# To control consciousness is to override biological and social instruction
Those who can control their consciousness can make themselves happy or sad regardless of what’s happening to their “external” world. By changing the content of their consciousness, they can form disaster into opportunity.
Understanding that Consciousness is intentionally ordered information is the key to control consciousness. Most of us have our intents coming either from biological instruction or social instruction. We form goals based on these instructions, such as living a long and healthy life or to get a job. As our intents are coming from a hierarchy goals, we could actually have a higher level goal up in the hierarchy that overrides those biological instruction or social instruction.
Martyrs, for example, voluntarily suffers death, an intent that are quite the opposite of the norms to live a long and healthy life. This intention is formed as they have their religious beliefs as their higher level goal.
# References
Mihaly, Flow (p. 24).
A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening “outside,” just by changing the contents of consciousness. […] To develop this trait, one must find ways to order consciousness so as to be in control of feelings and thoughts.
Mihaly, Flow (pp. 27 - 28).
Sometimes, as in the case of political protesters who wish to starve themselves to death, the intention of making an ideological statement might override genetic instructions, resulting in voluntary death.
But there are enough exceptions in every culture to show that goals are quire flexible. Individuals who depart from the norms - heroes, saints, artists, and poets, as well as madmen and criminals - look for different things in life then most others do. The existence of people like these shows that consciousness can be ordered in term of different goals and intentions. Each of us has this freedom to control our subjective reality.
# Backlinks
- Controlling consciousness is learnable
- Just because To control consciousness is to override biological and social instruction is not something that we could tangibly see, it doesn’t mean that they’re not trainable (Similar to relative pitch ear training). Many discipline or culture have proven how controlling consciousness can be learnt. Yoga is a good example of a discipline that involves or requires the mastery of consciousness. The fact that yogi are able to do them after years of practice is no different to how a software developer could create softwares after years of practice.
- The key to flow is to control consciousness
- Fortunately, we don’t really have to waste our psychic energy to such disorder, as long as we can control our consciousness. To control consciousness is to override biological and social instruction, and To control consciousness is to be able to focus attention at will. Controlling consciousness is learnable.