Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World (18 page)

He was not sure he could control the class again today.

It was not part of a janitor’s duty.
¹

What did you notice when you read these sentences? Most people find that they repeatedly update their view of the scene in their mind’s eye. First of all, they see a little boy winding his way to school and worrying about his math lesson. Then they’re forced to update the scene as the little boy changes into a teacher, before finally morphing into a janitor.

This example illustrates how the mind is continuously working “
behind the scenes” to build a picture of the world as best it can. We never see a scene in photographic detail, but instead make inferences based on the “facts” that we are given. The mind elaborates on the details, judging them, fitting them with
past experience, anticipating how they’ll be in the future and attaching meaning to them. It’s a fantastically elaborate mental juggling act. And this whole process is run and rerun every time we read a magazine, recall a memory, engage in conversation or anticipate the future. As a result, events seen in the mind’s eye can end up differing wildly from person to person and from any objective “reality”: we don’t see the world as it is, but as
we are
.

We are constantly making guesses about the world—and we’re barely conscious of it. We only notice it when someone comes along and plays a trick on us, as in the John scenario. Then our running commentary on life is laid bare and evaporates—before reformulating itself seamlessly into a new one. Often we’re not even aware of the shift. Or, if we are, it gives us a little shiver of vertigo, as if the world imperceptibly shifted beneath our feet. And, if you’re lucky, it will make you laugh out loud—this sudden shifting of perspective is how many jokes work.

The way we interpret the world makes a huge difference to how we react. This is sometimes called the ABC model of emotions. The “A” represents the situation itself—what a video camera would record. The “B” is the interpretation given to the scene; the running story we create out of the situation, which often flows just beneath the surface of awareness but is taken as fact. The “C” is our reactions: our emotions, body sensations and our impulses to act in various ways.

Often, we see the “A” and “C” quite clearly, but we are not aware of the “B.” We think that the situation itself aroused our feelings and emotions when, in fact, it was our
interpretation
of the scene that did this. It’s as if the world were a silent film on
which we write our own commentary. But the commentary, with its explanations of what is going on, happens so fast that we take it to be part of the film. It can become progressively more difficult to separate the “real” facts of a situation from its interpretation. And once such a propaganda stream has begun, it can be more and more difficult to argue against it. All future events will be interpreted to support the status quo; competing information is ignored and supporting facts wholeheartedly embraced.

The mind’s running commentary on the world is like a rumor. It might be true, it might only be partially true—or it might be completely wrong. Unfortunately, the mind often finds it very difficult to detect the difference between fact and fiction once it has begun to construct a mental model of the world. For these reasons, rumors can be incredibly powerful and derail not just the minds of individuals but of whole societies.

There are few better illustrations of how powerful rumors can be, and how difficult they can be to stop, than the US military’s “psychological operations” during the Second World War. During that time, many bizarre and surreal rumors would spread like wildfire across America, often without any foundation or logic at all. For example, claims such as, “The Russians get most of our butter and just use it for greasing their guns,” or “The Navy has dumped three carloads of coffee into New York harbor” would appear as if from nowhere and begin to sap morale.

The American government was desperate to scotch such rumors as soon as they appeared and tried all kinds of perfectly reasonable and logical approaches.
²
One of their first tactics was to broadcast special radio programs where they’d
take a rumor, discuss it and try to quash it. This soon revealed another problem, in that many listeners would retune their radios partway through a program, so they’d hear only the rumor and not its debunking. This obviously helped to spread the rumors even more.

Next, the government set up special “rumor clinics” in newspapers, where experts would take a rumor and refute it by explaining its psychological underpinnings
—how, for example, it represented a form of “self-defense” or a “mental projection.” A major problem with this approach soon surfaced too: the experts in the “rumor clinics” often had very little evidence on which to build a case, largely because you can’t prove a negative. Quite often, they ended up making things far worse because they would simply dismiss the rumors as nonsense and say that the true facts were “a military secret.”

They were up against another major problem too: we often give far more credence to emotionally charged stories than to logic—no matter how rational the arguments.

In many ways, the study of rumors is the study of our minds because: o
ur thoughts are like rumors in the mind. They might be true, but then again, they might not be.

In retrospect, we can see how both of the above approaches to debunking wartime rumors were doomed to failure—yet we repeatedly adopt the same techniques when we try to quash the rumors in our own minds. Take self-criticism as an example: when we are feeling stressed or vulnerable, we only hear the inner critic and not the quieter voice of compassion. If we do hear an alternative to the unsettling thoughts, we probably won’t believe the answers because the emotional
punch behind the thoughts is so powerful that it overwhelms all of our logic. If we dismiss our thoughts as “nonsense” or tell ourselves to “get a grip” or to “pull yourself together” then this further lowers our morale, leaving us wide open to further feelings of weakness and inadequacy. To make matters even worse, every time the tape of self-criticism begins to roll, we immediately start embellishing the story. We begin trawling our minds for supporting evidence and ignore everything to the contrary.

Is it any wonder then, that the rumor mill in our minds can cause us so much unnecessary suffering? Is it so surprising that all of the ways in which we try to quench those rumors only end up making things far, far worse?

