Sleuthing the Mind’s Labyrinth
Creatively, the twentieth century dazzled in its abundance of inventions, societal innovations, artistic presentations, and even wars. One may say that the engagement with nature, mass, and matter is only hampered by a dreary imagination. Who takes credit? Why, our minds, of course.
Enter the Follies
Ah, the mind. Such a phenomenon! We use it to contact life and fulfill all our ambitions. But it exerts foxy moods, too. As much as the mind can astonish, it can show contrary and petulant sides as well. There are moments when it foists upon us the idea that it is a dire necessity to be admired by significant others. When that recognition does not arrive, one feels quite upset. Again, who made me upset? Could it have been my mind?
Of course not! My mind would not make me feel that way, we insist. When things don’t run the way of expectations, distress is obviously caused by a nemesis. From weather conditions to political declarations, from loud neighbors next door to my misbehaving kids and colleagues, the idea that my distress comes from my preferred view of these unfortunate circumstances remains unacceptable. My sense of entitlement would be compromised.
Throughout the day, my mind loves to reminisce, in a leisurely way, about the fact that the world doesn’t always treat me right. My work environment, home life, rush hour traffic, all need to acknowledge my importance and everything will be all right. Taking my own counsel and acting independently of external reassurance seems too risky. It would be better if an authoritative figure would mandate my favorite solution. Then things would obviously improve.
We have the striving ideal that one should be admirably intelligent, enviably competent, always achieving, with nary a hair out of place, offering minimal apologies for incidental mistakes. Or the compelling idea that if some external item suits me, then the more the better. Try that with two espresso lattes and find out how your body responds!
The comforting notion, “If I strive for eminent domain over the situation, my worries dwindle” is also important. Play the stock market on that tip and watch what happens. It is quite unfair that headaches emerge when the mind insists that our efforts and every other task won’t tolerate imperfection.
Then there is the admonition that if I just act professionally and become emotionally detached—as some high-minded friends recommend—then divine order will take its course. Since my chosen deity watches over me, could I just not sit, in the kitchen for example, and await the divine order to cook the meal? My suspicion is that anticipation becomes the supper. Yet if you want to sit on the sidelines, be above it all and distant yourself from the bothersome world, less distraction becomes your solace. It’s been said that when remaining utterly above it all, aging prospers. Besides, where’s the fun?
But best of all, there’s that underlying, irresistible concept that harbors victimhood. Could fate deal unfair blows? “How can I lose,” says Charley Brown, “when I am so sincere?” Hence, woe betide me is only natural, almost commendable. While I nurse my mournfulness, the last remedy for one to undertake is brisk exercise. Horrors! A sorrowful disposition always flees a metabolic upgrade. No time to lighten up. Here are a few instances of how we entrance ourselves by staring at the homemade mirror of our discontent.
The Theater of Mind
With sufficient reflection, it becomes obvious that the rational mind with help from its fertile imagination possesses not only colossal power to generate modern cultures but an almost irrepressible facility to take refuge in its own melodramas. Oh, how we relish the empathy of others replaying our home-grown tales of calamity. These scenarios may enthrall us, but, very much like fast food, convenience supplants substance.
In rehearsing these internal scenes, it may not be self-evident that the one who gets star billing is also the stage manager, script writer, and most of the time, the sole member of the audience. As the poignant drama unfolds, forget at your peril who tacitly ranks as designer and uncontested stage manager.
The puzzler again knocks; how much more is my mind? To put aside for the moment our imperative self-interest and widen our purview, one might find instances of humanely intelligent, creative individuals whose brio of noblesse oblige touches the lives of others.
Among the numerous pacesetters in this art of thriving, Rabindranath Tagore, Ramana Maharshi, Swami Rama, or even Helen Keller, Norman Cousins, and Howard Zinn come to mind, each provided a universal yet versatile assessment on approaching life with neither encouragement nor sympathy ever to withdraw. Mandatory for them before acting is first to understand and discern. They were not unfamiliar with the exasperating fact that things break down. Who isn’t?
Some dreams are renewable, some aren’t. So what? Disappointments as well as astonishments go along with any territory. Could it be that learning how to read and treat life right beckons more enduring surprises than supposed? As Goethe put it: “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”
When our lifestyle puts us in hope’s way, is there not a gradual forfeiting of anxiety about our daily living, or a diminishment of any future fears? Encouraged, we inspect life for symptoms of growth. Have some days ever provoked you to default the external assurances coveted for security? If you cherish religious pretensions, a day may come when they will seem less imperative and with no need for recriminations.
The Show Must Go On
Perhaps a pertinent illustration from the mythic past might illuminate our quest. Along with Sigmund Freud’s pithy remark that the clans of a certain island people are beyond psychoanalysis, there is an ancient legend that Sakyamuni, the Buddha no less, once immigrated to that same Green Isle to crusade with his message. One day it so happened that a whistling stroller, Finbarr, a leprechaun, sauntered along the shores of Glenda Loch and spied the sallow- looking monk perched under an oak tree. Suddenly the cross-legged contemplator opened his eyes wide and vigorously announced: “All life is suffering.”
Noting that dour utterance, a wry smile flashed across Finbarr’s face, and he sashayed up to the placid sitter, got his undivided attention, and grinningly retorted: “Aye, laddie, such a lugubrious outburst might benefit the Brits, but methinks you’ve misplaced your wits and forgotten that this glorious life is evermore the art of possibilities.” Rumor has it that the saffron monk soon departed from the old Irish sod, impatiently mumbling something about its incorrigible inhabitants.
