co·here·now

The human mind loves to feel like it has everything under control. And so it likes to build mental images of things. Simple, neat, isolated images that reinforce the belief that all variables are known and thus everything is under control. For example, when you are planning to go out and meet a friend, you might have a mental image of what things will be like. If you are going to see a show and you are buying tickets, you might have an idea of how enjoyable the experience will be. How you and your friend will feel entertained and satisfied. How you will both leave the show feeling that the experience was worth the money.

Sometimes all of this plays out as you’d expect. But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes there is traffic and you are late. Sometimes you or your friend feel ill at the last moment and cancel. Other times the show isn’t enjoyable - it’s not funny, too predictable, offensive, etc. And when this happens, how do you feel? For many people, it’s like they’ve had the rug pulled out from under them. Surprised, annoyed, regretting things. “Hey what happened here? I was expecting things to go a different way.” So what happened?

It all starts with the creation of a mental image in your mind that depicts how things might go. “I will get there on time. Connect and share stories with my friend. Laugh. Be captivated by the show. And then return home with a warm, fuzzy feeling of connection and satisfaction.” Perhaps there is a visual element to it where you visualize you and your friend enjoying the show. Like a daydream. And every so often, when you think of the upcoming show, you might replay imaginary scenes in your mind of what could happen and what you’d like to happen. You might mention to your friend, “I’m excited. I think it’s going to be a fun night.”

As you do this, you feed energy into your mental image and the image transforms from a possibility of how the night might unfold into how you expect the night to unfold. And then as the night unfolds, something unexpected happens. Reality does not live up to your expectations. You imagined one thing was going to happen and then something completely different happened.

Many people react to this experience by blaming their outer circumstances. “It was the show’s fault. Traffic caused the problem. It’s flu season. There’s nothing I can do about it.” Others take more responsibility and blame their mental image. “I should have been more careful and read the reviews. If I left earlier I wouldn’t have been caught up in traffic.” They think that if only they had a more detailed, accurate mental image, then everything will go as they expect it to. If they read the reviews for the play, leave earlier to beat traffic, get a flu shot, then everything will go as expected. “It’s that simple. If I just understand more of the variables at play, then eventually I’ll be able to control how things turn out and I’ll never be surprised.”

And so the next time, they read the reviews and they leave early and they get their flu shot and the show is a bust anyways. But they didn’t read the right reviews. They didn’t leave early enough. And so back to the drawing board, to gather more information, to adjust expectations, to improve the mental model. And this cycle can continue for a long time.

Many people spend their whole lives trying to avoid what they consider unpleasant by building more and more sophisticated mental images. And yet one way or another, life eventually finds a way to surprise even the most prepared, the most knowledgeable people. And why is that? Because reality exists outside of our minds. No matter how detailed your mental image is, it is still an image in your mind. And it will never capture the fullness of reality because it isn’t reality. It’s what you think reality is.

Yet many people believe reality should live up to their images, not the other way around. This sense that life is going to unfold exactly as we imagine it will, that we can control everything in our lives, that we know what will happen - makes us feel safe and secure. If we don’t know what’s going to happen, then anything could happen. Even things we don’t want to happen. Even things that we are afraid of. Even things that we believe could destroy us. So we reason that if we can just plan out every little detail in our lives, we can avoid those things.

And given how the world around us is constantly changing and there is always the risk of experiencing pain and suffering, it’s understandable that we seek security. The problem is that this sense of security isn’t reliable. It’s an illusion. No matter how sophisticated our plans and expectations are, we still end up being let down and surprised because we can’t predict what will happen in life. It’s too complicated and the future is constantly changing. Life is an ever-evolving, interconnected, interwoven whole, where a change in one part affects the whole and vice versa.

So what can you do? The first step is recognizing this dynamic in yourself. This tendency to create mental images and expect that the world lives up to them. Recognize your reactions when that doesn’t work out. And then you can begin to recognize that your mental images are just images. They are not reality and they will never capture the fullness of reality. So it doesn’t make sense to expect that life conforms to them.

