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| 24 Feb 2007 12:48:42 pm |
 The Master Mind |
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The Master Mind
I didn’t know I had a mind to change
I simply didn’t think about it.
Now I have and have been
Thinking about it.
You see, I have a sense that I have a mind
And what I know is, my mind has been having me.
That’s right. The thing has been and is doing me.
Ok, so what have I done about it? Well, here is what I’ve done and do every day…when I remember to do my mind before it does me. First I remember that thoughts come one at a time and I can hear each of them as they come. Most of the time I’m not aware that the thoughts are coming, I just am them. What a funny way to describe how it happens! Its hard just trying to express the process of thoughts coming and my acting them out!
It seems to me that if I can listen to the thoughts, or my thoughts is another way of saying it. But truly, are they my thoughts or just the thoughts? Claiming ownership of the thoughts creates the experience of “I am my thoughts”, but that’s not true, the thoughts just come out of somewhere…I don’t know where they come from, just that I hear them and often obey them, am them. I often defend the thoughts that I have heard in my head. Why do I do that? Again, that’s one of the problems of calling them “my thoughts.”
I wrote this poem…OK, I didn’t write it, I just heard it in my head and wrote it down. However, the poem is very interesting and tells part of the tale of my life experience here hanging out with “my mind.” The poem goes like this: What if you knew you were danced on strings like a marirrionette? If you knew, what would you do? And the next time those strings dance you, think you, laugh you, cry you, worry you…If you could but see the strings just once in a while, what would you do? And really, what could you do?”
Having a mind, is like that, I don’t actually think about what I’m going to say or do, it just happens…What do you mean, it just happens…what about planning and doing things in life? Well, all those things just happen as they pour through my mind and I just follow along almost all the time. I never have an original thought that I thought about, the thoughts just come out of nowhere!
Come on, tell the truth, your thoughts just come to you, you don’t actually think about the thoughts your about to have…you’ve never thought of it before!! It’s all brand new. You have never thought about what you are going to think about. Each of us is just here listening to thoughts that pour through us and tell us what to do and not do. We are all pawns..all just puppets to the drives and wishes that come to us…there is no free will. We are just being lived …we are puppets on the thought strings that live us.
Can I change it? I don’t know, I’ve been trying to influence my behavior and sometimes I feel like I have. But not very often. Ok, so how about the possibility that I get to watch the show of it? That is a very comforting Idea! I have been stuck here in this thing I call my body, with this mind that has been doing me all these years…every experience has just come to me and I got to be present in it and I got to be a part of the mystery of it’s life and process…I got the experience of all that I liked about it and didn’t like about it….but I did get to be here!!
What would it be like to actually be in control of my mind..could I think fast enough to get through it alive? If I actually got to plan every bit of my experience and to chose my thoughts before I thought them…could I actually do that? I don’t know and kind of know I could not do it. It would be too much.
However, what is amazing is that by not thinking about it, I actually think I am in control and that I am thinking these thoughts and actually thinking about thinking about it!! But I knowthat isn’t true. It just can’t be, because the thoughts just come so fast.
Ok, so here I am, its just a few days since I made the last entries here. I’ve been thinking about this project, this trying to figure out where thoughts come from and what my so called “thinking” is all about…I would grateful for any little crumb of understanding.
You know, I’ve been thinking about thinking for many years now and have had several experiences I want to write about here, so you’ll know what I know, so far.
I remember, one day I was driving down a freeway and suddenly had this experience that I was walking back into my own head, really, it was like I had walked into my brain and I found myself in a small room, I can still kind of see it. In the room were these two guys and I suddenly knew what they were up to, I knew these two guys were the ones who were somehow responsible for all the thoughts I was having! It was really weird and very real to me..Then one of them said to me “Get out of here! Your not supposed to be back here!! So, I “left”…..a pretty amazing experience!!
Another time, I was driving along and having all these thoughts, the ususual kind of everyday experience. One of the thoughts that came to me was a shock and a really crummy idea! I reacted to the thought by yelling out “Who said that!!? There was no answer! That was an amazing experience too. What I got out of it was that thoughts just come and there is no one “person” or part of me that owns up to having said it!
