The second chapter of Mindfulness and the Natural World focuses on the mind. Our minds are wonderful organs. They allow us to express our thoughts and experiences of the world. However, they can also be our best friend and worst enemy at the same time. And they are constantly seeking our attention. For me, one of the best things about developing mindfulness has been learning not to pay attention to all the thoughts that go through my head. They don't necessarily go away. I just notice them less and when I do notice them, I am more able to choose which ones to put my energy towards and which ones to just notice and move on from.
The chapter talks about how the thinking mind is brilliant at certain ways of thinking - analysing, planning, categorising, remembering, judging, assessing. It also tends to be weighted towards negative messages; a hangover from days when problem-solving was a constant need to ensure our survival. Even post-survival, our minds continue to do the job they were evolved for - look for potential threats and ways to better our situation through creation and innovation. Some of that has brought great progress, but a lot has brought great suffering.
Without threats to our survival, our purpose in modern life has been to achieve so-called happiness and we have created a number of stories and images of what that looks like. Thompson describes how, because our minds are built to find solutions to problems, and happiness has become a problem we need to solve, we have 'created a number of potential ideals we should aspire to, which we think will give us a constant state of feeling good - such as having more money, owning a house, having a successful career, being more confident and having a perfect body'. This leads us to pursue these relentlessly, in the pursuit of happiness, which we have defined as feeling good all the time, and if we don't feel good all the time, our minds tell us we have failed.
All this results in becoming slaves to our minds, separated from direct experience and this can lead to anxiety, depression, self-doubt and general unhappiness. We end up seeking something we will not find, while missing life for what it is. In actual fact, our states of mind are transitory, changing all the time, depending on what is going in both within and around us. And our ‘self’, despite its tendency to develop and follow fixed behavioural habits, can grow, change and develop as we come into contact with different people and experiences. We are not a fixed, separate entity, but part of a huge universe of interacting parts. When we learn to accept this, paying attention to only the here and now and stop trying to hold on to a fixed notion of self, we begin to discover a greater sense of freedom and happiness in our lives.
The chapter talks about how the thinking mind is brilliant at certain ways of thinking - analysing, planning, categorising, remembering, judging, assessing. It also tends to be weighted towards negative messages; a hangover from days when problem-solving was a constant need to ensure our survival. Even post-survival, our minds continue to do the job they were evolved for - look for potential threats and ways to better our situation through creation and innovation. Some of that has brought great progress, but a lot has brought great suffering.
Without threats to our survival, our purpose in modern life has been to achieve so-called happiness and we have created a number of stories and images of what that looks like. Thompson describes how, because our minds are built to find solutions to problems, and happiness has become a problem we need to solve, we have 'created a number of potential ideals we should aspire to, which we think will give us a constant state of feeling good - such as having more money, owning a house, having a successful career, being more confident and having a perfect body'. This leads us to pursue these relentlessly, in the pursuit of happiness, which we have defined as feeling good all the time, and if we don't feel good all the time, our minds tell us we have failed.
All this results in becoming slaves to our minds, separated from direct experience and this can lead to anxiety, depression, self-doubt and general unhappiness. We end up seeking something we will not find, while missing life for what it is. In actual fact, our states of mind are transitory, changing all the time, depending on what is going in both within and around us. And our ‘self’, despite its tendency to develop and follow fixed behavioural habits, can grow, change and develop as we come into contact with different people and experiences. We are not a fixed, separate entity, but part of a huge universe of interacting parts. When we learn to accept this, paying attention to only the here and now and stop trying to hold on to a fixed notion of self, we begin to discover a greater sense of freedom and happiness in our lives.