2020 Summit | MVS Full Teaching | Working with the Mind

Marshall: If you’re going to take on bigger things in life and manage a basic life, that requires being pretty present and not…avoiding distractions as much as possible. So I’d like to talk about two things. The first is a practice that was given to me a few years ago called, know where your mind is going. Know Where Your Mind is going. 

Now that’s different than knowing your thoughts. That’s different than just watching your thoughts. It’s different than stepping outside your mind and saying, “Oh, now I’m thinking this. Now I’m thinking that.” Most thinking is in motion. These are streams of thought. You’re building a fantasy reality, you’re recreating a memory, you’re projecting into the future—this is a stream of thoughts. Your mind is going somewhere, all right? And most of these thoughts are connected to something, so it’s a stream of thoughts.

And as you get to know yourself and listen to others objectively, you can see that many streams we share together. You know, we have streams of thought about projecting fearful scenarios for ourselves, imagining what it would be like to be in a difficult situation, imagining ourselves being in a relationship with a person or a place or a thing. These are streams of thought, okay? They’re very common to probably all of us. 

So know where your mind is going and make a decision: Do you want to go there? “No, I don’t want to go there.” So you pull your mind back. Sometimes you may want to go there just to see what that is.

But for the most part, these wanderings of the mind are not fruitful. They’re not leading to a prize or a great realization. So in this way, you keep your mind functional. And part of being functional mentally is being present to what you’re doing, to who you are, who you’re with, what’s going on around you, what’s going on within you—just being present.

In fact, probably the majority of mistakes that we make and people make is because they’re not being present. “I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t see the person stepping out in front of my car”, right? “I didn’t see that item on the stairs that I just slipped on, almost broke my leg. I didn’t see that I left the stove on. I didn’t see that I have to go upstairs three more times because I didn’t follow a certain progression of events I follow every morning to get myself ready for the day.” Being present. 

And being present in a way is kind of a functional stillness, because it’s being observant to what is happening and to what you are doing. Your mind is in motion, but it’s in sync with what you are doing. If you want to contemplate something, sit down and stop doing and start contemplating. If you want to imagine something, don’t be doing it while you’re actually in motion because you will not be paying attention. And when you’re not paying attention, you’re not all there. 

Some people are so not all there that, you know, they’re hardly present for anything. They’re living in sort of a miasmic dream. And so bad things happen to them. And they didn’t see it coming. Before most bad things that will happen to you, there are signs that it is coming—most signs: visual signs, internal signs, signs from Knowledge. Signs. Got to be present for those.

And so being present is…you’ll be surprised at how much of the time you are not present. “Where have I been for the last three hours? Well, I did this…” But you didn’t know where you were. Being present driving a car through town, don’t listen to the radio, don’t be in conversation with people and definitely do not talk on the phone.

Patricia and I came upon out in New Mexico a horrendous head-on collision. People died in it. Because somebody, it turned out, wasn’t looking and took their eyes off the road for a moment, crossed the line, bang! Children on board, everything. It was terrible.

So every time I go outside I am like on alert to be present and observant. Sights, sounds, nature, people, traffic or whatever I’m focused on doing. So being present is really great for your mind. It’s very, very rejuvenating.

In fact, one of the best things you can do for your mind is to be involved in active engagement—probably not your work, but it could be your work—where you’re completely absorbed in it. Perhaps you do that gardening; perhaps you do that playing music; perhaps you do that even during your practice, but you’re absorbed in it. So this is great for the mind. It’s a focused mind. You’re single-minded. That’s great for your mind. That is really what your mind was meant to do.

So as you go through your day, and we…the hourlies help us with this. The hourlies kind of brings us back. How am I feeling? What’s going on with me? What’s going on around me? It’s a reorientation to being present. 

So if you think at the end of the day how much time was spent where you were not present, you really didn’t know what’s going on within you, around you, very carefully; okay, you’re able to drive through traffic and you did these things…but how much were you with your own experience? How much were you seeing things around you carefully, discerning your environment?

And it just sounds like a very obvious and simple thing. But actually most people do not practice being present, either to their own experience, to the experience of others or to what’s going on around them. And so when bad things come down the line, they blame others. They play the victim card, which is really stupid.

What’s going on in people’s careers right now? You can see these things coming, these trend lines coming that may make your line of work obsolete or reduce it greatly, or maybe there’s a technological change that will alter your line of work, or eliminate it all together. This is called paying attention, watching for signs.

I think watching for signs is just something you do peripherally. I don’t think you have to do it with high intention. It’s just you watch for things that stand out in your experience. But to do that, you have to be present to your experience. And “present to your experience” is a kind of functional stillness. I am with what I am doing.

I can’t tell you what a difference this will make in terms of reducing the number of errors, mistakes, oversights in your life. Your discernment of other people becomes heightened and sharp. And you begin to become engaged with your own experience more consistently, which gives you kind of a measure of how you feel about things that you encounter as you go through each day.

