Meditation: A lifetime contract—Chapter 1: Knowing your unconsci

It was a Friday afternoon. After a busy day of work, Ralph left his office, and walked to the garage where he entered his car. He started the engine and turned on his radio so that he could listen to the news program from his favorite station when he drove his car home. It had been his habit to listen to radio on his way home after work. Even though he loved news and music, but that was not the main reason that had kept him doing so for many years. He did this mainly for getting his mind away from what happened during work. But today he just could hear anything from the radio because he had hot conversation with his boss in the afternoon and his mind kept replaying some most exciting details of that talk all the way home. This was not the first time for him to have this kind of unresting mind on his way home. Usually if there were some heated up conversations with others during the day then even the best radio programs would not be good enough to divert his mind from those conversations.

………

Linda spent a very quiet day at home. After supper she put on her headphone and left home walking towards the park nearby as usual. Today she just could not enjoy what the iPod was playing. Even though what was played was her best favorite and there was nothing physically between her ear and the headphone, she just could not hear the song. Tomorrow she would have an important meeting with a potential employer, and right now her mind was occupied by an imaginary rehearsal full of conversations which might happen tomorrow during the meeting.

………..

That day was the last day of Jack’s network administration training class. He paid $5000 for this training, but it had been a torture for him during the past one week of training. He truly wanted to learn as much as $5000 worth skills from the training, but every time when he was in the class, his mind went to somewhere else. He had this problem at his school ages, and now the problem seemed to get worse as his age growing.

………..

Jessica was always a happy person. Wherever she went she sang songs. But recently she started to worry about her own singing. It was not because her singing sounded no longer good, but it was because one day she realized that for the most of time when she sang a song she actually did not pick which song to sing but that song just came up by itself. She found that she was indeed led into the singing by the songs. In order to test her own worry about this issue, she tried to stop her singing in the middle of the songs intentionally. Once she did that, she confirmed her worry for even she forced herself to stop singing she still could feel the tunes in her head.

………..

That evening, John threw a party at his house for he wanted to share his exciting new enlightenment with his old friends. His guests were Ralph, Linda, Jack, and Jessica. Even before John got a chance to talk about his new discovery, Jessica started to talk about her problem with the singing, and then Ralph, Linda, and Jack complained that they could not quite well control their own mind.

“Wow, what a coincidence!” John said to them cheerfully, “it seems that all you guys just start to be aware of one common problem and a surprise I was about to give is that I just found the cause of that problem and the cure of it!”

“Are you kidding?” Ralph asked full of doubt and others could not believe such a coincidence either.

“Have you heard about the Benjamin Libet experiment?” instead giving an answer John asked them a question.

“What is that?” Jack asked for all others.

“Benjamin Libet was the first recipient of the Virtual Nobel Prize in Psychology from the University of Klagenfurt. I am not sure if you have heard of that, but that is not important. The important thing is the experiment he did in 1970s. Basically he demonstrated through his experiment that our bodily actions are indeed initiated by our unconscious neuronal processes, which are retrospectively felt to be consciously motivated by the subject.”

John was about to go on to share what he learned during the one-week psychology literature study when Jack cut him off, “Could you please put it into plain English, professor?”

“It means we don’t consciously act as we normally think we do. We just consciously know our action. Every single action we make is initiated by our unconscious mind.”

“My professor, I have to say that you are so good to get me lost.” Linda felt very confused about what John just said.

“Be patient, people.” John picked up a Sharpie and drew a triangle on the white board, and then drew a line across the tip of that triangle.

“Just consider that triangle as a gigantic iceberg on the ocean. We could only see a small tip above the water surface but the real good part of the iceberg is under the water. Our mind is like that iceberg. Our conscious mind is only that small tip that we are aware of, and the major part of that huge body is the unconscious mind which we don’t see.”

“I heard of that iceberg analogy before. Does that have something to do with Benjamin Libet experiment?” asked Jessica.

“People have been aware of the existence of unconscious mind for quite a long time. But it is still a biggest mystery about human mind to scientists. As a result the unconscious mind has become an area that psychologists and psychiatrist, as well as some modern philosophical movements plus new age mythological schools are interested in playing with. But no one before

Benjamin Libet could provide a sound scientific evidence of how this unconscious mind works.” John poured himself a glass of beer and continued, “Now, with the conclusion from Benjamin Libet experiment, even though we still don’t know much about how that mysterious unconscious world operates, at least we know with a quite high confidence that our actions are planned within and instructed by that gigantic unconscious mind before our conscious mind is informed of that action.”

