easily reveal what this core value is for you.

This can be an experience that is both enlightening and sobering as it makes us see that our choices are rarely informed by the rationalizations we afterwards come up with. They are mostly the result of a childish attachment that lurks in our subconscious. And the more self-aware we become, the more we feel a dissatisfaction with the pursuit of hollow goals. But this is not a deterministic trap that we cannot escape from.

We Can Change What Drives Us

We live in a probabilistic universe where nothing is set in stone. Rather than vaguely philosophize about the nature of free will, we can deduce that the that feedback loop of consciousness plays an active role in processing information and making decisions. It has a say in what our most deeply rooted core motivations are.

Concepts and ideas only have power over us when we emotionally invest and hold on to them.

This brings up some questions: in light of all this knowledge, how do we correct our course? How do we truly find meaning in our lives and experience the kind of fulfilment that most of us only catch glimpses of from time to time?

It turns out that science has more answers in these regards than is commonly assumed.

It is widely understood that logic is our most powerful ally in understanding and approaching reality. More than a cold and blunt instrument for calculation, it is the closest thing to a force that holds our universe together. Our advances in physics continue to reveal a mathematical framework underpinning anything and everything in our reality. Without these consistent patterns, nothing would exist. Without its exquisite dance of aeons of genetic iterations, we would not be able to think or feel.

We often see logic as the opposite of emotion, but instead it is the engine of our emotions and it provides reliable answers when we are frustrated or confused. Logic is what creates rhythm or structure, it is fundamental in the melody of music and the colors and symmetry of flowers. It creates biological machinery so intricate and rich that they can become self-aware, capable of love and selflessness and able to observe the majestic logical patterns that created them.

We can trace our origins and the molecules in our body back to the stars in which they were created and see that we are all connected. Over billions of years, these molecules configured themselves into complex units that we call human beings. These units are like cells in the body of humanity, wired to evolve and move it forward.

This is why we have a deep desire to find meaning, to find an existential equilibrium:

Evolution has fundamentally programmed us so that we want our beliefs to align with reality.

Logic is, in a sense, the prime directive of our consciousness. We must value it as such if we want to break free from the clutches of hollow reward mechanisms. Evolution has put the feedback loop of experience in control of our brain. We make the calls. And while we intuitively navigate reality with the compass of our reward system, we can change how this system operates.

This is what happens in paradigm shifts or identity crises. In religious transformations or in the minds of many first-time parents.

The reward system shifts its dominant focus.

It's easy to think in absurd stereotypes when we imagine a person primarily driven by logic. But for human beings, it would only be illogical to suppress emotions or disregard human needs. Instead, what is logical for humans is to act in ways that are most efficient for the benefit of ourselves and of humanity.

Part of the reasons why meditation and mindfulness practices have scientifically measurable health and psychological benefits is precisely because they somewhat disconnect us from attachments that constantly take up mental energy and generate dissonance. They also shift the brain's activity from its Default Mode Network to what is called the Task-Positive Network and it allows us to more easily be selfless, clear-headed and focused. The simple act of intently putting focus on our breathing throughout the day is enough to make this happen. It creates an awareness that is often described as 'being in the present' or being in a state of flow, wherein rather than identifying with our thoughts, we become an observer of them and are much more inclined to follow reason over impulse.

We become more capable of adjusting our beliefs and making conscious choices that rewire our brain's reward system. We can observe clear improvements in how, over the centuries, common subconscious core values have shifted away from things like superstition. Perhaps at some point in our future, our cultures will find common ground in simply valuing logic.

As a society, we're currently still too obsessed with trivial differences and preferences to make such a drastic leap. But as individuals, we're fortunate to live in a time where we have the freedom to question our cultural beliefs and choose our own path. Even our core values that hold tremendous power over us and have been ingrained in our minds through decades of conditioning can be changed.

3 Steps to Make the Click

While core values don't just change automatically, here is how one could adopt a more logic-oriented mindset.

The first step would be to ensure one has a genuine appreciation for logic, something that much of the audience watching this video may already have. It can be profoundly inspiring to learn about how logic underpins everything in the vast and intricate complexity of our universe and it can also be empowering to realize, as you learn, that even when we don't know them, the logical answers to our questions exist. It also helps to be aware that science and logic are not about certainties but about finding out what is most likely. Our universe is a probabilistic phenomenon. Even a hypothetically perfect simulation could not predict with complete certainty how events would unfold. There is a profound sense of acceptance in acknowledging that nothing is ever truly certain, but with our brain's ability to reason, we can come up with pretty good approximations of what the best course of action is at every point in our lives.

This first step can be achieved simply by reflection or learning about logic and science from books and documentaries or rewatching this video.

