SPLIT MINDS, NEITHER REALLY ‘HERE’
We have countless daily moments where we transition out of our split ‘just operating’ minds and return to our clarity, and vice-versa. The first time I actually noticed this was a very benign moment, nothing spectacular: I was walking along the sidewalk of a mildly busy downtown street. I was in my ‘operating’ mind as we so often are, which means I was far, far away, thinking of probably work and girls and chores and dreams, with a little background music probably thrown in; and my mind was operating on autopilot as far as my external circumstances… I saw everything around me, obeyed the street signals, walked, avoided bumping into people and being run over by vehicles, etc., but beyond registering them spatially as was necessary for movement and survival, I wasn’t giving them particular attention.
Then a car honked – not at me, but close by – and startled me. It was like a brief shock from a mental cattle prod, and my preoccupied mind, distracted by things past and future, instantly disappeared, dissolved off. I was once again in the now, just seeing the traffic, peoples’ faces, the color of cars, the architecture of the buildings, the trees and birds I was passing. All my other thoughts had suddenly disappeared and I was suddenly taking note of all that was around me, not simply registering them as objects I was pinballing my way through as I steamed towards wherever I was heading. And I was noticing myself within these things, too; my walking speed, direction, breathing, clothing, energy. My attention, focus, awareness were on all things here and now, not on thoughts of things far away, past and future, as they had been before I was startled.
In that moment, in my mid-twenties, I noticed that transition. Really noticed it for what it was… a sudden startle that shook me from having two minds back into having one unified, here mind. In the split-mind mode, one part was registering things around me just enough so I could keep walking toward my destination, and the other part was thinking about other things like work and daydreams and relationships. In the split-mind mode, our more conscious thoughts and interests are far away and thinking of things unrelated to what is immediately around us; meanwhile, we operate with a less conscious awareness of where we are, what we are doing, and what is happening around us. This awareness is still there in some small degree, but we’re giving more brain priority to other more interesting or pressing things, less brain priority to right here, right now, around us and inside us.
We all do this. Every day, many times a day, our thoughts are not right here, right now, with our surroundings, happenings and circumstances; they are off remembering some things from the past, they are working out some wish or plan for the future, they are thinking of a loved one, they are humming out a tune and remembering a music video, they are engrossed in a phone conversation or texting someone or thinking on behalf of work, or a thousand other things. The attentive, interested, exciting part of our awareness is attending those things, entertaining itself, or being efficient working out job and schedule details; meanwhile the moment-by-moment operational part of our brain is on cruise control. It registers the things around us, registers what we are doing as we move through that world, and keeps us turning left or right and not stepping in potholes or on little doggy gift packages smeared all over the sidewalk.
Within the next year after that minor honking incident that awakened me to becoming aware of those little daily returns to clarity, something else startled me into ‘noticing’. Again, it was a benign event: I saw there were blackberry bushes along the path I had been walking – almost daily – into town. I lived about a mile from downtown, and there was a beautiful seaside promenade running past my apartment on to downtown. Imagine walking that path hundreds of times, in both directions, and not noticing blackberry bushes, especially when bearing fruit in the summer. I saw the view, even saw people and buildings and plants… but my mind was so caught up in the excitement and dramas of my life, that I did not clearly and deeply take notice of the details. For years. Blackberries! And I’d missed them, for years, while I was walking right through them as they lined both sides of the walkway, I was even brushing them with my shoulders.
And this is funny: many years later I had moved away, but while hitch hiking back through that area, I stayed a few days with a friend who was living by a lake, an hour outside of that city. One day he came back from the grocery store, complaining that the small flat of blackberries he’d bought cost over four dollars! I smiled and said, “Come out here.” We walked out the front door, down the three steps, and I pointed to a plant five feet away, overgrowing his fence. I said, “What’s that?” He said, “OH, MY GOD!” It was a blackberry bush, near his front door, full of big juicy blackberries. I said to follow me again, and pointed to a much larger blackberry bush up against the side of his house. He made the same exclamation. We went behind the house, to the dirt road leading up to his place, and I pointed… there were acres of blackberry bushes, which he had to drive beside every day coming and going from town. He was so amazed he hadn’t seen them. So caught up in his thoughts, his busy schedule, even doing yard work right beside those bushes, ha ha. But I understood his blindness. I’d been there myself.
