The human mind is a wondrous invention of nature, hopefully, that's obvious. With 100 trillion neural connections, its complexity (because of its interconnection) competes with that of the universe itself. The entire universe only houses 100 billion stars for comparison. For this reason, the mind’s power is said to be untapped and in its relative infinity await the secrets of human potential.
Yet, the scope of its influence over us and our lives is often underestimated on an individual level and very few ever seriously ask if they are actually in control of their lives or not. We like to think we are. It's easy to believe we are. But when we scrutinize our existential stress, doesn't it arise from the hard-to-swallow gut feeling that we aren't in control?
The art of meditating is the art of self-control, but at times it can feel more like a war to win back a sovereignty that we may have never had. Once the practice becomes a habit and familiarity with the experience of self-control builds it becomes easier to appreciate meditating as an act of rebellion against the automated and unconscious self. We must proclaim our independence, not from the world, but from that mass of grey and white matter inside our skulls.
So, we are pursuing freedom and when in pursuit of this freedom it’s prudent to know where we lose our own authority and what is taking it away. When we investigate where autonomy is lost, we discover we may have never had it. Every choice is made at the whim of an impulse that comes from within us, pushing us off the ledge of indecision. But why? Do I choose the foods I enjoy? Do I choose the music I like? Do I choose the clothes I prefer?
Ignorant of the reasons why we do the things we do, like the things we like, and dislike the things we dislike, as creatures so proud of our consciousness we regretfully must admit we are more like leaves in a river than salmon swimming against the current. We simply go with the suggestions of our inner voice and assume there is a plausible reason. The same way we trust Google Maps to take us where we need to go, we trust our minds - the shadow monarch – to lead us forward into our future choice after choice. Sometimes it leads us well, often actually, but we do so under its authority. Hopefully, we were raised right and inherited the decent-enough genes. Even if it all works out, having the best decision made for us isn't satisfying either. Even when we hesitate between different options, in the end, when the choice is made, good or bad, it was decided for us, and that wounds our unspoken pride of consciousness.
The lesson of Mental Separation (disassociating with the mind) involves nurturing a healthy skepticism of our own thoughts and eventually, identity. Every chic must leave the nest. Every young adult must leave the family home (depending on their culture). Every individual will one day rebel against the cage of their conditioning, both biological and social, to proclaim their soul (epic yoga dogma). As we disassociate from the mind's influence an unprecedented sense of sincerity emerges. We change! The term in Sanskrit is Moksha, meaning liberation from the mind that we thought was us. This liberation is not easy because the mind is sticky and our subservience is familiar. By rejecting the mind’s influence we become a Jivanmukti, a liberated being. At that point, the liberated person finally can make choices that are more sincere and selfless with less hesitation. The way a musician after decades of practice can mindlessly communicate perfectly through their instrument; the mind no longer stifles, influences, or delays the deeper drives of the individual. Rather, it amplifies the undistorted and unfiltered motivations of a person who is as selfless and good as they can be.
The catch is, no one can know if liberation has occurred in another (especially because it is a process) but the person who has been liberated. I mean, it's never inspiring to hear someone claim they have achieved any degree of "enlightenment". It's better to observe it. Complicating the matter, actions don't always represent the person. Bad people deceptively do good things. Good people mistakingly do bad things. Any claims of Moksha , for that reason, often fall on deaf ears, rightfully. The need to liberate ourselves, therefore, is not for reputation. It is supremely personal, as is the consequence. We do this for ourselves.
Yogic culture seems to tailor this intense humility, in regards to the process of liberation, by suggesting, even the experiences of daily meditation should be kept to ourselves. It's no one's business and nothing to share.
Now, this chapter is about distancing from this mind. When we meditate we are ex-communicating ourselves from our favorite neural metropolis. To make sense of the mental maze, the yogis interpreted the mind as if it were a psychological landscape. This landscape is common to all of us. The further away you get from the buzz of the intellect, memories, and fantasies the higher up the mountain of clarity you go. The summit of this mountain known as meditation is the apex of potential sincerity and knowledge. Perenial knowledge, that is! To sit at the top of the mountain is to sit in unprecedented honesty with ourselves, but also reality itself. There, all the knowledge that slipped through Tesla's, Einstein's, and Da Vinci's fingertips is right in front of us. The difference is a yogi feels it and never grasps it. Only observing it, they are transformed. At that point, however, the mind has been completely abandoned. It’s thoughts, memories, fantasies, beliefs, and stores of knowledge are like the cities at the bottom of the mountain slopes. When meditating, the city of the mind, the world of personal ambition and judgment, and the many, many fractal personas we have and use to achieve our goals and judge our lives can be seen, but they are far away. The internal distance makes it all far less significant. Simply, we just stop caring about our tiny, repetitive, little lives, in the best way possible.
