‘Make your mind up’

Such an inadvertently telling request

Today I saw a statement along the lines that ‘people are always trying to make up our minds for us’ — funny-ish, in sense that ‘making up one’s mind’, as in deciding or choosing, is generally considered to be a reflexive affair; something we can only do to ourselves. And also very true, as it often happens that others might want to influence what we end up deciding or choosing.

What captured my attention, though, was the literal expression: that we make up our minds. As in, we furnish them, think them into shape, or even conjure them up out of thin air. And it was so clear to me that this is what’s constantly happening.

Now, this doesn’t mean, of course, that in the beloved trio of body, heart and mind, ‘mind’ doesn’t exist. Rest assured, it does. If you read Aspects of You, though, on the centres and the instinctual drives, you might remember that I’m distinguishing between two separate functions of the mind: the simple, constructive function and the higher, open one. And this distinction is interesting in relation to this ‘making up’ of our minds that we engage in. As it turns out, the very large portion of our activity where we ‘make our mind up’ is not only firmly rooted in the simple, constructive function, but also in a curiously subjective fold of it.

An excursion into subjectivity

One angle that didn’t occur to me to explore in Aspects was that of subjectivity. I mean, in one way it did — book focuses to a great extent on the experiential, and experience is always subjective — but I didn’t spell it out. But now, let’s unpack this concept a bit more.

At least in the Western world, we’ve been fed the idea that subjectivity is, at best, secondary; at worst, it’s less-than, often bad, and sometimes downright dangerous. ‘Watch it so you’re not being subjective’ — implying subjectivity can’t be trusted and, at the very least, won’t do anyone else any good. And, sure, for some endeavours, objectivity is definitely the way to go. However, on the same evolutionary wave as philosophy, general intellectualism and natural science came the idea what objectivity equals ‘truth’. Somewhere along that same journey, we forgot they subjectively is the only way we can ever experience anything.

Now, as far as experience goes, in relation to the three centres, a curious realisation lands: the simple, constructive function of the head isn’t designed for experience. Experiences happen in the gut, the heart, and — depending on our definition of the word — the higher, open head function. Experience is sensation, movement, perception, interoception; it’s life, happening. Sometimes, we might also experience the vast ocean of consciousness where the sensations and movements are happening (which is where the higher open function of the head comes into the picture.) But thinking — which is what the simple, constructive function is designed to do and which it does tremendously well — is, in itself, not an experience. If we were to exclude all the unconscious instinctual and emotional material that seeps into our cognitive processes, those processed themselves are objective. Or at least, they’re designed to be. The intellect’s job is to synthesise, commit to memory, recall, conclude, hypothesise, calculate, invent, question, separate, compare, investigate ... you get the idea. That’s what the simple constructive function is for. It’s responsible for most of the trimmings and features of civilisation. We wouldn’t have come far without it.

Obviously, we might also use the constructive function to create experiences for ourselves. We might think of something that scares us and feel anxious as a result. We might think of someone dear to us and experience feelings of love. We might remember something we’ve lost and feel grief, or sadness. But when this happens, again, these thoughts in themselves are just triggers of experience; not experiences in themselves.

The maker up of our minds

Now, apart from the multiple outer elements wanting to ‘make up our mind’ for us, there’s an inner candidate for this job, too: the ego. The ego whips up a blend of familiar instinctual stances and emotional climates that somehow feel particular to our identity, sprinkle generous amounts of world conceptions and ideas on top of it, and thus creates the mind structure that reminds us who we are. Everything about us that would be gone if we woke up tomorrow with no memories — that’s the mind that the ego has made up.

This is not necessarily a problem. Most people would consider it a good thing that we remember who our work colleagues are, what we’re meant to be doing at our place of work, who our family members are, what we did yesterday, and what plans we have for tomorrow. But the thing is those are not the only things we remember. We will so remember likes and dislikes, grievances and aspirations, mistakes and victories — and not necessarily only those still relevant. Does this whole bunch of ideas about ourselves about others and about the world, which doesn’t necessarily add value to our lives. We’ve ‘made up our mind’ in a way that at one point felt constructive, but which now is limiting. To the extent that we aren’t aware of this happening or having happened, we will then continue living within a prison of our own design, but which we don’t remember creating. This way, the mind we ‘made up’ is effectively blocking our own unfoldment.

Another possibility, of course, is that we do remember it — and that we still view the related aspects of ourselves and of life as we did then, even if it’s been decades. (Our mind is made up, remember? 😉) And the irony is that if we’re aware of this happening, we probably see it as a good thing. ‘Since I suck at maths anyway, it’s wise that I keep away from this work task.’ ‘I was never any good at dancing — it sounds like my friends will have fun on Friday, but I’ll just make a fool of myself if I come along.’ To the iteration of us that created this memory and made up the rule this feels like safety. Why would I want to make a fool of myself, if I know that I’m not good at something?