Step 2 is to identify your current core value. Find what emotionally drives you. In this step, you pinpoint what it is that throughout your life your reward system has turned into its primary focus. It could simply be comfort, success or social validation.

Making the conscious leap to adopt logic as a core value is step 3. This resolution is not about just implementing new habits but rather about fundamentally committing to doing the right thing at any time, depending on your knowledge and the logical connections you make.

Finding the courage and truly making this click can be a euphoric or liberating experience.

There is a wealth of knowledge and insight available online on how this can be achieved for those who find it difficult. Although this difficulty is often an illusion that simply takes some bravery to overcome.

Why People Fail to Click

What has been observed thus far among people who go through this transformation is that those who ultimately make this leap with the intention of elevating their experience will eventually lose this newfound awareness. This is not due to a lack of discipline, but rather due to a fundamental misunderstanding regarding consciousness that we are deeply conditioned with. It is a fallacy that most of us never verbalize or are even aware of and that sits at the heart of our misconceptions regarding our experience.

You believe that there is a 'you' inside the brain.

Even as you watch this video, you've most likely concluded at least subconsciously that there is still a 'you' in the ever-changing feedback loop of consciousness. That while we are an unfathomably complex and rich phenomenon of continuous information processing and near infinite iteration and transmutation, that somehow at every instant and in every loop, a defining part of us survives.

We believe this even though most cells in our body die and are replaced over and over. The electrons that buzz through our neurons to generate our ongoing experience do not exist in any solid or intuitive sense of the word and scientists find no trace of a self inside our brain.

Each second, the consciousness that emerges from the grey matter mechanisms behind our eyes is different, sometimes unrecognizably so, from what it was a second before.

The truth is every moment we are a new entity that existed only for that one single moment and will never manifest itself again. No experience can truly be replicated, no identity can ever reflect an ever-changing synergy and there is no self or I that can persist in the endless stream of experience. Not even for an instant.

The only place where there resides some notion of the imagined self, is in the proteins that were synthesized to store a memory of a moment that once occurred. As if the feedback loop of consciousness at that moment wrote in the machinery of our neurons: "I was here", so that the next iteration, the next loop that a new experience emerges from, might learn from it.

From fixating on faulty concepts of what we are, on stories of a phantom that we define as the self, we learn nothing of value. It is fascinating that sometimes science and ancient esoteric wisdoms seem to meet. The idea that there is no actual self is not a new one. But it is one that is logical and has gained more scientific support than other schools of thought. Life and death are concepts that do not seem to apply in the ways that we think they do.

Your True Self

Beyond outdated philosophical or religious notions, we have no reasons at all to believe the human organism is inhabited by a spirit, but rather by a near-infinity of consciousnesses over time. And each manifestation is much more than a mere expression of our brain's neural activity. It is a culmination of all the interaction that led to its emergence.

Consciousness does not emerge from the brain like a genie from a bottle. In fact, without any influence from society, in cases where children grow up in isolation, not raised by humans but among animals, the brain does not adapt to the use of language and becomes forever incapable of speaking or even conceptually thinking in the ways that we constantly do. So much of what we tend to label as intrinsic personality can not even exist on a basic level without sufficient interaction.

Consciousness emerges from the vast interplay of stardust becoming aware, aeons of genetic mutation, thousands of generations laying the groundwork of language and culture necessary to form complex thoughts and finally, our current society's conditioning, education, social influences and parental guidance. All elements combine to generate electrochemical fireworks inside our neurons to eventually create these instances of experience.

All of it is interconnected. There are no limits or borders in what is a part of our existence. Nothing is external. Even from a basic neurological perspective, everything takes place within our consciousness.

It comes as no surprise then that the most intellectually and emotionally satisfying programming that our brain is capable of running is fundamentally selfless.

The more we dismantle the hologram of our imaginary self, the more easily we accept our evolutionary drive to care for others and the more capable we are of understanding the sinister foundation of our individualist conditioning.

Our history is full of examples where mainstream narratives successfully hypnotize us into complacency and inaction as they attempt to blind or distract us from the damage we are doing. Some of the most iconic examples, the holocaust and slavery, took place within the past few generations.

Our inner selfish monster that we create as a coping mechanism for our fears and uncertainties does not reflect what we really are. Even though its influence runs deep, since we begin the process of identifying and labeling ourselves very early on in life.

As children, we don't know any better and we often end up blaming ourselves for things that were either beyond our control or actions that we did not yet understand the consequences of. We gradually and subconsciously create flawed beliefs that inhibit us. But beneath all of this remains what analytical psychology calls the inner child. This is why many forms of therapy and meditation focus on seeing our thoughts and emotions, even our mind, as separate from us. These practices have been well documented to have profound effects on us.