This doesn’t mean that all mental images are bad and that you should never create them. Mental images are incredibly important tools that we use to create things. How do you think the light bulb would have ever been invented if it hadn’t started as an image in someone’s mind? It’s necessary to formulate mental images in order to bring ideas to life, in order to interact with the world and reason about how things might interact.

The problem arises when people mistake their mental images for reality, when they become attached to their images and base their sense of security on their images coming to fruition. You can envision a light bulb in your mind all you want, but until you actually do something physical, you’re not going to create a physical light bulb. And just because you envision a light bulb in a particular way doesn’t mean that it is possible or practical to physically create it in that way. You will likely try and fail many times before you actually create something that you would call a light bulb.

Letting go of your mental images and expectations doesn’t mean you no longer have dreams or aspirations or goals or hopes. You can still plan. You can still leave early to beat traffic. That’s practical. It means that you recognize the limitations of your images and that you lessen your attachment to specific outcomes so that you are not so disturbed when things unfold in unexpected ways.

When life throws a curveball, you can step back and say, “Ah, I created a mental image of an outcome that I got attached to. I can’t expect life to conform to my mental images. After all, life is much more vast and intricate than any image I could come up with. So what can I do? I can let go of my mental image and experience life more directly.” And as you let go of each mental image, you become more free. You are no longer conditioning your sense of security and state of mind on specific outcomes, and, perhaps more importantly, you can experience things as they are.

An image in your mind can act like a veil that separates you from a more direct experience of what you are imagining. For example, let’s say you were looking at a rose and you had a mental image of what a rose is like. “It’s beautiful and pink and smells so good. It’s my favorite flower. I love the way the petals are shaped in delicate layers.” It’s a great image, but when you are looking at a rose and you have this image in your mind, you aren’t really seeing the rose, you aren’t really experiencing the rose. You are seeing it how you want to see it, colored by the veil of your mental image. But when you let go of all your descriptions and expectations and let your mind fall quiet, like an alpine lake that is so still it forms a mirror, you can come into a more direct experience of the rose and see it for what it is - which is completely beyond words. It is much more than any description you could come up with. It is how it is. It is a rose, but it is also dirt and air and light, molecules and atoms and quantum particles. There is no longer any distance in your mind between you and the experience.

Experiencing things as they are is worthwhile in and of itself. It allows you to touch something deeper and more everlasting than you’ve ever touched before. And that’s worth it. Additionally, it also allows you to work with life rather than against it. When you are blinded by an illusion, you can’t see very clearly. All you can see is the illusion. And sure, perhaps the illusion makes you feel comfortable in some ways, but it also causes a lot of friction because it’s constantly coming into conflict with glimpses of reality that sneak up on you.

In this sense, illusions cause you to work against life. You want life to conform to your mental image of it and life won’t. Life simply refuses and there is nothing in your power that you can do to change that. Why? Because life doesn’t revolve solely around you and your mental images. Life is a collective unfolding. And when you let go of whatever illusion you are holding on to, you can begin to work with life rather than against it.

It’s as if you are trying to put on a shoe that’s too small for you. Your foot will never fit, but you ignore that and you think it must fit because you want it to fit. “I want that shoe to fit. Maybe if I try it this way or that way.” But this is an illusion. You’ve created a mental image that that particular shoe must fit, but in reality, it doesn’t. So when you surrender your mental image, your illusion, then you might see clearly enough to notice that there is a shoe one size up that fits perfectly. And that’s working with life.

When you experience things more directly, when you let go of the mental images of how you think life should flow, then you can recognize how life is flowing and you can flow with it. Of course this doesn’t mean that you will never be surprised. In fact, it means that you will constantly be surprised. For life is surprising and ever-evolving. However, rather than running from the surprises, you can embrace them. Because where there is surprise, there is opportunity - opportunity for something even more grand and beautiful than you ever thought possible. And the opportunity is constantly flowing.

