That we have to think, consider, view and act is obvious. In many ways, the activities of our psyche are formations, based on our individual make-up, the ambience we are in and the degree of interaction between ourselves and the various elements of our environment. Such mental formations are inevitable and might be seen as occurring not only in the individual consciousness but also within the wider ambience. Mostly, the mental emphasis that arises is a factor of our ambience, whether circumstantial, situational, interpersonal or functional. Notwithstanding the popular preoccupation with notions such as individuality, the systems that we exist in and interface with are completely intertwined.

This means that mental formations arise and ebb contingent upon how one interacts with the numerous elements of the field we are in. And mental emphasis situates within the context of ourselves, our ambience, as well as the dynamicity of the interaction between self and environment. That pain and uncertainty are universal cannot but impinge upon this interaction as also upon mental formations. The chain of arisings is therefore as follows, intertwining systems, the degree of interaction between these systems, mental formations and then mental emphasis.

Why might all this be important? Because, in adopting a certain mental emphasis, we cannot singularly pick ourselves or what might be exclusively pleasant. For balance to come about, mental emphasis ought to incorporate uncertainty and pain as much as what might be seen as certain. If this is done, it becomes possible to configure our existence in a way that allows the harmonious integration of what is easy to bear as well as what is not.