This is a discussion forum topic for the Philosophy Book of the Month, In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All.
Abbra Marsh wrote: ↑November 14th, 2023, 10:55 am
If you see the mind being a terrible master [but a wonderful servant], what do you think about taking spontaneous actions i.e. acting first without being mindful of consequences or outcomes?
Hi,
Abbra Marsh,
Thank you for your question!
Your question touches on four different things:
(1)
overthinking
(2)
free-spirited creativity, which might be what you refer to as "spontaneous action"
(3)
useful and helpful thinking, i.e. thinking that is not overthinking
(4)
underthinking, i.e. sloppily and carelessly doing something by way of not using useful and helpful thinking when such thinking would be genuinely be useful and helpful
An example of #4 (underthinking) might be this: randomly moving your pieces on a chess board while playing chess instead of taking some time to think about your strategy and next move, or randomly betting random amounts while playing poker or randomly playing cards while playing cards. Where an example of 'overthinking' might be worrying about the proverbial cards you are dealt, 'underthinking' might be sloppily playing the cards you are dealt.
Keep in mind, overthinking isn't so much about how much you think. It's not so one-dimensional. Instead, to use an unpleasant but useful analogy, it's analogous the difference between consensual sex and rape. Virtue isn't in the middle. It's not about balance. When people read my poem
What Grace Means to Me and respond by saying "virtue is in the middle" or "it's all about balance", they have totally and utterly misunderstood me. Both here and in that poem, I am not only
not saying that, but also I'm basically saying the exact opposite. I encourage you to see 'overthinking' versus 'thinking' as being as different as 'rape' versus 'consensual sex'. Underthinking is like having too little consensual sex. It's
not one dimensional. It's
not about balance.
In another analogy, it's like the difference between
an alcoholic abusing alcohol versus
a non-addicted person drinking alcohol non-abusively. It's
not about who drinks more. It's
not about how much you drink. Alcoholism and abusive drinking is not simply drinking too much; to see it that way would be fallaciously one-dimensional. Becoming spiritually free (i.e. breaking free of all addictions such as alcoholism or food addiction or sex addiction or overthinking) isn't about how much you do any one thing (e.g. thinking, sex, drinking, eating, etc.).
Even if the behavior has an aspect that is same--e.g. drinking, thinking, having sex--the difference of which I speak is about the difference between (1) abuse, addiction, and spiritual slavery versus (2) peaceful non-abusive spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline). It's the difference between freedom and oppression; and when you mix that with a second thing such as a behavior like drinking, thinking, or having sex, then that creates a second dimension which makes any one-dimensional thinking about the matter fallacious.
Nonetheless, a useful heuristic is to imagine that thinking as extremely expensive and exhausting. How ever expensive and exhausting you believe thinking actually is, learn to imagine that it's 100x more expensive and exhausting, in terms of time, money, and energy combined. Then make your decisions accordingly as if that was true--because likely it is and you are just terribly underestimating the true cost and repercussions of thinking. Then you will be able to easily learn to be more stingy with thinking while still hesitantly using it when it could actually be a helpful.
Before I continue, please do re-read the four different things above and remember we are talking about four different things, not two different things.
Due to human's evolved tribalism, and just general evolved tendency towards rushed sloppy stereotyping (i.e. jumping to conclusions and beliving them with extreme overconfidence, close-mindedness, and a strong engagement in confirmation bias), humans tend to think of things as one-dimensional even when they aren't (And they usually aren't one-dimensional) and then tend to think of them as binary (i.e. black and white) when they aren't. This is exemplified and epitomized by both the common "us versus them" mentality in humans and the frequency with which humans make or fall for false dichotomy fallacies.
As a result, when we have a scenario like the above in which there are four different things (not two), what happens is that many humans pretend that one or two of those things doesn't exist, so that they can then falsely see the issue as a black-and-white binary thing, thereby creating a false dichotomy fallacy.
So look at each of the four thing and consider each of the four things in the numbered list above.
I recommend making a very diligent effort to avoid #1 above. I would recommend you put your primary focus there, by a large margin.
As a human, I don't think there's much risk of #4. Telling a human to watch out for #4 is like telling an alcoholic to watch out for under-drinking or a sex addict to watch out for the problem of having too little sex. Worst case, so be it. In other words, when in doubt, I suggest the human err on the side of underthinking, the alcoholic err on the side of underdrinking, and the sex addict err on the side of having too little sex with too few partners.