Who’s to say that we are not born as irrepressible strollers, impetuous learners of the warps, woofs, and crannies of existence? May it be emphatically stated that we are really not human entities searching for religious experiences but spiritual beings journeying through the labyrinth of human experiences. Our sensual embodiment is a toast to the creativity of the cosmos.
Contending with life from an unintimidating perspective casts a flexible ambience upon those days that don’t always win the gold. Utterly unpredictable dire events as well as episodes of heightened futility that embarrass our competency when backfires seem our inheritance are no one’s devious faults but just the unheralded crisscrossing of events. When the smoke clears, look who’s still standing.
Owning a Dual Citizenship
Peer back for a moment. From the mists of the past came those pioneer sages of the Himalayas who pondered a term that could summarize their unconditional embrace of existence in all its perplexity and wonder. What better way to call the art of union with life than “yoga,” that most natural of philosophies. Their point was that we are joined at the hip to experience the unexpurgated version of corporeal as well as unbounded reality. Yes, there’s the rub for doubters: you’ve got to probe, engage, and stake out your nature. It’s willy nilly, with no free rides. You must work the claim yourself, or it stays wistfully an afterthought.
Those mountain adventurers in human anthropology, like the famed masters of the West, also bequeathed maintenance manuals that insinuate self-study. Along with the Upanishads and Homeric myths that stir our imagination in their intimation of immortality, the quest for the elusive Grail positions us finally at the doorstep to Sri Vidya, that startling expose on the ultimate surprise. Meeting life head on, we eventually—but never at the cost of disparaging the mundane plane—encounter imperishable omniscience.
By now we know that the human cultivated mind—a clever fellow, a chameleon of moods, an alchemist of change, a perpetrator of self-delusions, a discerner of data, a pursuer of revelations—swaggers before the future like an astronaut ready for lift off. Bolstered with the challenging inspiration of the sages and masters, together with a little experience of our own, the mind has stumbled upon clues that foretell a radical perspective. Strangely, it is not a matter of where rational endeavors lead next, for the ancient hints beckon one to break through the code of reason.
Our resistance is formidable. Like Narcissus we have fallen deeply in love with our precious ideas. They ensure our self-identity. After all, am I not an amazing product of brilliant concepts and talents which indisputably have obtained my credentials and awards, my enviable job, my inimitable outlook on life itself? Without them, I have no terrain of name and fame. Yet I pondered: Could the essence of my identity be more than the fascinating corridors of rational productivity? Who would not wince to suppose that the immaterial faculty of reason be but a mode of a richer consciousness? What would that do to my public status?
These strange musings have me standing at the precipice of my acquired talents, only I don’t follow ambition’s way to add more. Instead, I am prompted toward the unexpected: I pause from rehearsing the ideas that compose my identity and curiously discover that I can take leave of them and divert attention elsewhere. Like furniture in my home, I know that my favorite books are there, but I don’t need to constantly prove it by standing in front of them.
The pressing question then is, without paying attention to my ideas that forge my self-identity, where does that leave me? Albeit I release from my propensity to view myself exclusively as the conceiver of ideas. It’s starting to emerge that my sense of self-awareness, heretofore connected to my precious notions and consequent lifestyle, is not necessarily bound to that ensemble. If I ally only to my ideas, as soon as I dismiss one or more, some part of me might cease to exist! Yet past experience does not bear this out, thank goodness.
The Quantum Leap Entices
Throughout my thinking, I assume my identity could only be the resumé of my cherished ideas; no more, no less. It makes sense then, as I seriously constrict the focus of my awareness to certain ideas, that I take on the unified consequences of that choice in my whole person—body, emotions, and mind. Nonetheless, as long as I want to study reality, express ideas, and perform actions, I am obliged to enjoin the power of intelligence to the objects of this world. Without the taste of union, there is no knowledge.
At this point, students of spirituality often misunderstand the dynamics of the issue. The normal rational attachment to one’s ideas regarding the world gets mistaken for a subtler problem. Confusion looms not from the necessary involvement with ideas and things but from my fetish with the content.
I presume, for example, the content is the primary framework of my self-identity. Do I hear an echo of Narcissus? I narrowly emboss these ideas with a self-importance of my own making and thus avidly isolate my sense of self-preservation within the confines of their content. This array of ideas is now the unquestionable norm of my life, confirming the lifestyle that befits it. Ah, the traps we weave! Maya is calling. “You did it again, mind, all by yourself.”
It seems so simple. Like sunlight dawning, the presence of awareness is like a diaphanous gaze that illumines my interactions with living and, of course, the chosen content of my mind. Nothing can affect me personally without awareness. Unobtrusively, it forms the context that enables me to appreciate sensual and intellectual experiences. From its uninhibited amplitude, I can choose to create, ponder, enhance, or reject any idea, any aspect of my past experience, and engage or decline any activity that’s within my interest. The scope of awareness, then, is vastly broader than its current or retained objects of attention and refreshingly wider than the most spacious skies imagination can conceive.
Yet rationality, bless it for all its glittering Nobel prizes, still cannot deliver the full revelation of human nature but emphatically warms one up for the penultimate surprise. Following reason’s power to the brink of insight enables us to grasp that, unbelievably, awareness is not content. With that one stroke, new liberty lands in our laps. The trap is only sprung when we, enthusiastically or derogatorily, reduce our sense of identity to a mere array of selected ideas and make self-awareness equal to that content. The fetish is in. Mr. Hubris is right at home.
Oh, conscious spirit, you are born an intrepid traveler to stay the journey of life with undaunted wits and self-respect. Falter though you may, anything else is a cul-de-sac. Heads up, Grasshopper! When you keep your content in context, then you are in alignment with your omnipotent soul.