The Director in Your Head

Few of us in this day and age haven’t heard the expression, “What you put your mind to is what you become” or “Your thoughts are things so be careful with your thoughts,” or some version of the same. Thus the more motivated of us walk around thinking, “Gotta be careful what I think.”

The challenge with this is that with a little self-inquiry we quickly discover that we don’t actually control our thoughts – that our thoughts, in fact, come and go like fireflies on a summer night. Controlling them is an impossibility.

But perhaps we can refuse to identify with our thoughts. As a thought flares up we can look at it and in short order it will vanish as easily as it came. Like watching traffic on a highway. “There goes a red car, now a bus, now a blue one…” and so on. Unfortunately, what we instead do is grab hold of thoughts and identify with them. Worse, we tend to grab hold of the juiciest, most dramatic thoughts. So not only am I incapable of doing that job, I’m worthless at any job. Not only will I fail in that public presentation, I’ll freeze and my career will be ruined, my wife will leave me and I’ll end up living in a van down by the river.

Years ago I worked for the American Red Cross in its disaster operations center. I was immersed in all-things disaster and eventually I became quite knowledgeable about the climate, hurricanes, tornadoes – you name it – and I shared all of this with others, particuarly all the warnings about imminent global warming, worsening storms, cataclysms, and some other goodies. Eventually I left the job and one day was dining with a friend who asked, “What do you think about that hurricane brewing in the Atlantic?” To which I responded, “What hurricane?” My friend laughed and noted how much things had changed – how for so many years I’d bent the ears of him and others about all the storms, the terrible possibilities that lie in the future, and how much that had changed given I wasn’t even aware a hurricane was forming.

It was an important lesson for me because it demonstrated how the thoughts we identify with truly become our world view on things. Today I listen as those on the political Right fear economic apocalypse, buying up guns and ammo, hording food, preparing for the End Times being fast-tracked by Obama. Similarly, not so many months ago I listened to my friends on the Left speak of the coming of the Messiah in the form of Obama, how he would undo all the wrongs and injustices of the past, and how a new Eden would descened on mankind. Both camps are heavily invested in their worldviews, if only because those are the particular thoughts which they have chosen to appropriate for themselves.

So the rule I try to live by isn’t to be careful what I think, since so often I have zero control over what is popping into my head (and frankly, as any meditator knows, the more we try to subdue or control our thoughts, the more unwieldy they become), instead I am careful not to identify with my thoughts – any of them if I can help it.