“Are you telling us that we are not intelligent thinkers but only good viewers?” asked Ralph.

“Libet’s experiment is too simple to answer that question. But my personal meditation experience during last week told me that we are not mere viewers either.”

“That’s big news. You are doing meditation now?” asked Jack.

“I just started last week.”

“Tell us what you learned from your new hobby” requested Linda.

“Not much. But I think I can answer the question Ralph just asked from my meditation experience, of course not scientifically, but metaphysically with a good confidence.” John paused for second and then continued, “I would say that even though our unconscious mind is the main designer and initiator of our actions, it does listen to the intention of our conscious mind. If we don’t like certain ideas produced by our unconscious mind, we could gently let it go.”

“But it might come back again, right?” asked Linda.

“Yes. Now with this new enlightenment of mine as I just introduced to you guys we at least could provide very consistent explanation to what you guys experienced this morning or this afternoon. Do you see that?”

“How?” asked Jack and he is still very confused.

“To answer this we need to recall a millenniums long theory that all our actions are in pursuit of pleasure and escape from pain. “

“You are talking about the Hedonism.” said Jessica.

“Back to that time people was taking this theory in a shallow sense to refer to our conscious actions. With the awareness of the unconscious mind, what we need to do is to extend this ‘pursuit of pleasure and escape from pain’ law into the mechanics of the unconscious world.”

“Now you sound very Freudian”, teased Ralph.

“Not exactly. But you are still quite right since he was the pioneer of modern study on unconscious world.”

“I guess I get your new theory now.” Jessica turned to others and said, “John is telling us that the reason Ralph and Linda had those conversations repeated in their mind was because they both were excited about those contents, which brought certain pleasure in their unconscious mind and thus the unconscious mind kept playing with those contents. And Jack, your unconscious mind treated listening to the teacher in the class as a pain and then it just tried to escape from that pain to some thoughts which might be more joyful than the lesson. Am I right, John?”

“Smart girl” John complimented with regards.

“But how do you explain my issue with the non-stopped songs?” asked Jessica.

“Let me explain that,” Ralph cut in, “if what John just told us makes sense, then it should also work on your issue with the automatic songs because the human mind is not just for thoughts. The operation of melody should also be part of the function of mind.”

“If it makes sense, Ah? What do you think?” Jack asked Ralph.

“I would say my intelligence tells me that what John told us makes very good sense to me. What you guys think?”

“It sounds very reasonable to me. But how could we solve the problem?” asked Linda.

“Discipline,” replied John.

“Discipline?” asked Jack with confusion shown on his face.

“I mean discipline of mind which might take years to achieve.”

“How?” Jessica was excited about this and wished to learn the trick right away.

“The most important thing we need to do might be becoming more aware of those non-productive mental activities, and try to stay away from them. There is some millenniums long theory about this. It is called ‘living at the present moment’. “

“Wow, another millenniums long stuff? Sounds like we are dealing with some ancient problem here” said Jack.

“You are right. What we are experiencing today is a fundamental human issue which is generated by the nature of human mind. Thousands years ago some wise men already noticed the issue and figured out some strategy to deal with the problem. But unfortunately, only very few people so far have been knowledgeable about what they found.”

“That’s because those wise men did not have computer and internet at that time,” commented Ralph. They all laughed to agree.

“What do you mean by ‘living at the present moment’?” asked Linda.

“When we are repeating some past conversations or some virtual plays that have not yet happened, or we get lost in day dreaming like Jack did during the class, we are not living at the present moment in the sense that our mind is not fully connected to the real world, and that’s why Ralph could not hear what the news broadcasted in the radio, Linda could not hear the songs and Jack could not even know what the teacher was talking about. And Jessica’s case was also similar.”

“That makes sense,” commented Ralph.

John continued, “Some ancient sages found that a reminder of the need to live at the present moment could be a help to stay away from those chatty mind or day dreaming. And they suggested that the way to live at the present moment could just be to pay more attention to your surroundings, to enjoy every moment of real life, or just to stay in peaceful mind without much complicated thoughts but with a high alert to what is happening around.”

“That is hard, isn’t it?” asked Jack.

“Yes, it is hard. Meditation is a good exercise which could help people to gain more control over their mind during ordinary life. But still, it might take years of practice for a person to be good at it.”

