A simple response to complex problems

[GliderGuider]

Climate change, peak oil, droughts and floods, food and water shortages, financial instability, political paralysis – decline and maybe even collapse loom on every front of the human experience. It's pretty nerve-wracking stuff.

Everyone who wakes up to what some of us affectionately call "the clusterfuck" instinctively looks for answers. What is really going on, why is this happening, who or what is behind it all? The more clearly we come to understand the situation, the more inevitable and irreversible it appears. We seem to be headed for major changes in the way our world works.

On reflection, one thing seems clear. Because we manipulate the world with our ideas, the state of our world is a direct result of our ideas, a perfect reflection of the way our minds work.

The implication is that we cannot "change the world" without first changing the way our minds work. This is simply a restatement of Mahatma Gandhi's advice, "Become the change you wish to see in the world."

So how might we begin to change the way our minds work? Here's one suggestion.

For a few moments stop doing anything. Sit down, close your eyes, slow your breathing, and relax as deeply as you can.

Now imagine that your attention is a flashlight beam. Normally it's focused outward, scanning and illuminating the world around you. For a little while turn the flashlight of your awareness around. Point it at yourself instead of the world. Instead of looking out there, look within.

Allow your mind to do whatever it wants to (you can't stop it anyway, no matter what some gurus might say), but pay attention to it. While paying attention to your inner state ask yourself this simple question:

"Who am I?"

Notice whatever ideas arise in response to that simple, basic question. As they come up, ask each one, "Am I really that?" You may be surprised by what you discover.

As you do this a few times you may notice your inner landscape becoming cleaner - less cluttered, less chaotic. You are learning to pick up your inner rubbish.

Let’s all begin picking up our inner rubbish. It won’t directly stop climate change, ecological decline, the crumbling financial situation or any of the other changes that are happening in the world around us, but of course nothing can ever really “stop” change. After all, change is built into the program of life, the universe and everything.

Changing the way your mind works by using this simple technique may not change "the" world, but it just might change "your" world. And that just might be enough.

[pscot]

1. That which is observed changes

It's hard to sustain.

[GliderGuider]

2. Very true. That goes as much for our inner state as for subatomic particles.

An interesting question is, when I observe myself, who is the observer? Who is the subject, and who the object?

When you say "It is hard to sustain," what do you mean by "it"? The observation, the observer, the changed behaviour - or something else?

Sustaining the observation is mostly a matter of desire, earnestness and discipline.
Sustaining the Observer - especially beyond the moment of disciplined observation - requires something else. Self-realization, perhaps.
I don't worry too much about sustaining behaviour change - that seems to happen naturally if one observes closely, and often enough.

[pscot]

3. The inner attention is hard to sustain

For one thing it has to be effortless. And then there's the question of what are you "looking" at, really. As for who's looking, it seems to be the snake brain, and you have to be wary of it. It's the Gorgon. If you let it, It can turn you into a scientologist.

[GliderGuider]

4. I don't want to get too off topic, but

I know it's possible because I've done it. And I'm satisfied that I know who's looking - it's not the reptilian portion of my brain. It takes practice, though, and I worked on getting to that point for about 5 years before it happened. The fact that it happened is one of the reasons I've pretty well lost interest in the environmental bunfights on here in last couple of months

Do you know anything about Advaita? Discovering that was the key for me.

[pscot]

5. It's easy to overthink this stuff

I've done that a lot. I've also read a lot, from Plato and Seneca to Gurdieff and D.T. Suzuki. Nowdays I read mainly crime novels and history and don't worry much about my inner state. I had a near death experience a few years back, and it changed me. I haven't stopped laughing since.

[GliderGuider]

7. Yeah, I hear experiences like that can change you that way. (edited)

Last edited Tue Aug 21, 2012, 07:48 AM - Edit history (1)

I'm happy for you.

I'm content to have stopped obsessing over a bunch of things that I couldn't do anything about. And laughing a lot more these days too.

On edit: Regarding over-thinking

The beauty of Advaita is that it's so accessible to mind-bound, thinking-obsessed Westerners. There's no chanting, no worship, no belief of any sort required. In a sense it's utterly scientific - you can simply do the experiment and see what results you get. If there are none, discard and move on. That's why I was finally able to settle there after years of dipping into other streams.

The other interesting thing is that this practice has actually calmed my life-long tendency to overthink things. My web articles contain a clear record of my over-analytical tendencies. Looking back on that is one of the sources of my laughter these days.

[pscot]

9. Compunding duality

It's what we do.

[RobertEarl]

6. If you are totally self-centered, fine

Just remember that there are those of us who still reflect upon the impacts to other lives our civilization's changes are forcing upon a million year old natural world. All in a blink of geologic time.

Some are able to withdraw into their own little world all the while exclaiming nah-nah-nah, i got mine, too bad for you.

It is a trap that too many of our kind have fallen into with the direct consequence that we have allowed this veritable garden of Eden to go to shit.

Go ahead and change your world by controlling your mind, i highly recommend it. Just don't sell short what the real changes are actually doing to other minds and lives and beings.

[GliderGuider]

8. It's a big world, with lots of room for different approaches.

I'm not saying, "Don't try to save the world, instead retreat to a mountain top and meditate for the rest of your life." Even in the Buddhist parable of the Ten Bulls the final poem deals with the ex-seeker returning to the marketplace and the movement of daily life.

It's entirely possible for a policy analyst, scientist or engineer to use inner work in addition to their professional skills. The two are by no means mutually exclusive. I'd be willing to bet that cleaning up their inner landscape might make such people even more effective.

[pscot]

10. Greed, egotism and unexamined pursuit of self-interest

have led us to our current predicament. They are antithetical to the kind of inner change GG is talking about. Our problems were not created by Buddist monks.