Some of the sanest people I know also have the most disordered thinking underneath. We all do have plenty of that in reality. But those of us with a bonus dose of thought chaos — we are the ones who’ve had to learn to pause before we leap. To mind the gap between thought and action. To calm ourselves inwardly, somehow, first, before we jump to conclusions or react. No matter where you are in life, it’s those pauses that make us sane. Nothing else. One can have the most measured, efficient, rational thought processes in the world, and if you never pause from one thought to the next, you can still be a complete psychopath. Maybe that’s even a workable definition of a psychopath (I don’t know — IANAP).
Morality
We pause. We doubt our own minds — our own ego — our own so-called self. Most of us have learned to do that through toil and pain. Seeing how negatively our disordered thoughts affect others or our self. And so at this stage the pause is more like suppression — a squashing down of our own thoughts and feelings for long enough to consider the feelings of others. We have to or else the chaos takes over.
Squashing down is ok. It’s like morality — what Buddhists call the first training. (By the way I should mention that I don’t identify as Buddhist. I’m way too zig-zaggy for that. But I have done a lot of Buddhist meditation training, and naturally use their frameworks for talking about our minds).
The problem with just relying on morality for our sanity is that it becomes a habit of mistrust towards ourselves. We don’t give ourselves free rein, ever, even when our intentions are good. We have learned to never listen to ourselves. This is plain unpleasant.
Not only is suppression unpleasant, it’s also not enough in the long run — because, by not listening to ourselves, we learn to not look at ourselves, and then all sorts of shadow issues start coming out sideways without us being aware.
Moralising alone is necessary, and yet both painful and not sufficient. This is why we need mind training.
From Morality to Mind Training
What mind training teaches is a new way to pause. A new way to “mind the gap” between our thoughts / emotions and our actions; a way that doesn’t involve suppressing our feelings. The disordered thinking won’t go away. Although it may lessen somewhat, we’ll still need to pause. But we learn to use those pauses to let our feelings flow through us like rain (American Beauty, major spoiler alert). Instead of squashing them down anymore, we let ourselves feel them; radically, like never before. This takes some serious emotional-mental strength and insight. Which is most often called “mindfulness”.
Morality really shines, and ceases to be unpleasant or difficult or boring, when it’s combined with high levels of attention and awareness.
In short, while there may be good reasons why we suppress our knee jerk reactions, over time that’s harmful to ourselves, and even with all that hard work it’s not reliable.
That’s why we need mind training. We all need it — but especially the sanest, kindest-acting ones among us, who’ve learned not to trust ourselves.
There is a better way.
Afterthoughts
Since penning these words, I realized that of course sometimes we are so confused or baffled in our thinking that we cannot even learn to squash down our thoughts or mind the gap, even in a suppression sense, let alone take mind training practices into our lives. Although my post does intentionally edify emotional and thought disorders, which I think is a much needed and refreshing viewpoint from current attitudes of mental “illness” (I dislike this term), it was not my meaning to minimize the suffering of being in the full grip of our difficulties. I certainly didn’t mean to imply that, when we find ourselves gripped by chaos, we should just “try harder”. Internal suppression or transcendence are impossible for all of us at times — and some of us more than others. When this is the case long-term, I still recognize the need for conventional medicine in helping to find traction within thoughts / emotions / moods, as imperfect and riddled with side-effects as most of those treatments are.
I guess the times I’m talking about — when we are apparently sane but inwardly tortured — are those in which we are in active recovery. I define active recovery as putting into daily practice some system of morality to keep us from getting trapped by our own internal chaos. Whether we arrive at active recovery through medication (and I include herbal medications in that), through internal work, or a combination as in my case, it is an essential first step.
like all of your posts – thank you for sharing your insight – it’s not that you can put these things into words – there is so much tortured, searching poetry out there that expresses a bind between instinctual feelings and internal value systems – but its that you put it in a way that is workable. You don’t have a ‘too hard basket’, which is the downfall of many out there suffering, and even the people who are treating them. The grey areas in between become clear in your vision, a functioning part of reality if worked with skillfully. That might just be revolutionary to many (myself as one in many). it also gives another road to choose from – instead of just “be yourself, let it out! be impulsive and rash and goddamn passionate’ OR ‘be calm, be efficient, be NORMAL’ – you offer a way to appreciate all the chaos … yet in a way that does not put us in conflict with the external and internal spaces that beg for a more peaceful touch.
Keep writing. Word after word. It’s necessary.