I find this very common in younger people, especially those in their teens. They are so caught up in these things called thoughts and emotions, and their gadgets and material things and intense or exciting thoughts about all things good and bad in their lives, that they whiz by the world with only a fraction of their attention – for bare operating purposes – placed on the here and now they are passing through. I watch even adults, into old age, still enveloped so completely in their thoughts and dramas and issues, they spend so much of their lives in this blindness to the clear here-and-now.
It’s like someone walking along a street and reading a book; they may be using just enough ‘operating mind’ to keep walking and negotiating the sidewalk and people… but the more engrossed they are in that book, the less their senses are paying attention to what is immediately happening around them. You don’t need to be actually reading a book, your mind can be that tuned-out simply with your thoughts, or when talking with someone beside you, or noticing something interesting in a store window. When anything takes your thoughts and awareness away from what is here and now… that is what causes you to not pay attention to something you should definitely be paying attention to. This is when you stub your toe, not paying attention to the sidewalk cracks. It’s what makes you miss your turnoff while driving, because the thoughts you’re thinking or the conversation you’re having or the song you’re listening to is just so engrossing. This is what makes you walk or drive right into a situation that kills you or someone else, because you’re so engrossed in your away-thoughts that you didn’t clearly notice the stop light or the Don’t Walk sign lit up, or the vehicle barreling at you, or the road hazard you’re approaching. It’s why, in many places, using a cell phone while driving is illegal. There’s a reason for that: it takes too much of your attention and awareness out of the here and now, and opens you to dangers that are much more difficult to avoid if your attention is not ‘here’.
IT’S ALWAYS HAPPENING, SO… NOTICE!
But there is always a transition out of that distracted state, a sudden arrival of our mind into the here and now again. You can be startled out of it by a sudden sharp sound, or you might stumble or bump into something while you’re engrossed in your ‘away thoughts’. The more your attention is elsewhere, the more impact a startle will have on bringing you back to clarity. If your attention is mostly here and now, a car honk right beside you might be annoying but not really startle you; if your attention is far far away, that same honk can startle the daylights out of you, make you jump, make your heart race, make you break out in a sudden sweat and panic while all your survival senses scramble to shift their attention back to the here-and-now again.
And sometimes the transition feels more gentle and organic; you’ve been thinking of other things for awhile, then your thoughts feel like that’s enough for now and they dissolve like a breeze that’s suddenly not blowing anymore, and voila… you’re dialed in to what’s going on around you, you’re in the here-and-now again. You were mostly doing-and-thinking, and you’ve come back more purely to the way you were born: doing-and-experiencing… plus just a little thinking. There is a toggle switch, some constant changing point, and our awareness see-saws back and forth around that balance point. Our here-and-now awareness fades out while we dream or think of things in the distance… and those distracting thoughts fade out while our in-the-moment awareness of what is immediately happening right around us returns.
We yo-yo our attention back and forth at each moment, and don’t notice the transition. It just happens. It’s so natural. Sometimes we have longer, more lost moments of concentration on other thoughts, and we do notice when our attention is suddenly brought back to here and now; we realize that we don’t remember anything from the last four blocks we just walked, or we don’t remember a thing around us from the last fifteen minutes of driving along the highway, or we can’t recall a single thing that happened for the last few minutes in the office while we were thinking or working. But we don’t pay any attention to the actual transition back to clarity, it means nothing to us. We all experience it, dozens or hundreds of times each day, sometimes we notice how far away our thoughts and awareness just were, sometimes we don’t.
