You Are Not Your Mind
Just posted to Mudita Forum:
My thanks to Mark for his spirited kick-off essay introducing Chapter 1 in our discussion of The Power of Now.
In some ways, this chapter is a tour-de-force of challenging ideas. Here is my personalized summary of some of the key points from the chapter:
* Enlightenment is not a superhuman accomplishment, but rather a natural state of “felt connectedness with Being.”
* The experience of Being provides the basis of the spiritual life; however, Being is not something supernatural, but rather the supremely natural: existence itself, prior to being differentiated, by the mind, into existents.
* Being can be felt directly, as the experience of your own inner body. As a part of what exists, we are each part of Being, and thus the experience of Being is available to us at all times, if we only pay attention to it.
* However, we have a neurotic tendency instead to identify with our minds. This causes a constant preoccupation with past and future, as well as much unhappiness. As the mind strives to protect its fabricated sense-of-self - the ego - we are subjected to a low level of chronic anxiety and fear. Hence, the preoccupation with the dream-like past and future, rather than with the here-and-now.
* Descartes’s statement that “I think, therefore I am,” is thus an expression of the most basic error: to equate thinking with being, and identity with thinking.
* This tendency to identify with the mind is also the primary obstacle to experiencing Being, and thus enlightenment. Only by letting go of the ‘egoic mind’ can we find peace and connectedness with Being, with what is available to be experienced in this moment, with what actually is.
* The road to enlightenment lies in deliberately cultivating the capacity for present-moment awareness, and the direct experience of what is, in this moment, true and real.
* When we need to use our mind, our capacity for thought, it will still be there. But our mind will be clearer, more focused, more penetrating. We won’t be as clouded by resistance, tension, and emotion.
Above, I mention that these ideas are challenging. They can be particularly so for admirers of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, for several reasons:
...It challenges us to open to a new kind of spirituality, which can feel alien to self-identified atheists.
...It challenges us to recognize the destructive role of the ego, challenging the value of egoism per se. (Or does it?)
...It further challenges us to dis-identify with the mind - with our capacity for abstract thought - which seems like a yet more fundamental challenge to the very heart of Ayn Rand’s philosophy: the unalloyed reliance on reason.
Can these differences ever be reconciled? If so, how?
I certainly believe they can be reconciled, and to great benefit - but only after very careful consideration. I look forward to reading others’ thoughts.
Originally published at Mudita Journal. Please leave any comments there.