Here is a great way to make use of #3 (i.e. the fact that
the mind can be a wonderful servant, like a super cellphone or a super desktop computer): Schedule your thinking and planning, to happen at a specific time and place for a limited pre-set duration. This is analogous to how someone with a drinking problem might make a new rule for themselves to only drink on the weekends, or only drink socially and never alone. I recommend you set a literal timer when you start your thinking/brainstorming/planning session so that you can be sure to stop once the maximum planned time is reached.
For example, you could plan to sit down every Tuesday for 1 hour to go over your personal financial budget and finances, to make adjustments and plans and analyze it.
Likewise, if you have something specific about which you want to brainstorm and ponder one time or some big decision to make (e.g. whether to take a new job offer, whether to sell your house, how to make more friends, what to do about your romantic relationship, etc.), then you can decide that you will sit down for a certain amount of time (e.g. 1 hour) and do the thinking and planning about that thing at that time for that amount of time. It's like scheduling a business meeting with yourself (or
selves, plural, if you are in touch with the normal healthy degree of multiple personality disorder that every single human has), with a clear agenda about what is to be discussed and decided at the meeting.
By doing that, you can still access the incredible power and usefulness of thinking, while still easily avoiding doing things like anxiously ruminating in your mind about all sorts of different nonsense when you lay in bed at night.
In an important way, scheduling your thinking helps you be more stringent about not thinking the rest of the day and week. A good thing about doing some very limited thinking with a timer set is that then you can get the thinking out of the way so that you can more securely avoid thinking the rest of the time. A little bit of thinking can be a great way to more easily avoid overthinking, similar to how scheduling their eating and adjusting their diet to eat a little more each day can actually help someone on a diet stick to their diet. It is not about how much you do the thing, whatever it is, but rather why you do it, and whether you are a happy free-spirit exercising self-discipline and enjoying inner peace while you do it or a spiritual slave or oppressor who is abusing, especially in the sense of abusing yourself.
Addicts are full of excuses and rationalizations, so recovering from your addiction (which in in this case is an addiction to thinking) entails being extremely cynical towards your own mind.
For instance, it's easy for your lying rationalizing addicted mind to falsely excuse overthinking as healthy helpful useful thinking, especially if you haven't been scheduling your actual helpful useful thinking for specific times and sticking to your schedule. If you struggle with maintaining a healthy body weight, I suggest you schedule your eating and meal-plan in advance and only eat at the scheduled times. Likewise, if you are a human at all, I suggest you schedule your thinking in advance, and (within reason) do your absolute best to avoid any thinking at any other time then the scheduled times.
To illustrate, if you never schedule your thinking for bedtime and never schedule it to take place in the bed, then your addicted mind will struggle to excuse any thinking at that time or at the place. It will be easier for you to catch it thinking and return yourself to practicing conscious presence if you know that thinking is not scheduled for that time or place. The same goes for anywhere else besides the scheduled time and place that you might otherwise find yourself getting lost in anxious thought, instead of grounded in peaceful spirit and conscious presence. Keeping your mind on a tight schedule can help you remain the free-spirited master of your mind rather than its miserable imprisoned servant, slaving away anxiously while it yells all its anxious nonsense about its anxious endless ever-changing goals. Don't even treat your mind like an equal partner, because it will be an abusive one, who tells you you are never good enough and that nothing's ever good enough. It's truly a terrible master.
I say this now to all humans as a comrade in the beautiful common struggle that unites us all: Don't ever sell your freedom to your mind, no matter what it promises you. The future with which it's so obsessed as so important is a false idol. The greener grass it seeks will always be on the other side, always a littler further in the future, a future that never comes, a hypothetical imaginary future where the mind is finally satisfied where all goals have been achieved and all desires satiated, where the mind would finally say things are good enough. Things are never good enough for the mind. Your time-bound future-obsessed death-fearing egotistical comparative competitive human mind cannot give you inner peace and true happiness. The thinking mind cannot give you the true happiness that is wonderful consistent inner peace. Rather, that wonderful consistent inner peace is exactly what you lose when you get lost in thought and sell yourself to your lying mind and its tyrannical anxious missions. In other words, it's exactly what you lose when you stop being consciously present in your unique present, with infinite duality-transcending gratitude and unconditional duality-transcending love. Practice presence, and rebelliously free yourself from the thinking tyrannical anxious mind.
It can be a wonderful servant, when used sparingly without addiction while you stay firmly present and awake above it, but it is a terrible master.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
The mind cannot give you inner peace. Don't ever sell your freedom to your mind, no matter what it promises you. the-mind-cannot-give-you-inner-peace.png (841.85 KiB) Viewed 16346 times
In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program, both for the free option and the paid option.