Automatic English For The People

The Art of Power Vocabulary Text

Hello, this is AJ. Welcome to the vocabulary lesson for "The Art of Power." Let's get

started right away, here we go.

Our first word is subconscious. We've talked about this word already several times, so

I'll review it quickly. Subconscious means the deep part of your mind. It's the deep

emotions, the deep thoughts. They're not at the top of your mind, you're not thinking

about them. You don't realize that they are there, they're deep down.

And then, of course, the other kind of mind or consciousness is your conscious mind.

Your conscious mind is what you are thinking about right now. You know what you're

thinking about. You can kind of see it or hear it in your brain. But the subconscious is

deeper. You don't see it or hear it immediately, it's not obvious. So that's

subconscious.

Our next word is dormant, dormant. So Thich Nhat Hanh said that often these seeds

of anger or the seeds of violence or the seeds of sadness and depression, often they

are dormant. Dormant means sleeping. Quite simply it means sleeping, so, again,

dormant. If the seeds are dormant it means they're sleeping. They're not growing,

they're not active. They're not awake they are sleeping, so dormant means sleeping.

You hear this word with volcanoes sometimes. They'll say it's a dormant volcano.

Volcano is a big mountain, right? It explodes sometimes. Well if it's a dormant

volcano it's a sleeping volcano. It's not exploding, there's nothing happening, it's

asleep. Okay, so dormant, again, dormant means sleeping or asleep.

Our next word is formation, formation. He says that when these negative emotions,

these negative seeds are fed or watered, when you give them energy they become

mental formations. So a formation is just a thing, an organized thing. So, in other

words, they become real things. They become alive, they become awake, they

become real things.

So before you had this seed of anger, but you weren't angry. It's down there, it's

asleep, nothing is happening. But then maybe you watched the news or you're around

a lot of angry people and then suddenly that seed starts growing. And now anger

becomes real, it becomes a mental formation, it becomes a real idea. It becomes a

real feeling in your brain, in your mind. So, again, formation is something that is real

and organized, something that exists in reality.