Understanding the experiential nature of the mind is paramount to letting it go, so it’s worth discussing. Those 100 trillion neural connections swirl with countless thoughts, signals, and commands every second. We all know this. That’s why the entertainment business, sports, video-game companies, and alcohol sales are all so profitable. The mind is a lot! When someone meditates they are often overwhelmed at the number of thoughts buzzing in their head. It is a cerebral tempest of data and its movement creates a sort of psychological gravity. As it swirls with thoughts it “pulls” our awareness into it, like a paper boat in a whirlpool. Hypnotized like a cat with a laser pen, in the rip current we can’t even feel, we eventually become our thoughts, our paper edges dissolving, our true identity disappearing. Whether they are positive or negative, their assumptions and reactions become ours and as the paper inevitably dissolves completely, we eventually agree with our beliefs fanatically. To disavow a thought we truly believe is to disavow ourselves! Why would we disavow our core beliefs, you might ask. What’s the alternative? The fact that we can’t fathom disagreeing in a fundamental way with our own core beliefs illustrates (if you can sense it) the absolute dominion our minds have over us. If you can’t sense the stickiness of our concepts, that proves the point even more. No doubt, Moksha is a strange ambition but that is what makes it exciting! The dominion of the mind is being strengthened continuously. It pulled us in a long time ago and we, the little paper boats, have never gotten out. When we meditate, we reverse the process, and our paper edges somehow reform and dry. Some of these resurrected boats make it to the other side of the cognitive ocean.
Some human development…
By 4 months a toddler will ponder its reflection and in a primordial language, we’ve all forgotten, asking itself, “Who is this person I’m looking at? Is that me?” The mind at that point begins its life long quest of resolving that daunting question; Who am I? I am this body. I am these emotions. I am these loosely fitted beliefs. I am these well-established perceptions. It is an ever sophisticating, tightening, escalation of psychological structure.
At 18 months a child begins to see itself as autonomous. It begins to identify with the voice of a growing identity in its head. From that moment on, the mind will never let go of the identity it has assumed and we, for the most part, will spend the rest of our lives living through that identity, obeying the mind that created it, and forgetting what we were before we were entranced 36 months into our story. Around the mid-twenties, that baby becomes “fully” conscious. Its cortex, in the brain, finally turning on in its maturity.
Yogis believe what we really are is the consciousness that perceives the world and the identity is only what it “wears” to interact with the world. That consciousness seems to align with the cortex, and in metaphorical speak, finally hatches in a “second-birth” in the mid-twenties when the cortex activates more completely. Meditation leverages that step in personal development, and instead of solidifying into the established persona that has been being built since infancy works to break away. This true self that’s breaking away has no physical features and no personal motivation other than its liberation. Those are its only distinguishing features, which help a meditator recognize their proximity to it and Moksha. Our true form simply observes as a disembodied sense of witnessing. Turns out, that “mode” or pattern of neural activity, (which involves activation of the cortex and the Task Oriented Network more than anything else) because that is what it is in reality, is beneficial to our physical and psychological health. So the metaphor, removed of all poetry, in terms of our bodies is simply good for us. That “mode” bolsters the immune system, enables the regulation of digestion, diminishes impulsivity, reduces stress and the related acidity of stress hormones and neurotransmitters, and encourages healthy sleep patterns.
All the researched benefits of meditation depend on gaining a visceral sense of independence from the mind. Similarly, magic mushrooms have recently gained traction in psychology because of measurable benefits in regards to overcoming addiction, specifically in relation to smoking. A necessary element for a smoker to stop smoking when being treated with psilocybin mushrooms is a “mystical” experience. Often that mystical experience involves a form of ego-death that shatters someone’s concepts of Self. Sound similar? Moksha. I wager, the benefits of meditation hinge on this sense of separating from the mind, as well.
The concept inside this process is uber poetic and dramatic. Its what lies at the heart of our most epic stories. Abandon the Self to become the Self. Or more clearly, abandon what we thought we were to become what we really are. Shatter to overcome. I think of little chicks smashing their baby beaks into the white wall of a shell that was once their only world. Driven by some inexplicable power, they use their face and brute force to enter another reality. The will to disassociate from our minds is a quietly frightening endeavor and the ability to believe we are not the identity we think of as ourselves is, as mentioned before, bizarre. No more bizarre than a chick hatching, though. Despite the challenge, it is proven to be immensely good. Now, if we can muster up the imagination and wonder to renounce our unconsciousness and break through a wall we can’t sense, what happens? From those that have done it; we reduce suffering and increase wonder.