“Hold on a minute.” Ralph sensed some problem in what John just said and he asked, “Do you mean we should not think about anything that is not happening in the moment?”

“Hey, I know what you mean, wise guy.” John replied with a smile, “as usual, the wisdom from ancient wise men does not always speak with strict logic. What you are trying to say is perfectly correct that it is impossible for intelligent beings like us only pay attention to what is happening at the present moment without thinking about other issues in life, especially in this busy world.” He finished his glass of beer and continued, “Not only those chatty mind or day dreaming are products of ideas or feelings produced by the unconscious mental processes, but any meaningful thoughts, including any plans for our life, any creative thinking for our research or writing, any analytical troubleshooting, are all developed from those ideas or feelings produced by our unconscious mind. That is the nature of our mind.”

The guests were all quiet and listening to John with great interest.

“As a result, it is very hard to draw a line between the initiative of productive thinking and non-productive thinking like day dreaming. Especially for those who believe in various kinds of inspiration including spiritual inspiration, ideas coming up into their awareness without expectation is a fundamental intellectual or spiritual resource, and thus respect to the unexpected ideas is very important in life.” John sensed some confusion among his audience and paused to wait for some response.

“Well, I just thought I understood what you said a minute ago, and now you get me lost again.” Jack said to John, “you just told us that we need to get our mind disciplined so that we can live at the present moment. But now you are saying that those ideas that cause me to do day dreaming might be precious inspirations. Then how should I discipline my mind?”

“You are asking the right person because I was thinking about this for the whole day before you guys came.” John replied cheerfully, “Here are a couple issues that might help us to learn how to get our mind disciplined.”

“First of all, it is not just what we think that matters, but how we think indeed matters more. The common feature of the mental activities that bother you guys today is that they are not under your subjective control, but instead they become your boss. This type of untamed thoughts is usually very exhausting as you all know because of their repetitive pattern. Having a disciplined mind means that we be able to have more control over own mind instead of being controlled by our thoughts for most of the time. This should also be the goal of any meditation practice.”

“That makes a lot sense to me,” applauded Jessica.

“Second, we need to make efforts to reduce the illusionary ingredients in our thoughts.”

“How do you tell what illusionary thoughts are?” Linda showed her zeal for the solution.

“Illusion is again a millenniums long issue and it is not easy to recognize what is illusion. The basic meaning of illusion is what looks real but not real. However, in real life we have seen many things that were originally unreal but in the end they did become real because people took them as real. What I am trying to say is that there is no universal hard definition for the criteria of illusion.”

“Here he is trying to confuse us again,” complained Jack.

“Don’t worry. As a professor of philosophy I could offer you guys some of my personal insight on this issue,” John said with confidence.

“What is that?” asked Jessica.

“I am not going to give a general theory about what is illusion because that is not what we are interested here. At this moment, we only care about how to avoid illusionary thoughts as much as possible, don’t we?”

“Yes,” answered Jack.

“For this purpose, what we need to do is to identify the distance between any thought from the reality.”

“You sound like talking about abstract math here,” commented Ralph.

“Not that complicated indeed. Have you heard of the six degrees of separation between people?”

“Yes,” Ralph answered.

“What we need here is something similar, which is simple but effective in measuring abstract distance. My proposal is to evaluate the distance between a thought and the reality based on how easy the thought could be realized.” John poured himself another glass of beer and continued,

“For example, if you think tomorrow you are going to buy a box of beer from the grocery store. It is very real because you don’t need to count on anyone else’ action to accomplish it. But if you think about proposing a business plan to a potential investor tomorrow while you have not fixed an appointment with him yet, then this thought is much more distant from reality than the previous one.”

“You mean the distance of a thought from reality could be measure by how many uncertain conditions it would involve in order to realize it?” Ralph tried to summarize John’s idea.

“Yes, precisely,” replied John, “and once we are able to judge how far a thought is from the reality, we would have a better idea about how much illusion the thought might contain. Of course, this is more artistic than scientific, and we need some practices to be good at it.”

“That sounds very interesting and I would vote for it” Linda is very excited about John’s new enlightenment of human thoughts, “then what else should we know to get our own mind more disciplined?”

“So far I can only contribute these two points to the issue” Replied John.

…….

These five friends just turned that party into a philosophical saloon and all the guests left John’s house with great satisfaction late that night.