When the Mind Learns for the Wrong Reasons
Cuando la mente aprende por las razones equivocadas
A question about the tendency to condemn the mind's learning process, and how the mind can function freely once we stop using it to control our experience or preserve a limited identity.
When the Mind Learns for the Wrong Reasons
A question about the tendency to condemn the mind's learning process, and how the mind can function freely once we stop using it to control our experience or preserve a limited identity.
When the mind is learning, there seems to be a resistance, as though the mind is trying to take over the process. It becomes a kind of condemnation of the mind's learning. We've always had the habit of learning through the mind, by the mind. So I reach a point where I feel, "I don't want the mind learning."
There are different kinds of learning. We learn different things, and the mind is good at learning some of them. Then there are others that, let's say, transcend the mind. The mind can learn, and we can get better at aiding the mind to learn. But if we are not also learning something about the nature of what we are, then we will think we are the mind, and that is going to block the progress of learning in both ourselves and the mind.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm getting into.
The mind as a tool, not an identity
The more we disidentify from thought, the more freely the mind can learn and operate. But it will only learn the things it is good at, or we will only use it for the things it is good at. It becomes more like a functioning tool than what we are.
When we are identified with the mind, we tend to use it to try to control emotional states or sensations, which is what we so often do. That creates a lot of noise, because we are basically trying to numb the experience of sensations and emotions. But when we stop doing that with the mind, when we can simply be with sensations and emotions as they appear, then the mind can do what it does best.
The mind's real capacities
The mind is a very creative thing. There are many different aspects to it: functioning of creativity, imagination of all forms (visual, sound, ideas), engineering, inventions, logical and rational thinking, conversational intelligence. I could keep naming aspects in which it is extremely beautiful and has a very infinite capacity.
But that is only possible if we let it operate for those purposes and not for defining what we are, or controlling our experience by trying to create preferred sensations and avoid the ones we don't want. That is where we are using the mind for the wrong thing, and it becomes very problematic.
Ultimately, we use the mind to preserve an idea of what we are that is not what we are, an idea that is limited. And in order to preserve that idea, the mind needs to operate in a really problematic way.