Good intentions; unfortunate results

But the thing is, maybe these experience are ancient history. Maybe I’m someone else today. Maybe that one maths class where I got the idea that I couldn’t count to save my life was a one-time thing. Maybe I just had a crappy teacher who shamed me for making a mistake, making me scared to try again — scared, even, to dare suspect the verdict wasn’t actually true (as if I did, I might believe it and then go on to make a fool of myself all over again).

Maybe my so-called friends laughed at my efforts on the dance floor, scaring me off dancing until further notice. And the thing is, the ‘notice’ never came. Loathe to have to think about it again, I might have stopped dancing even in the privacy of my own home. Everyone has hordes of such little experiences, whether they made a notable impact or not. And when they happened, the mind was made-up to ‘come to the rescue’ any time we might have found out how insubstantial these ideas were.

Realising this, we (that is, that same made-up mind) start seeing the ego — as well as its older cousin the superego — as an enemy. ‘It doesn’t want you to succeed’, ‘It wants to keep you small.’ But none of these things are the truth, exactly. It actually wants to keep us safe. Sure, its tactics fail miserably, and the result is it does keep us small, but the attempt is to protect us — from things like shame, humiliation, vulnerability, worthlessness. It wants to guide our way to thriving without pain. It seems like a good idea, on paper — the only problem is, it does not actually work.

Anyway — what was that about subjectivity?

It’s clear that the ego-mind has a propensity for creating strategic structures out of our experience. Experience is subjective. But the cognitive function assigned to make sense of experience isn’t designed to be. As we just saw, its thing is neutral computing — gathering facts, sorting them, analysing, drawing conclusions; that kind of thing. But when we ‘make it up’ — as in, assume and choose and decide to treat our assumptions and choices as The Truth — then our perception of reality gets skewed.

The much-revered (and, truly, useful and precious) constructive function of the head is in fact the only place in our inner makeup what doesn’t trade in the currency of experience — and, as such, doesn’t relate directly to inner practice. Indirectly, it relates in plenty of ways. For starters, it helps us orient ourselves in the massive supply of formats, focuses, modalities, and applications available. It helps us do inquiry, question ourselves (in ways that can be helpful or not so helpful, of course), and connect important dots from which we can then proceed to explore experientially. And once we’ve done so — when we’ve gone down our various rabbit-holes of impulses, feelings, sensations, reactions and emotions and actually experienced something — once the dust has settled, the mind can help us sort through, understand, and make sense of what’s happened.

But our educational institutions teach us that learning is primarily a cognitive affair, pretty much cutting out he middle bit, with its subjective discoveries. When it’s a deeper understanding of ourselves and life that we’re after, though, our infatuation with the simple, constructive head-function can mislead us into thinking it’s processing, learning, dot-connecting and abstractions is the ‘inner work’ we need to do. It’s got to be the way to go (or so this function argues); after all, who else can provide the all-important objectivity? Are we meant to trust subjective processes? How would we even know we’re going in the right direction? But the obvious answer — that honouring our subjective experience is the closest to a ‘right direction’ we could ever get — is almost unthinkable for a mind conditioned to worship objectivity.

But before the ego-mind rushes to make plans for how to stop operating this way, there’s a ‘however’: this seems to be an entirely human, natural thing. Which is to say, this is not a character flaw, and it happens to everyone. It’s easy to read all this and think, ‘Oh, let me fix this. Let me be Objective from now on.’ Or worse — believe we are already capable of the objectivity we’ve been taught to believe we should lead with.

It’s a bit like the mistaken idea that the goal of meditation is perfect stillness or the absence of thought, where actually, it’s the repeated interruption, coming back from our constant editing into the present moment. In the matter of objectivity, our task isn’t to exist as an isolated, objective head centre. Rather it’s to remember that we’re inherently subjective beings, featuring a faculty with the potential for objectivity which is also strongly influenced by less objective faculties. And more than anything, it’s to stop shaming and blacklisting that subjectivity, instead welcoming it as our portal into experience — and ultimately, into life.

When we stop expecting objectivity, we discover it’s completely fine when our own interpretation of an exchange isn’t the same as someone else’s. We don’t have to fight over who’s right. Instead, we can be curious about each other’s experiences, honouring them as the unique creations that they are, and — perhaps in delighted surprise — appreciating how similar they can sometimes be, us all being human after all.

The full-circle relationship

In our inner practice, we discover we can take the same approach. Just like we don’t have to internally debate our spouse of friend or colleague or politician, we can stop debating the ego and the inner critic. We can realise (most likely, time and time again) that the solution to relational issues, whether it’s about our relationships with others or with aspects of our own self, isn’t debate, but listening. Taking an interest. How is this for you, right now? Not to fix anything, but to be with what is, giving it space to drift, settle, and unfold.

This is the way home.