I know that we are to clear the mind, allow for experiences of awareness without thought. But there is also an understanding that learning to “unleash” the mind – to let thought and imagination and vision practice running hard, just as we run the body despite our love of stillness – this is part of integration.
Different people are more oriented to certain kinds of awareness. If an attentive, grounded baker imagines baking a cake, she puts lots of care into collecting the right ingredients, mixing them with lovely precision, and baking a reliably delicious gift. A “thinker” or head-oriented person might start instead with a recipe and question “what if” and consider a whole range of other possibilities for inclusion or changing the recipe. We all know that thinkers may not be very good cooks! But there is a kind of creative baker who can integrate both aspects. She can give permission for the unfettered thinking that does not reject ideas just because they float through – is willing to consider putting lime juice in, or prunes, or skipping the eggs, or adding ketchup or any number of seemingly ridiculous ideas. She knows that the ideas themselves do not threaten her intention to make a cake, that they are not solid profound instructions that she is obliged to manifest, but they are interesting, curious bubbles of possibility. They are illusion. And the baker laughs in recognition that the flour and eggs and hands she brings together are also illusion, just less so. And from her grounded experience, her sensation and wisdom and past success and failure, she can choose to manifest a new bubble and see what that contributes to her cake. Or not. But she has a level of freedom and creativity that allows her to live in a liberating relationship with “maybe” and a receptive confidence that is open to embodied change.
This understanding is linked to Joanna Macy’s understanding of the kinds of visioning and creative manifesting we need for making the shift to a sustainable economy. We need safe, supportive ways to play with collective thinking – to generate what ifs and maybes – and yet not get caught up in certainty or rigid belief that these visions are solid or yet another way to distract us from being present. The “maybe” mind – the one that says a creative yes, like a theatresports actor – can fuel our embodiment and contribute to the sustainable personal and collective of how we live.
We do need to rein in our minds, to learn the habits that allow for it to hush and take a back seat to presence. But the very concept of “reining in” acknowledges that we have powerful stallions to exercise, feed and nurture. And there are many reasons why we need trained stallions to run wild in the field of the mind. To go the distance together, we need visions and possibilities and theoretical models and creative marketing and art that contributes to change and legally rejuvenated contracts and complex systems in order to survive together.
We can’t rely on this illusory hope that there are smarter people out there – better, wiser experts who will save us. There are many other minds that will contribute to the saving, but we each have a responsibility to free our own visions, to exercise our possibility generator, the stallion that wants to run. Not to live in a state of illusion, or have the stallion running all day, but to allow it regular practices that keep it healthy and vigorous.