Now what does that mean? Does it mean that thoughts just auto generate with no “person” in charge of saying them? Does it mean that thoughts have no cause that we can trace down? What does that mean to me? Are my thoughts just a vocal noise from no where and from no thing?
I do know, that my life seems to work out and has beginnings and ends and I have a general sense of purpose or purposes..My life seems like it’s moving forward in some way. I really think I have some choices if only because I find I’m apparently choosing to do things…and all the while thoughts direct and define the experiences I’m having.
That’s something I can say for sure, I’m having experiences all of the time. I don’t know what I’m going to experience from moment to moment, but for sure, I am having experiences anyway.
Am I directing the course of my experience? No, I’m not, I’m just having the experiences. What does that mean to me? Should I be disturbed that it’s all catch as catch can? I don’t feel frustrated or upset..why is that? You’d think I’b be upset….I am a little….just there in the back of my mind….but, its not a very important fact…Why is that?
I’d like to think that I’m kind of in charge of my life and choices, but I know that’s not true…I can’t fool myself into thinking I know what I’m going to be thinking, feeling and doing in even the next few moments, let alone, plotting out my life and choices. I know that everyone else is in the same boat and we are all acting as if we are choice making entities. We are not, we are being done by thoughts that come from who knows where and all without any causation we can know. Perhaps one of us knows…I wonder.
It came to me once that perhaps there is some parallel dimension where we are being lived by the thoughts of others, somewhere else..Thats not a bad idea, because why would anyone bother with most of the ideas that come to me. My life experiences, for the most part are no big deal. The best experiences are when I find myself being of pure service to someone else, that does feel good and I like that feeling. Why is that? Where does the idea of being of service come from? It’s a good idea, I feel, but where and why does it come to me. I can be very difficult and really awful sometimes..that makes me feel rotten to, but does not stop my behavior. I’m really working on it and making some progress, but why make progress? For whom? I guess for me, because I feel better when I am “better.”
I want to talk about the “mind map” that sprung into my mind several years ago. It came to me that if I only had a model of the mind, I’d have some frame of reference to think about thinking. I really got involved with advocating its existence and even shared it with others. In fact, I gave a talk to a drug half way house and my talk was entited “How to change your mind” I started with the idea that you couldn’t change the mind if you didn’t know what it was, hence, my “model” of the mind.
It was pretty simple, I drew a big circle on the board and then populated the interior of the circle with mind parts. One of the parts I called “the library” and it was full of all the ideas we’d collected, and most of these ideas were all about security and coping with life. Another part of the model was “the pharmacy” and it was full of the neurotransmitters of emotion. Another part of the model was an “I”. The final part of the model was what I called “The Soul, or Spirit within”
What I told the listeners is that most of us rely on the bunk of survival and coping ideas in the library, and that’s why we are so afraid all the time. The fear comes from always reling on the security concerns from the library. What is worse is that each of the ideas in the library is matched to a matching neurotransmitter in the pharmacy that makes the idea “feel real”.
What I proposed to the listeners, is that they begin to rely on the Soul or Spirit within rather than the noisy libraries security and fear ideas. I suggested to the listeners that in order to access the spirit within they must practice becoming silent and then relying on the soft quiet messages and direction that comes from accessing the spirit soul part of the minds model.
I still feel there is much truth and good direction from the idea of “the model of the mind.”
However, I know that the greatest challenge I personally have is to become silent more often…and to rely on the soul spirit part of myself for direction and experience…that’s really the best idea that has come to “My Mind.” So far..
I read an article recently that suggests that there is a second mind in our belly..the article was written by a medical man in the NY Times…and this feels true too…I began framing questions to myself some years ago, when I started asking myself how “I felt” about something, rather than what I thought about it….When I do this, I have to become quiet and really “listen” to my interior, and it does feel visceral, belly directed….and when the “answers” come they do “feel True”…much more than my rapid fire disgorging head thoughts…that feel crappy and judgmental and full of angst…that’s how I recollect the two different approaches are…
To be continued..
Stan Alari
July 6, 2007 |
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Category : How I'm learning to work with my mind..wow, it works!!
| Posted By : Stanley |  Comments[394] |  Trackbacks [0] |
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