When you begin to let go of your mental images, you can realize that just like the rose, you are also much more than any description. At a young age, we often have a mental image of ourselves - although perhaps not consciously - of what it means to be a child in the environment we grew up in. We are dependent on our mothers and fathers - we need them to change our clothes, cook food, go places. So we have this image of what we can do and can’t do. We are children who can ask questions and play and our basic needs are taken care of by our parents. As you grow older, this image changes. As a teenager, you no longer need your parents to change your clothes or brush your teeth and while playing is still important, you are now expected to take on more responsibilities, like getting good grades and cleaning up after yourself. You think of yourself as a bit more independent and perhaps clashing from time to time with your parents. And as you continue to grow older, your image of yourself continues to change. As an adult, you no longer think of yourself as a helpless child or an anxious teenager. Perhaps you think of yourself as a husband or wife, as a healthy, strong, responsible adult with a blooming career. Perhaps you think you know quite a bit about life and that other people should listen to you.

And everything is fine, until one day, seemingly out of nowhere, life throws you a curveball and threatens your self image. Perhaps you lose your job, grow apart from your spouse or get ill. Losing your job threatens the image of a successful person with a blooming career. Perhaps you define success as being an expert in your field, or making a certain amount of money or rising to a certain level in your organization. How can you be a “successful” person if you’ve lost your job? How can you be the “perfect” spouse and parent when your marriage is falling apart? How can you be a healthy, strong, independent adult when you are ill and unable to do things you once did?

All of a sudden the image of who you thought you were is under attack. And this is such a frightening possibility that most people live their whole lives trying to avoid anything that threatens their mental image of who they are. Because when you identify so strongly with a mental image, you believe you are that image. You believe that the image is an accurate representation of who you are. And if the image is under attack, then so are you. If you identify strongly enough with the image, then it can even feel like you are dying when the image comes into question. If you are no longer a husband or businesswoman or healthy, then who are you?

That’s a good question. But most people live their whole lives without really ever asking it openly and honestly. They cling to their images and do everything they can to avoid anything that threatens them. And when life catches up to them and circumstances change, they eventually accept the changes and adjust their images. “Now I’m single and divorced, but I’m still a good father to my children. Now I’m disabled and need help to live day to day.” And then they cling to those new images until something threatens them and the cycle continues until one day they start to question, “Is this really who I am?” And the answer is no, it’s just an image of who you think you are that you’ve created in your mind. If you want to know who you really are, then you have to go beyond your mental images.

Even though you’ve changed throughout your life. Even though you once thought of yourself as a helpless child and now perhaps you think of yourself as a relatively capable adult, you are still you. There is a you beneath all the outer personality, appearances and circumstances. You are the “I” when you say, “I am”. And when you begin to question your mental images of who you think you are and get in touch with who you really are, then life gets much easier, because the real you is beyond your outer circumstances and it can’t be threatened when those circumstances change.

When you look deeply enough, you can see that you are not your outer personality. Your personality is changing. In fact, you might be a bit more serious than you once were. You are also not your outer appearance. Your body is constantly changing. It’s growing older. And yet here you are. You are conscious. You are aware. And when you experience that pure awareness, you can see that you are beyond your body and that you are beyond anything in this world. And that you are not going to die when the body dies or when a mental image of yourself dies. You will still be here. And when you let go of your false sense of security that you’ve based upon your mental images, you can find a solid, lasting sense of security in being who you truly are. Nothing in this world can take that away from you. When you realize that, you can let go of the control games and the fear begins to fall away.

When you cling to an image of yourself and believe you are defined by that image, what is happening? In part, you are defining what you can and can’t do based on the image. You are saying, “I am like this. And because I am like this, I can do these things and I can’t do these things.” For example, if you have an image of yourself as a shy person, then you can hide from people and you can’t speak publicly. “Oh, I could never do that. I’m too shy.” I’m sure you’ve said things like this about yourself at one time or another. “Oh, I could never paint. I’m not creative enough.” Or whatever it may be. And what you are doing is you are creating a mental box around yourself, defining what you can and can’t do based on a belief. And this affects your actions. You are very unlikely to ever try public speaking or painting if you believe that you can’t do it.

