The Hidden Life of Minds

I read a book awhile back called The Hidden Life of Dogs. The author followed her dog around the neighborhood for some months as he went about his doggie business, sniffing, marking, and impregnating. Nowadays you can buy a little digital camera that you can put on your dog’s or cat’s collar and sit in the comfort of your living room watching Fido and Fluffy do what they do. The idea is that by watching them, we can gain some insight into their lives. We can understand them better.

We can do the same with our minds. My mind seems to be busy all the time, but I spend little time really paying attention to what it’s up to. So I followed it around for awhile – my version of reality TV. This is what I observed.

Mostly, I couldn’t keep up. In a very short period of time, I caught my mind rehearsing, reliving, planning, judging, complaining, criticizing, worrying, regretting, thinking, anticipating, wishing, hoping, missing, enjoying, caring. And feeling anxious, content, happy, tired, angry, sad, excited, lonely, resentful, loving.

After this brief exercise, I came to some conclusions. My mind wastes a lot of time and energy. It does not know how to rest. Harnessing it to focus is understandably challenging. It is like a wild horse. In fact, it is very much like a young horse I once trained. Instead of training the filly to accept a halter and lead when she was very small, we waited until she was an adolescent and very strong, and not at all keen to being directed by anyone else.

I have made reference before to training our minds like we train a puppy – with gentle repetition and time for play and rest. I wonder what the Dalai Lama’s mind is like. His mind has been trained since he was a toddler. He meditates for hours at a time. What must it be like to have a mind as powerfully focus-able as that? See, there I go again, wandering off.

My mind is long past the puppy stage, and long past the adolescent horse stage, but I am nevertheless motivated to make some effort to train it. In fact, I have been working on this for awhile now, and I’m convinced that old dogs can learn new tricks!

If you are so inclined, attach a little video camera to your mind, sit back, and see where it goes when it doesn’t know you’re watching. Remember not to judge – be a neutral observer. You might be surprised. We did this exercise in my monthly discussion group last week, and we were all surprised by how different our minds were. It was very clear, for example, that an artist’s mind goes to different places than a lawyer’s mind. We had lots of fun, so if you have a chance, try this with some other people.

In the next posts, we’ll talk more about the training part. For now, just get to know your mind a little better. Relax and make friends.