This is part 4 of a longer essay about spirituality, which I'm be posting here in installments. I recommend reading the parts in order. Read Part 3 Here.
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We're all ultimately after experience, not commentary on experience. And yet there’s a commentary on experience that most of us never shut off: our thoughts.
Most people are caught up in their thoughts most of the time: “What do I have to do next?” “I bet that person thinks I’m an idiot,” “If I do this, then this will happen,” “This is boring,” and so on.
If we’re feeling something, we’re usually caught up in our thoughts about the feeling: “I’m depressed and that’s bad,” or “I’m angry at Bill because Bill’s a jerk,” or “I’m angry at Bill and that makes me a jerk.” We aren’t just feeling, in other words, we’re telling ourselves stories about our feelings.[1]
We rarely experience reality without an accompanying thought commentary.
But really, this thought commentary is also our experience. We can’t really jump out of our experience and comment on it. We only imagine that’s what we’re doing when we think. Our experience contains our thinking, just as it contains language and logic. Experience isn’t only what we’re after, it’s all we’ve ever got.
To be caught up in thoughts, then, isn’t to step outside of reality; rather it’s to be caught up in a part of reality. What’s more, it’s to be caught up in a very small part of reality.
Pausing to take in just some of the reality outside our thinking reveals its immensity and complexity. Stop now and take in the sights, sounds, and sensations around you without commenting on them in your mind. In your visual field alone, you’ll find almost infinite detail, subtlety, and variation.
Not only is thought in general a very small part of reality, but our particular thoughts at any given moment are a yet smaller part of reality. The normal human condition, then, is to be caught up in a tiny slice of a tiny slice of reality—to occupy, you could say, a little room in a little house in the immense universe.
And yet, almost no one leaves their room.
Almost everyone keeps replaying the same thoughts—or the same kinds of thoughts—over and over. People who tend to find fault with you, for example, don’t suddenly start noticing your great qualities. Democrats don’t suddenly start thinking like Republicans. Almost everyone has habitual thoughts that are either the same thoughts or the same general frequency of thought, whether irritated, pessimistic, happy, and so on.
These habitual thoughts guide us. But they tend to guide us in a loop. They steer us towards certain news, information, facts, details, people, and groups, all of which tend to reinforce the thoughts that led us to them. If you think corporations are up to no good, for example, you’re likely to look for evidence of this idea as well as gravitate to people who agree with you, both of which then further reinforce your belief. If you think all “supernatural” phenomena are either lies or delusions, you either won’t seriously investigate the subject or you’ll focus only on the cases that do indeed support your belief.
Our habitual thoughts, together with all the data and people they’ve attracted, tend to cause habitual moods, habitual actions, and habitual expectations. Again, these all further reinforce the original thoughts. If you assume someone’s a jerk, for example, you’re more likely to treat them like a jerk, which makes them more likely to act like a jerk around you, which reinforces your idea that they’re a jerk, and so on. If you think your wife is wonderful, you’re more likely to notice the ways she is wonderful, and she’s more likely to get even more wonderful.
In a nutshell, we live in a nutshell. Whether a theoretical physicist or a truck driver, everyone lives in the circle of positive reinforcement—whether vicious, virtuous, or vanilla—that’s driven by their habitual thoughts. This circle forms the walls of that little room that most people rarely leave.[2] It’s why we feel “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Paradoxically, the more influential a thought, the more it doesn’t seem like a thought at all. Especially powerful ideas so pervade our thinking that we don’t even remark on them. They are like any object that we look at so often, we don’t really see it. They seem like absolute truth. The room becomes reality.[3]
Spiritual wisdom is just recognizing your room for what it is.
Next Up: Meditation
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Footnotes
[1] We usually learned these stories from our parents. Whether or not parents literally read stories to their kids, parents are always telling their kids stories.
[2] Even theoretical physicists who believe they are studying reality on the largest possible scale are quite often trapped in ways of thinking that restrict their view of reality. I explore this in more depth in my book, The Science Spell.
[3] Significantly, this phenomenon occurs at a collective as well as individual level. In other words, just because thousands or even millions of people believe absolutely that something is true is no guarantee that it is. Entire cultures and civilizations can occupy a room and call it reality. A brief survey of the beliefs of various cultures, including our own, reveals pervasive fundamental beliefs that we now find insane: for example, the sacrifice of humans to appease gods, the legitimacy of slavery, or the idea that women shouldn’t vote. Cultures, though, are largely blind to their own version of insanity, except for the relatively few individuals who point it out.
I agree about having conversations with very different kinds of people with very different outlooks and just listening. We don't have to agree with everything, but how often do we really listen? Instead, we have an image of ourselves or a set of ideas we're desperately clinging to and trying to protect. Almost all our culture's experts in various fields also live in little bubbles. We don't mix it up with radically different people and outlooks.
And I agree that staying within our habitual thoughts and automatic responses is a way to make things more convenient. To make our choices easier. It's hard to stay open to a greater reality and trust that things will unfold for us. I face…
"In a nutshell, we live in a nutshell..." I love it! Btw what I also love is that your essays are crystalclear even for a non native speaker like myself.
Very interesting explanation of how we operate in the everyday life.
What - in my experience - is very interesting excercise, that we regularly have real conversations with people, who have a completely different opinion about the world. We can learn a lot from it about ourselves, our openness, tolerance, true listening skills (that means an honest attempt to underatand the other's point of view and his/her worldview that forms the opinion he/she holds), and of course our limits and limitations.
I think everyone (except from very few) has a…