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Understanding the Nature of the Mental Environment

Anything that goes on or that happens on the inside of you would constitute your mental environment; all your experiences and memories of those experiences, all your beliefs, all the emotional energy attached to those beliefs, all your feelings, needs, wants, expectations, and goals, and all your thoughts, regardless of whether or not you have expressed these thoughts into the environment, make up your mental landscape.

Positively Charged Emotions: Love, happiness, joy, confidence, peace, acceptance
Negatively Charged Emotions: Fear, anger, hatred, jealousy, disappointment, confusion, impatience, stress, anxiety, betrayal
Illusions: Denials, rationalizations, intellectualizations, distortions
Beliefs
Intents: Goals, aspirations
Expectations: Wants, desires, demands Needs Dreams: Sleeping dreams, daydreams
Thoughts Attractions Memories Creativity Intuition

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE MENTAL (INNER) ENVIRONMENT?  

Beliefs are formed and meanings get attached. The mental environment is where our experiences of the outside world form into a complex belief structure about the nature of the physical environment and our relationship with it.

There are two things that I want you to note about this definition. First, it is limited, because it doesn't take into account mental activities that generate from within, exclusive of outside sensory information. This is something I will expand on later. Second, I am not including the brain as part of the mental environment, even though the activity of the mental environment takes place inside of the brain. (Why I am not including it will become clear in a moment.)

One of the first characteristics you may notice about the mental components listed is that they are all intangible. You can't see, hear, touch, taste, or smell them, at least not as they exist in the mental environment. For example, no surgeon operating on living brain tissue has ever encountered his patient's beliefs, thoughts, dreams, or memories, even though he knew they were in there somewhere. Biochemists have discovered DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) while working at the molecular level of tissue make-up and as of yet have not encountered one of the mental components listed earlier. Yet we know they exist because we can experience the results of someone's beliefs or thoughts as they are expressed outwardly in the physical environment through their behavior.   

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