Instead of confronting the mind’s rumor mill with logic and “positive thinking,” it makes far more sense to step outside the endless cycle and just watch the thoughts unfold in all their fevered beauty. But this can be difficult. If you look closely at the “rumors” that start washing around the mind when you feel stressed, you’ll see how much a part of you they really appear to be. They carry quite a punch and may be central to what you believe about yourself and the situation in which you find yourself.

Have a look at the following list of common thoughts that pop into people’s heads when they feel frantic, stressed, unhappy or exhausted (taken from a questionnaire compiled by one of our colleagues, meditation teacher Hugh Poulton):

 

• I can’t enjoy myself without thinking about what needs to be done.
  
 

 

• I must never fail.
  
 

 

• Why can’t I relax?
  
 

 

• I must never let people down.
  
 

 

• It’s up to me.
  
 

 

• I must be strong.
  
 

 

• Everyone relies on me.
  
 

 

• I’m the only one who can do this.
  
 

 

• I can’t stand this any more.
  
 

 

• I mustn’t waste a minute.
  
 

 

• I wish I were somewhere else.
  
 

 

• Why don’t they just do it?
  
 

 

• Why am I not enjoying this any more?
  
 

 

• What’s the matter with me?
  
 

 

• I can’t give up.
  
 

 

• Something has to change.
  
 

 

• There must be something wrong with me.
  
 

 

• Everything will fall apart without me.
  
 

 

• Why can’t I switch off?
  
 

When we feel stressed and life is frantic, thoughts like these often feel like the absolute
truth
about us and the world. But they are, in fact,
symptoms of stress
, just as a high temperature is a symptom of flu.

As you get more stressed, you believe more strongly in
thoughts such as,
I’m the only one who can do this.
And with loaded thoughts like this, which is in effect saying that you and only you are responsible if things go wrong, then is it any wonder that your mind reacts and wants to find an escape route? You just want to be released from the pressure, so thoughts such as,
I wish I could just disappear,
follow swiftly along behind.

Becoming aware that these thoughts are
symptoms
of stress and exhaustion, rather than facts that must be true, allows you to step back from them. And this grants you the space to decide whether to take them seriously or not. In time, through mindfulness practice, you can learn to notice them, acknowledge their presence and let them go. Week Four of the Mindfulness program will show you how to do this.

The first three weeks of the program have been designed to train the mind, while laying the foundations foreveryday mindfulness—the flavor of awareness that allows you to be truly present in the world, rather than simply drifting through it on autopilot. Week Four of the program refines this process by enhancing your ability to sense when your mind and body are signaling that things are turning negative and self-attacking, times when your reactions are pulling you into their vortex. Of course, sensing when your thoughts and feelings are turning against you is one thing; preventing them from gaining unstoppable momentum is quite another. So, Week Four gives you a powerful new tool—the Sounds and Thoughts meditation—to help you.

We are immersed in a soundscape of enormous depth and variety. Just take a moment to listen. What can you hear? At first you might sense a general pulsating, all-encompassing hubbub of noise. You might be able to pick out individual sounds. You might recognize a friendly voice, a radio elsewhere in the building, a door slamming, cars hissing past, a siren in the distance, the hum of air conditioning, an aircraft overhead, tinkling music. The list is endless. Even when you’re in a quiet room, you can still pick up muffled s
ounds. It might be your breath as it moves through your nostrils, or the creaking of the floor or a heating system. Even silence contains sounds.

This constantly fluxing soundscape is just like your thought stream.

It’s never still or silent. Our environment fluxes constantly like the waves on the sea and the wind in the trees.

The Sounds and Thoughts meditation gradually reveals the similarities between sound and thought. Both appear as if from nowhere. Both can seem random and we have no control over their arising. Both are enormously potent and carry immense momentum. They trigger powerful emotions that can easily run away with us.

Thoughts come as if from nowhere. Just as the ear is the organ that receives sounds, the mind is the organ that receives thoughts. Just as it is difficult to hear the raw sounds without activating a corresponding concept in the mind, such as “car,” “voice” or “central heating,” so the flicker of any thought activates a network of associations. Before we know it, the mind has leaped and bound into a past that we had long since forgotten or a future that’s been entirely dreamed up and has little basis in reality. We might start to feel angry, sad, anxious, stressed or bitter—just because a thought triggered an avalanche of associations.

The Sounds and Thoughts meditation helps you to discover this for yourself. It also helps you to discover—at the deepest of levels—that you can relate to unsettling thoughts in the same way that you relate to sounds. Your thoughts can be likened to a radio that’s been left on in the background. You can listen—or rather observe—but you need not elaborate on what you receive or act on what you feel. You don’t usually feel the need to think or behave in a way that a voice on a radio tells you to, so why should you blindly assume that your thoughts portray an unerringly accurate picture of the world? Your thoughts are thoughts. They are your
servants. No matter how loud they shout, they are not your master, giving orders that have to be obeyed. This realization gives you immense freedom; it takes you off a hair trigger and gives you the space to make more skillful decisions—decisions that can be made with your mind when it’s in full awareness.