shipwreck

What follows is something I wrote my ACT therapist, in service of trying to understand the thoughts and beliefs I cling to, whether uplifting or depressing. Sometimes my inner dialogue and imagery try to persuade me my situation is pleasant; other times they tell me I’m in Hell. Either way, the whole experience derives from thought. One way to get to a place of greater acceptance is to recognize that so much of what convinces us, so much of what we believe without question, comes from thinking. Rational minds are nothing but evolutionary adaptations that reside in nervous systems, which give us models of reality we use to plan activities. We envision, ahead of time, how we will build a house. We work out, before we get to the restaurant, what we will say when we propose marriage. We plan a route across town. Thought gives us the ability to build cognitive castles, live in them, make choices, and then decide if we want to use the same steps in real life. If after imagining a course of action, we expect it will lead to ruin, we choose another path.

Problems arise when we start mistaking the internal model for the external world, which we often do. The brain does not contain the universe, only a representation of it. Anything the brain believes true about our environment comes from watching a flickering image held by nerve cells. The actual world, with its streams of particles, unseen forces, vibrations, and inertia, remains out of reach of thought. Only action contacts the real thing.

If we believe our internal painting of the world to be the same thing as the actual earth, we get trapped in opinions that are based on a chimera. A glaring meteor falling from the sky is neither good nor bad, until thought comes into play. Once we start cogitating, we worry it might be an asteroid destined to annihilate much of life on earth; or we appraise the size of the flare, and decide it is probably only a fist-sized snippet of some long-forgotten satellite. Until we think, there is only a chunk of matter plummeting through the atmosphere, or from our perspective, just a streak of light. The mind-bustle that either impels us to whirl and hug our companion in a final gesture of affection, or suggests we relax and say “oooh!,” comes from neuronal add-ons to the physical event. Outside, there is just a mass of minerals being drawn toward the planet by gravity. It helps to scrape away the patina of opinion that our mind puts on everything, and try to look objectively at our lives.

This is not a lucid description of the concept. Hopefully, it at least introduces the rationale for examining the distinction between real-life and thought-life. If we could separate all the countless encrustations of beliefs, predictions, paranoia, hopes, and cynicism from the world we live in, we might see things more clearly. We might be less lost in our heads, and more in contact with day-to-day life.

What follows is a cognitive riff on how hard my rational mind works to escape those black, frozen waters in the broken places of my heart. My liberation is doomed by the memories and fixed beliefs that act in the opposite fashion, and pull me in. I can only speak in metaphors, but maybe someone will relate to what I ’see’ as my situation. I have excerpted and edited a portion of an email to my therapist, that I wrote very soon after leaving a session:

The picture that flashed into my mind as I stepped out of your building, was one of an ocean next to an infinite rock. Dark, cold, bottomless waters, sitting beneath warm, tropical air, scented with gardenias. There is a vertical cliff rising out of the depths, up through the liquid and shadows, and all the way into the sky, as high as one can see. I am attaching twigs, loops of silk, and palm leaves to the rock. I find tiny cracks in the vertical granite, and build a precarious structure to protect myself from the frightening waters. I feel like there is a monstrous hand grabbing my ankle, pulling me down. I climb onto my delicate platform with great effort. Inevitably, it gives way, and I feel myself being dragged down, down, down. But there is no hand. It is only a rope I have tied to a much sturdier structure I have built beneath the waves. That edifice is constructed of iron bars welded together, layered with corrosion and crud. What I think is a demon dragging me to my doom, is actually something I’ve built. It is my own creation, another artifice like my flimsy raft of sticks and thread.

I can almost imagine giving up on both systems. The old, solid, gallows built beneath, and the new, delicate web above. Then I would just be swimming. I could move away from the imposing rock. I would be far more free.

The traps above and below the surface, the beliefs that edify and destroy us, are nothing but patterns of impulses in our brains. They do not connect with the natural world, and are only opinions about models of reality. Very far removed from that rock dropping from above. Consider watching a plane crash on TV, and feeling bad about those poor passengers. Then try to experience how it felt for those in the jetliner as it lurched downward: they saw the wings shear off, felt their bodies get slammed against the windows and seatbacks, cringed as they heard the banshee-shriek of the fuselage shredding open, and braced themselves against the oven breath of flames just before the cabin exploded. Or consider the difference between watching a couple in bed in an R-rated movie, versus feeling the warm, moist flesh and pounding heart of your lover, who smiles while wrapped in your arms. The TV images never equal the real thing. Yet we base our fears and dreams on equally removed mental projections. Worries and anticipation are two steps apart from palpable life, which is only to be experienced in each present moment.

The more we recognize the difference between what our minds build, and the shining day that awaits us outside the doors of our thoughts, the more we can free ourselves from aversion, grasping, regret, and fear.

This is another day of cheating. I took something written in another context, and tacked it up on my blog. I write all the time, these days. The more interesting stuff does not necessarily pop out when I sit down to write a blog post. Sometimes it arises in a cleaner, less encumbered form, when I am just trying to save my life.

Revised 2009 November 14, 05:43 PDT.