Two parts of the mind or what is the difference between analysis and awareness?

— A certain event occurred. After a while I became aware of what really happened, but yesterday I asked myself: was it awareness or analysis?

— This is a very important question. We can easily confuse awareness with analysis. That would get us into a trap. What is the difference between awareness and analysis?

On the level of the mind our work is consist of a constant discernment. If you can discern, you understand. In such case, you can do this work on your own. If you do not discern, you don’t understand, and you cannot do this work on your own. One can only do what one understands.

Let’s return to your question. A certain event occurred. You return to it again and again.

 — Analysis, the way I see it, is a work of the mind. The mind takes an event, cuts it to pieces, and fits them on its shelves according to its beliefs. Awareness uses the same technique but without judgment or criticism. That’s how I understand it.

— We need an example. What did you try to analyze?

 — Something was stolen from me. I tried to analyze why it was stolen from me?

— I had an argument with someone. Later on, I analyze it. I should not have said it. I should have said it differently. I should have behaved differently.

— You got it! The essence of the analysis is that something should have happened one way, but it happened differently. You have a certain expectation. It is not matched. There is a discrepancy there.

I brought flowers to a woman I love. I expected to get a smile and a kiss, but she threw those flowers at me and slapped me. What went wrong? What could I have done differently? Analysis is the internal dialogue between two different parts of the mind.

You had an assumption that you are the “real” man. Based on this assumption, when you present your woman with flowers, she should hug and kiss you. But something totally different happens. A different image pops us, an image of the “weak” man. You consider yourself to be the “real” man, but you are being slapped. You suffer from cognitive dissonance. Something just went wrong. Why did it happen? One side of you says, “This is some kind of a mistake. This should not have happened.”

In reality, you are as “real and good” man as you are a “weak and bad” man. Behind these two parts of yours are two directors of one show that is called LIFE. Each part has to manifest itself. But, from the point of view of one part, the creation of the opposite part is unnecessary, horrible, and bad. The first part analyzes the situation from its point of view, “Why did not it happen the way I planned?”

The second part did what it was planning to do.

You are dealing with the main paradox of the mind here. There are two opposite directors in the mind. These directors work on one playground and create one show. The movie is being shot and it is being shot by two different directors. One director is black or invisible, while another is white or visible.

Each of them tries to shoot his own show. Suddenly the white director says, “I don’t like these black parts. Let me cut them out.” The black director says, “No, those are the good parts. We need to cut white parts out.”

This is your memory talking. What do you see when you look back at the scenario of your life? You see fragments. There is no wholeness there. That’s what the mind does. It selects what is consistent with the program of the white director, i.e. only half of the show. Another part gets cut out. That’s what I mean when I say that a human being is “crazy.” A man does not see the whole movie as his own creation. He sees only the fragments of his show. He cannot tie them together because of the so called “lapses of memory.”