The Ego-dominated mind plays its games in daily life, and creates the characters and scenarios necessary for the games. The content of such a scenario is determined by the individual’s environment and upbringing, that is, the culture in which we grow up. As a result, entirely different scenarios are created in the various cultures of our Earth.

At the beginning of our journey, we identify with these scenarios, which provide us with the sense of a solid identity, and the patterns of thoughts fixed in the scenarios are manifested in various mind games during our daily life. In the course of our journey leading to Consciousness, however, our objective becomes not creating a positive character, and thus a pleasant scenario, but finding the Existence behind every scenario. We realize that we do not need to become anything, because we are already in possession of the characteristics that we have been looking for so far, pursuing an image projected into the future. All we need to do is shift our focus of alert and conscious attention from the edge (Ego) to our center (witnessing Presence).

The first gift of conscious Alertness is when you discover that, instead of you, the it is largely the deep-programs of your conditioned Mind that are living your life. The society and culture in which you have grown up has programmed those fixed patterns of the mind into you, and your identity, who you are and what your job is in this world, are all based upon those conditioned patterns.

What do we need to know about these fixed, conditioned mental patterns?

1. The fixed patterns of your mind are individual, since they reflect the expectations of the particular environment in which you have been brought up. The expectations usually influence you unconsciously, almost like automatic deep programs of the mind.