get a more immediate experience of what we’re talking about, try this experiment.
We’ll briefly outline two different scenarios and invite you to reflect on each of them, separately, for a few seconds. If the contents of these scenarios don’t work in your own life, when you’ve read them both maybe take a moment to imagine something that better fits your circumstances.
Scenario 1
You’ve had a dreadful night. At 3 a.m. you woke suddenly with a low-level feeling of anxiety – and that got you thinking. You know that it’s not helpful to pursue thoughts like that at 3 a.m. – they’re always somehow exaggerated – but you couldn’t help yourself. One thought led to another. To top it off, you then started worrying about the fact that you weren’t sleeping and you were going to be tired and significantly below your best for the busy day ahead. So you started to think about that, and that really didn’t help. Having finally dropped off at 5.30, the alarm woke you at 6.30 and you began your morning bleary-eyed and feeling like there was sand under your eyelids.
That morning, you drop the kids off at school and they leave the car without saying a word to you.
What do you think? How do you feel?
Reflect on that for a few seconds before reading Scenario 2.
Scenario 2
You’ve had a great night. One of those really comfortable, satisfying nights when you get to bed at a good time, sleep all the way through and wake having had what feels like the perfect amount of sleep. You feel good.
That morning, you drop the kids off at school and they leave the car without saying a word to you.
What do you think? How do you feel?
Now we have just one question for you. Between Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 – was there any difference?
When we talk about these scenarios we usually find that there are a few people who experience no difference between the two. But there will also be a significant number of people who experience the two scenarios very differently.
‘In the first scenario I was so irritated,’ someone might say. ‘I thought, “Oh yeah – that’s right, I’m just your taxi service …” but in the second scenario I experienced that in another way. “Ah well,” I thought, “teenagers …”.’
It’s exactly the same event – the kids leave the car without speaking – but in one mind state you interpret that one way, in another mind state you have an alternative interpretation.
The way your mind is shaped by the first scenario presents you with a world in which your kids don’t care and treat you like a taxi service. In the second scenario, a differently shaped mind presents you with a world where, hey, your kids are just teenagers with their own preoccupations and, while this behaviour is something you’ll maybe raise with them another time, for now it’s OK. It doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care.
What’s going on here?
With challenging events we assume that the way we think and feel is caused by that event. ‘Of course I feel irritated. Didn’t you see how they just walked off without acknowledging me?’ But it’s not the event that caused us to react in that way.
In one mind-state we think and feel one way about the event (‘I’m just your taxi service!’); in another mind-state we think and feel differently (‘Ah well – teenagers …’). Not only that. It’s also important to see that the way we think and feel about what happens has further impacts on our mind-state. We get irritated when the kids walk off without saying good-bye and that takes our mind-state a notch or two lower. When we’re in a more positive and resourceful mind-state, and can smile and let go of it, it doesn’t bring us down.
Here’s the point. Sometimes we’re more resourceful; sometimes we’re less. There’s no getting away from that. We’re not about to say that the answer to all our problems is just to be more resourceful more often. But when you can see this process at work – when you can stand back and be aware of your thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses as just that – thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses, and not as ‘me’ or as ‘reality’ – then you can choose. This is what we call a state of ‘intimate detachment’. This isn’t the kind of detachment that leaves you feeling somehow separate, cold, clinical and not involved in what’s going on. Instead, you’re close to the experience, intimately involved in what’s happening. And at the same time you’re able to stand just a tiny, tiny bit back, so you can see what’s happening as it happens.
The diagram above describes this process.
1 The event – the kids get out of the car at school without saying a word.
2 The mind-state – we’re always in one or another state of mind when anything happens. In the example above, if we didn’t get much sleep we’d be in one kind of mind-state; if we slept well we’d be in another.
3 The interpretation – depending on our state of mind, we immediately form an interpretation of what just happened. When we’re sleep-deprived and struggling with the day we might well interpret that behaviour as fundamentally selfish and uncaring, whereas when we’re feeling well rested and more resourceful we might interpret it more as just what adolescents sometimes inadvertently do.
4 Our thoughts, feelings, body sensations, impulses – depending on the interpretation we make, our experience then unfolds in a particular way. A range of thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses to act follow from that interpretation. In scenario 1 we might think, ‘I’m just a taxi service for them!’ That comes with feelings of sadness and a sense of hollowness in the belly and tightness at the jaw. And we might want to cry or go off and get some chocolate. In scenario 2 we might think, ‘Uhuh – that’s adolescence for you.’ That might come along with warm feelings to the kids who are going through puberty; a sense of warmth and openness in the chest area and the resolve to talk about taking others into account when the time is right for that.
Thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses. That’s one way of exploring the various components of each moment of experience. Meta-awareness is the capacity to observe these in action and realise they are not set in stone; we do not have to succumb to being driven blindly by them.
KEY MESSAGES IN CHAPTER 1
We spend most of our life on automatic pilot, being swept along by our stream of experiences, habitually deciding on courses of action according to our programmed reactions.
If, however, we can develop our AIM – allowing, inquiry and meta-awareness – we have more choice in the actions we take.
Allowing is about meeting our experience with an attitude of care and acceptance, rather than wishing things were different. Inquiry is about being interested in our experience. Meta-awareness is about being able to be both in our experience and, at the same time, just a little separated from it so that we can observe and describe what is going on.
Our research tells us that we can hone these capacities in a concentrated way through the Mind Time practices.
The Mind Time practices we will teach you in this book will enable you to choose how you respond more of the time,