So do you want to limit yourself in this way or do you want to explore the possibility that you might be more than how you’ve defined yourself in your mind? You might not actually be shy. You can begin to ask the questions and explore it for yourself. You might find out that actually that sense of identity is something you’ve chosen to take on and it’s not truly you. It could be based on a choice that was made in response to trauma. For example, when we express our creativity and someone puts us down, in response we might say to ourselves, “I’m never going to express myself again.” And from there that might build into a belief that you are shy because you are afraid of expressing yourself. There is a reason why you believe something about yourself, why you’ve created a mental image and you can follow the thread and unwind the knot. And when you’ve let go of one limiting image and another and another, where’s the limit? There is none. That’s when you can really begin to tap into who you truly are and even the physical begins to seem a lot less limiting than it once did.

Mental images not only limit our actions, but they limit our beliefs and perception. Let’s say you see yourself as a materialistic person who’s living in a material world, and there is nothing else beyond that material world, and the material world came into existence from a big bang, and particles randomly collided until you came into being, and your consciousness derives from electricity and neurons in your brain. If you have this mental image of what life is like and how you fit into it, then what do you believe? You believe that you die when the body dies and that you exist as an object isolated from everything and everyone else around you. And when you fully believe this, you can’t even entertain the idea that you are more than your body and that there is life beyond what you can experience with your outer senses and that you’ve reincarnated on this planet for a long time. It doesn’t fit into your mental image, so you toss it aside. And so of course, you will never be able to experience whether or not there is life beyond your outer senses. You completely shut down the possibility of experiencing it when you believe it’s impossible.

If you want to take a more scientific approach, you can ask the question, “Do I really know that I am not more than the body? Could it be possible that I am a conscious being beyond space and time first of all, and that I am inhabiting my body second of all, rather than the other way around? Could it be that I’ve reincarnated on this planet for a long time and that I was born from other conscious beings who are also beyond space and time?” If you believe strongly enough in the materialistic paradigm, then you can’t ask these questions honestly. It just sounds silly or weird. But if you want to experience that you are more than the body, you have to ask the question and open yourself up to the experience. And then you can know for yourself whether there is truth to that or not.

Or you can cling to your mental image until it begins to crack. As happened to people that clung to the traditional model of Newtonian physics, where they believed everything was a separate object interacting with other separate objects. All was good until experiments showed that this couldn’t be possible, and as a result the field of quantum physics was born. People realized that nothing is really separate, everything is interconnected. The separation is an illusion and everything is energy. Life seems to be a certain way when we look at it from a distance, but when we look closer, we see that there is much more to it. And there is always more to it.

When you begin to see this, you can also experience that life isn’t so hostile and that you don’t need to be constantly running from things and defending yourself. In fact, the surprises serve as an important reminder, as a teaching. Life wants you to let go of your mental images. Life doesn’t want you to be trapped in your own limiting beliefs and illusions. And so it will happily challenge them, because it wants you to grow. And if you are willing to do that, you begin to see that life is actually infinitely supportive of you and unconditionally loving.

Life loves the real you so much that it’s not willing to allow you to remain trapped in an illusion forever. But of course, you still have a choice. You can cling to your mental images and run and fight and defend them, which will only increase the resistance that you experience in life as you attempt to swim upstream. Or you can let go of your mental images and allow yourself to flow and grow into a higher sense of who you are and how life is. A mental image can be like a rock in the river that you are hanging on to, and you are afraid that if you let go, then you will drown and be overwhelmed by the currents. But when you finally get tired of holding on, and you do let go, you realize that you don’t drown - everything is fine, because you are actually one with the river.