So, knowing where your mind is going is one practice. Being still is another. But to know where your mind is going, you have to be still and present enough to know where your mind is going. Ah. What is my mind doing right now? I kind of sense…I know where this is going to go. This is going to go down some predictable pathway. And I’m not going to do that. So I click off, come back to being present. It’s a great reorientation to just come back to be present. You don’t have to be at peace. Don’t be loving. Loving is a behavior. I can’t stand it when people try to be loving; it’s so false. Just come back to be present. To be really loving with people, you have to be present to them, then it comes naturally—compassion, regard, appreciation.

So for me being present…every time I get up in the morning I have a list of things on my mirror that I have to do before I can launch my day. I’m getting a little older so my memory isn’t quite as great.  So, because I want to be present, because I don’t have to repeat my actions over and over again. Oh, where did I leave my phone? Oh, where did I leave my wallet? What was I supposed to be doing? Where am I now?

I’m going to look at you; is this resonating with your experience? I’m going to look at you. Give me a nod if you think this is hitting home in some way. Okay, good. So this is very simple, but I think as a…being conscious…I like being present because when you say, “I’m aware”, well, what are you aware of? Are you aware of your thoughts? That doesn’t mean anything if you’re not guiding your mind. “I’m aware of strange things.” Well, that doesn’t mean anything unless they really have importance for you. 

I think being present is a much better marker for being practically and meaningfully engaged with life and with everything in it. And it, by its very nature, invites you to become objective because you’re not adding meaning or preference to the things you’re looking at. When you do that, you’re not present anymore; you’re only seeing yourself. I look at a person and I have judgments and preferences and dislikes. I’m not seeing that person. I’m seeing myself. Most people look out and all they see is themselves—their thoughts, their beliefs, preferences, judgments. They’re not seeing anything. So life treats them harshly because they’re not paying attention.

So I think this is for me a real, or a daily, signpost to know where my mind is going, decide where I want…do I want to go there; stop it and redirect it and be present. If I’m being present, I’m not distracted. And I’m also much more powerful. 

I first really came upon this when I was reading about this monastery in Nepal and the senior monks—you know, the real senior monks; major daily practice; I mean, arduous and continuous—what stood out for me was they all had some creative activity that they did. One was the calligrapher for the monastery. Another was the photographer of the monastery. The other was the garden designer who kind of oversaw their garden. Another did…kind was set up for their ceremonies they did artistically. They all had some kind of creative artistic thing that was related to their being a monk, but was of a different mindset altogether than very serious, determined, focused spiritual practice. And that really intrigued me. 

And so I noticed that people who have fifth Pillars tend to be doing better all the way around than people without. And one way to describe a fifth Pillar…There’s this very important book written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalhi.  He taught at the University of Chicago. I don’t know if he still does or not. It’s a very kind of seminal book that came out in the 80s called Flow.

And they did a major study of what makes people really happy, like under…normal happy. And they came down to having an activity that’s not passive—it’s actually active—in which you completely involve yourself. It has…generates—as long as you’re not looking at something very horrible or doing something that’s really awful—creates states of well-being that are very hard to achieve in any other way, aside from The Way of Knowledge, as I would see it.

So to have a fifth Pillar means that you have some kind of activity that’s involving. It’s not passive. It’s not relaxing; relaxing is not flow. A flow is an activity that you engage in, and in addition to the other things you do, but unrelated to them. It’s almost like it has no direct…it’s not providing any benefit financially or to your family, maybe not even to your health. But it’s something that you can become engaged in that gives your mind focus and reprieve from the rest of your life. Otherwise, your mind is going to get drilled down, become too hardened, too weighted, too oppressed.

And the other thing I’ll add is in addition to that, that I’ve come to see that what creates happiness in life is not achieving big happy things. Because those pleasures don’t last very long, even if you can achieve them—and often you don’t achieve them. It’s the simple pleasures every day. The simple things that feel good that are healthy, simple and doable. To enjoy them, you have to be present to them. So being present here is necessary. 

Many simple pleasures in a day will aggregate, will build up to give more sense of well-being than trying to have some big and pleasurable experience, which may or may not be achievable, and sometimes when you have it, it’s really not that great, or maybe it lasts for a few hours. 

So I’ll leave those two things with you, the fifth Pillar which we’re talking about. And you can think about this, what that might be for you. It can’t have any practical value.

Reed: Like gardening.

MVS: Well, gardening…but I mean, yeah, but gardening can be work, too. I mean, it’s better that it probably is not part of your practical daily regime.

Reed: We have an audience suggestion of one ice cream a day as a fifth Pillar, perhaps.

MVS: Yeah, but it’s not…it doesn’t it doesn’t fit the flow…It doesn’t fit the flow definition. That’s a simple pleasure, yes. But for flow, it’s got to be something you can really focus on that is restorative to you. And it doesn’t have to be practical. It doesn’t have to make money. And it doesn’t have to be something that you necessarily have to share with other people, though you might find someone to share it with.

So think of these things because our happiness and well-being, I mean, we’re not going to make it; we’re not going to take on bigger things if we don’t have that balancing to be lighthearted, you know? And we’re entering a much harder world coming over the horizon. So this lightheartedness is very important, but it involves certain activities that relax you, refocus you, give you a reprieve. They could be simple pleasures. It can be a fifth Pillar, which is something you do more regularly that seems to balance your life out and give you greater ability to deal with harder things.