Whatever level of suffering exists in any one’s life, the yogis firmly believe it is the misperception of the mind, specifically it’s intellect, which tends to see the world in black or white. Illness, pain, poverty, heartbreak, and death are, in truth, as divine as beauty, health, and prosperity. For this reason, they practice meditation to experience Moksha and liberate themselves from mental misperception and the dualistic world it creates. So liberation depends on Advaita- or non-dualism. Until there are no more sides there will be no peace. It’s very easy to see how the core logic of that statement rings true with the political-national landscapes of the world. To support the individual pursuit of Advaita, India has the value of living examples of Jivanmuktis who have lived beyond duality. They are beyond consequence, beyond greed, beyond self-doubt and shame. From squalor, they sing with joy every day, give their possession to any that ask, and exude nothing but devotional joy to life with every breath. There are more notorious characters that feast on cow feces, urine, and rotten fish guts, tasting Amrita - heavenly nectar - instead of the vile morsels that the rest of us see; or our minds see. What this demonstrates to those with the courage to keep their eyes open to their nauseating teachings is that suffering and disgust are concepts that can be remedied by dissociating with its source, the mind, and its illness; dualism. If we had the choice to only sense reality as good, where the ugly were also gorgeous and the wicked also innocent - would we? The will to say yes is a great starting point and suggests there is the desire to become something like a sage, sitting on the lap of humanity’s highest perspective. We might scoff at how unreasonable wanting to be sage-like is, but that’s sad. We devalue such a noble aim. Why? When we so readily applaud at a young person aiming to get rich and own a penthouse in one of the world’s mega-cities.
Psychology might label this perversion of the senses as skillful and/or detrimental reframing. Reframing is a cognitive bias. Meaning it doesn’t reflect objective truth (although that’s what yogis believe). Reframing, in therapy practice, is when a therapist provides a different perspective on a given situation. It builds off the point that the majority of life is interpretive rather than factual. But, sincerely adjusting our views of any given situation is difficult. We discover as in control as we think we are, we do not have the control to change what we believe or feel at will. Rather than exchanging one perspective for another, meditation states that all perspectives are incomplete. It is better to renounce them all and the mind with it through meditation and re-examine the situation after. That vast, perspective-less attitude is equated to heaven.
Now, let’s not throw the whole mind out with the mental bathwater. The point isn’t to be brain dead. The point is to sophisticate our preferences to become more inclusive versus exclusive, to glimpse a wider vision of the world, and escape the myopic lens of our unstretched and unpracticed attention. The consequence of stepping away from the mind is almost always a more positive world-view because it is more expansive. This proved to the yogis that the world, when further away from the mind, became increasingly good, validating the divinity and supreme nobility of life and the force that created it. No matter the state of affairs in any given moment, through meditation the world regained its brilliance. It was true, tested, and reliable - as true as the Sun and Moon.
The other reason to abandon the mind and the identity involves appreciating the unique brilliance of being human and the opportunity it provides. To be born human, to yogis, suggests that past lives were lived well. This does not mean all humans are wise. The temptations of the human condition might prove too much for some. They’ll choose to live this life indulging in reckless pleasure or creating pain for themselves and others. For the more insightful, being human provides a once in many lifetimes opportunity to know Truth. It’s not a race, but at some point, the priority should shift from outside to inside, from self to true self. Life is mysterious to all that are alive. But the mystery itself is non-existent for the dimwitted humans, instinctual animals, plants, and bacteria that don’t have the intellect to question it.
Ironically, the mind is both the main obstacle and key to this process of liberation, hence why it is actively abandoned but simultaneously studied and controlled in meditation. Similar to how so many of our technological innovations have proven to be simultaneously advantageous and disastrous. Fire is the most ancient example and nuclear power is the most extreme. This pattern of danger being entangled in value is easy to observe. When we use the mind to escape the mind it leads us beyond its limitations rather than drowning us in them. There is no greater adventure than the chance to encounter the possibility of Moksha, not as an idea but as an inner wind upon the face of our consciousness, as real, as felt, as true; although non-physical.
The fact that life’s mystery might be resolved, it’s miracle witnessed, and our suffering diminished by looking inside is beyond astounding. The fact that the ancients were sophisticated enough to embrace the inner-invisible dimensions of reality, where before the 1850’s the idea of germs creating illness was insanity, only illustrates our current hubris and a pattern of de-escalating wisdom that exists in all of us as a whole and most of us as individuals. Not a problem, the remedy is available. The main way to disconnect from the mind and liberate the self is by restraining distraction. The mind, as vibrantly active as it is, (back to those trillions of neural connections and the gravity they produce for us, the little paper boat) only has one conscious thought at a time. By focusing and refocusing the thought stream onto a single object, the mind is restrained and its “gravity” is reduced. Then consciousness floats through the mind, making it to the distant alien shore. That distant shore is the summit of meditation. It is the mountain that the legendary lord of yoga, Shiva, sits. I dare say, it is the cross that Jesus was nailed to. This state of being is notoriously difficult to access and even more difficult to integrate. Life provides most chicks with all the tools and instincts necessary to hatch from their eggs. Some, however, don’t make it. For Moksha, for Advaita, life challenges its “prized” creation, us. Few have the instinct and few have the tools. Less have both. The reality is the rip currents of the psyche will immediately prove themselves to be almost unstoppable. But despite the challenge, the yogi’s learned separating from the mind could be done and thankfully, even partial success leads to overwhelming states of peace.
The next question is how exactly? Most don’t like the answer. Sit, be still, be silent, and replace all thinking with feeling. Replace all analysis with open, non-judgmental awareness. It is too simple and repetitive for those locked in the buzz of a mind who loves complexity and entertainment, but it is the way.