thoughts, feelings, images, past present, future - everything is in our mind
The whole body is aware and thinks Not only the brain. Other nerve centres like the solar plexus and the gut plexus think and remember. Thinking even extends beyond the body into the paper and machines where words and other symbols are stored and manipulated outside the body. It extends into hearts and minds in the community where thoughts and feelings are shared and stored in the common culture.
For some the mind creates the body. For others the mind is one of the body's activities. Here, for convenience, body and mind are taken to be processes rather than things and not really separate. After all thoughts and sensations are biological activities.
Other animals, trees and even rocks are also complex processes that maintain their integrity and interact with their environment in ways that influence their future. In this sense they could be described as having mind and perhaps even intelligence even though they might not drive cars or speak English.
memory
Memory is unstable. Memories continuously reorganise themselves and fade. Understanding is continually shifting. The biochemistry of memory is easily disrupted by disease, drugs, diet, stress, social pressures, ageing and death.
What stable memory we have is conservative. It channels thoughts along well trodden paths. We see and hear what we already have some ideas about and the rest is vague. Someone who has not seen photographs before may not recognise what one represents without practice. Unfamiliar concepts are easily dismissed or overlooked while familiar ones make sense.
Intelligence
The human mind evolved in an intelligent natural environment to monitor a complex landscape of images, smells and sounds and to host languages and culture. It shrivels in monotonous urban rectangles, routines, the deathly E flat hum of motors and the perfumes of degrading asphalt, plastics and burnt car fuel.
A high IQ can be an intellectual disability in this kind of society organised around specialisation and conformity.
understanding
Intellectual insight by itself is not enlightenment. The brain can verbalise insights with its languages and mathematics but more is needed to understand the world and adapt to it. The rest of the mind and body has to come to understand as well. And want to act.
useless activity
It is hard to navigate life or learn a skill when only a small part of the mind is free to engage in the task at hand and the rest is preoccupied.
Becoming aware of thoughts and feelings can be enough to free the mind of unresolved problems and unnecessary activity.
The exercises on the mind, body and stress pages help calm the distracting merry-go-round of preoccupations and access the intelligence of all the mind including the intelligence of the body and emotions.