A clear mind is something you can measure, something you can build, work towards. As with anything you study, anything you want to become skilled at, the keys to learning and mastering involve repetition, perfecting details, perseverance, and this is no different for clearing your mind so it shines and can take on any daily occurrence with awareness, peace, clarity.
When you begin to really take notice of those moments you transition away from wherever your mind just was, and notice it coming back into being aware and interested in the objects and events immediately around you, and your place within them, then you begin growing your awareness of how often your mind is not clear. You begin to understand just how unruly your own attention span is, how easily the hungry animal of your mind wanders into the deep grass in every direction, always seeking some newer, greener dew-tipped grass to chew into, to think about.
THANK WHATEVER BRINGS YOU BACK
Early on in my new conscious awareness, while taking note of those back-to-clarity transitions, I began to feel grateful toward any event which startled me out of my daydreaming mind and back into here-and-now clarity. At first I’d swear at it; someone yells at you to watch out, or a dog rushes at you, a kid just misses you on his bike, a bug flies into your mouth or eye, a traffic happening that comes too close, you know, those million little things that startle you, annoy you, shock you, rattle you.
Once I began noticing that transition and understanding what was happening… I began thanking it. Something would scare the bejeezus out of me, or just annoy me momentarily, and I’d realize it had just brought me back to the here and now. Naturally I’d be startled and annoyed and say (insert your own cussing here). And then, almost right away, I would also say, “Thank you.” And I meant it. Thank you for reminding me that my mind was out to pasture just now. Thank you for reminding me of how much nicer, more experiential it is, to be in the here and now, rather than daydreaming. Thank you for startling me in a safe way, because in my zoned-out state, what if the thing that startled me into clarity was my being run over by a bus while I was not paying attention to the here and now? Thank you for keeping me safe, even though you annoyed the hell out of me; because we could also say that you possibly annoyed me out of hell. That thing that just startled me back into awareness might also have saved me from the next thing that happened… something that would have injured or killed me if my mind hadn’t been brought back to attention.
Just a couple days ago I was driving around a sharp corner on a back road, and suddenly there was an oncoming vehicle, cutting the corner, over the line and half in my lane so I had to swerve to avoid it. Yes, I cussed, yes, this was a foolish driver. And also… Thank you! I had been daydreaming a bit, dreamily enjoying the scenic drive, working out some things in my mind, not paying close attention simply to the here-and-now of my own driving. So thank you for startling me back to attention, to awake-ness, to awareness. Thank you for doing it in a way that didn’t harm me.
Part of having a clear mind means knowing what your mind is doing at each moment. Knowing where its presence is, knowing what it is focused on, knowing how clearly or unclearly it is sensing things during each moment. In other words, ‘clarity is an amount of awareness’. The less you are aware of the things happening around you and within you, in each moment, the less clear you are. The more you are aware of things happening around you and within you, in each moment, the more clear you are. It’s as simple, and as profound, as that.
That’s all that separates the most suffering person, wondering why life is so hard and nothing works out and everything is against them, from the wisest and most divine person. That ‘amount of awareness’ is all that separates them. There is a world, an entire universe, in ‘amount of awareness’. Noticing your transitions out of daydreaming, or work, or music or whatever, and back into here-and-now clarity, will vastly increase your knowing of yourself, of how your mind is working. Just noticing those transitions will add magnificently to your presence of clear mind over the years.
Your mind will wander. It will wander in and out of the here-and-now, and it will do that all day, every day. That is natural. I am helping you to focus on that one little thing, the benefit of noticing your momentary returns to clarity. Just that tiny little ‘Oh, I just came back’ moment. Even if you totally forget about this tool… sometime in the future, something will startle you away from your daydreaming and back into clarity and you will remember this, and you will smile. And – even if it scared you, annoyed you, pissed you off – I hope you will learn to thank it.
NOTICE YOUR TRANSITIONS BACK TO CLARITY
