When we learn how to drive, we are fully aware and conscious of everything we hear and observe. The knowledge is new and we are totally focused, operating from our conscious mind. However, once we become good at driving, we find ourselves doing multiple things while driving – sometimes attending to the phone, changing the music, and even allowing our mind to drift. We don’t realise it, but when we are familiar with something, we risk operating from our mechanical mind.

It is very easy to slip into our mechanical mind, and if we reflect on it, most of our self-created challenges have come when we were operating in that state. How often have we left our keys and phone somewhere and are unable to find them? Or put away important papers which we are unable to retrieve. Actions done mechanically, though done by us don’t register with us, causing problems.

Also, in mechanical mode we stop learning. We may be hearing, but are not truly listening and internalising. Not only do we stop growing, we run into relationship issues because we were not paying attention and don’t recall important things said.

Sometimes when we are with others, we don’t give them our full attention, listening to them mechanically while attending to our phones and other things. We don’t realise it, but our mechanical mind can make us insensitive.

Not all similar situations need the same response. Just because we have responded in a particular way in the past does not mean we should mechanically give decisions without being conscious of the needs of the new situation. Our mechanical mind blocks the flow of our creativity and innovation.

The world around us is changing, and we can only change when we are conscious of things and our need to adapt. Our mechanical mind prevents our growth and development.

Our world of emotions gets triggered automatically when we face certain situations as we have in the past, and if we are not conscious of our thoughts and actions, we will mechanically react, only to later regret our action.

True living is conscious living, not only when attending to big and so-called important things, but making each moment big and important. The essence of life is in its complete experience, with full awareness of anything and everything we do.

Each moment has the possibility of changing our life. But we can only do that when we live with full awareness through our conscious mind. There should be nothing mechanical about it.

(Picture-Canadian Rockies)