For a new writer, it can be difficult to find space to write your book. I don’t mean physical space. We can usually find a combination of location and time that, for one or two hours is quiet and you can be alone with your thoughts.
But is being alone with your thoughts such a good thing? Our thoughts can be useful (we certainly need them) but sometimes they plague us. We are pursued with questions from the sublime (“Am I ever going to write” to the mundane “did Jules forget his homework? Am I going to be fired” to the frightening “Why does my significant other end their call when I come in the room?”) Some thoughts just get in the way. How do we get rid of them?
Eckert Tolle has written extensively on this. I have adopted his approach, targeting it specifically for new writers.
Our minds are not everything
René Descartes, a French mathematician and philosopher said “I think, therefore I am.” It was both very popular and far from the truth.
We have all experienced the absence of thought. Suppose that you just heard that your significant other has been in a terrible accident. Where does your mind go? Or you received a call from a camp counselor saying that your son is lost. Or you won $700 million in the lottery. Or you walked in on the intimacies of your significant other with someone else. Or you just learned that your fourteen year old is pregnant. Or the state police show up unexpectedly at work and arrest you for a murder in a state that you never visited.
Shock. Numb. Nothing to think. We say, “My mind went blank, or “It blew my mind,” or “My mind just left me.”
These are aphorisms for nothing to think. Yet you are still here, dealing with the explosive situation.
These admittedly extreme examples demonstrate how you have urgent situations for which your mind initially is of no help.
Our goal is to conduct this mind-emptying of our own accord. Voluntarily.
So let’s do it. Right now.
What am I thinking
Look up from your device and ask, “What am I thinking?”
The answer is itself an illumination. You’re thinking lots of things, right? The noise outside. What someone told you at daycare. The chapters that you still need to read. That terrible email from the colleague you don’t like. Did I pay my cell phone bill? I hate my new computer. Do I really have a trip tomorrow? I don’t know where my car keys are. Will there be a negative review of my essay? Why is this room always so dim? Where is my boyfriend? I don’t like this apartment.
And, it seems that you can’t stop thinking these thoughts. Your mind is dragging you like a walker is yanked and jerked by five strong and forceful dogs, independently tugging hard at their leashes that you hold, pulling you sharp left, then a wrench backwards, then suddenly all the way forward. They don’t stop, and they are always there. And you are attached, like it or not.
Your mind can be a wild, raging thought-river, uncontrolled strong thought-currents sweeping you through, smashing and colliding, amplifying, and intensifying, with you caught up in it all. A maelstrom. Always swirling, always powering forward.
If you think that a mind empty of thought is not productive, then ask yourself how “productive” your mind is left to its own? It’s a tornado. Tearing through flotsam thoughts. Churning up intense emotion. Making more flotsam. Tearing through that.///Our minds are cluttered, wild and unharnessed. Like fire, your thoughts are good servants, but bad masters.
Managing the dogs
If you’ve never vacated your mind before, then you are in for a real treat.
Let’s deal with these five or six dogs, pulling and wrenching you one way or another on this crazy dog walk.
Drop the leashes.
What happens?
They run off, jumping and scampering, this way and that, barking, getting in each other’s way. You are now not a thought victim, you are a thought observer. That’s the key. You are standing apart, observing your mind. You’re not fighting, you are just not participating in the thought melee.
If your mind is the raging river, then go to the riverbank, climb out, and sit, watching the waves hurdle by. Watch their turbulence, being thankful that, for at least once, you are not caught up in it.
You have separated yourself from your mind. You are no more your mind then you are your liver. Sure, you need it, but there is much more to you than that. Same with your mind. It is tool that you own and use. It is not you.
How do you do this? As an observer, look at one thought at a time. Don’t fight it. Inspect it, Make sure you understand what it contains, and what your mind wants you to do with it. Then decide, “No. I reject that thought for now. I won’t be dwelling on it. So, what else do you have for me?”
That’s it.
This is dropping the leash. Where is the dog going to go? Somebody else’s mind? Ultimately it will come back. But, when it does, you only pick up the leach when you are ready.
Put no energy into the thought-rejection. This is not a fight. It’s a decision. Don’t turn your thought-repudiation into a “battle for mind control”. Our minds love to fight for thoughts, to stoke them up and then ram them home, supercharging our emotions. For example, the agitation generated by the thought, “Aren’t my sister’s children prettier than ours?” is already emotion laden, and can hook you before you know it. “How did I start thinking about that?” you ask. Thought emotion saps your strength before you even realize that you are immersed in the thought-emotion.
Don’t blame your mind
Don’t get angry with yourself, or your mind for “undermining you”, or “betraying you” with its self-inflicted thought-chaos.
It’s not that your mind’s unhappy with you, or wants to psychologically injure you, or hates you. Nothing like that.
It is simply that your mind doesn’t know better.
Serving up thoughts is what it does. It’s not malicious. Any more than your small bowel is “malicious” for digesting food. It’s simply all that your normal mind knows to do. It pushes thoughts your way to protect and defend you. To keep you alive. But, like a jackhammer that is locked in the “On” position, making mental noise and blasting through thought-concrete is all that your mind knows to do.
But, now, things are different.
You are now the governor of your mind. You control the on and off switch. To empty your mind, you simply take each and every thought that it offers to you, inspect it, then set it aside and wait for the next to be set aside as well until no more are left.
So, you use your mind like you use an implement. Like a car, a wrench, a trackball, a remote control, or fire, your mind is a tool at your disposal. Many times you use it.
Sometimes, you simply put it down.
Stubborn thoughts
Some thoughts don’t want to be banished. Suppose your first thought is “Is my daughter on drugs?” A powerful, primal thought. It acts as though its undeniable importance overrides any energy you use to push it away. It demands your full attention. Now. It keeps coming back.
However, the principal rule is that it is now you who govern your mind. Not the reverse.
All that you need to think in response, quietly, clearly, is “I’m not dwelling on that thought right now. What’s the next one?”
Should it come back, and it likely will, don’t get angry, don’t get frustrated, don’t reject yourself. Simply say again. “No, not now.” Act like you are talking to a well-meaning but persistent employee. You will get back to him or her in time.
I have had thoughts (imperative, driving thoughts that required careful consideration) come back at me ten times. Fifteen time. Each time I conduct the emptying process. As long as I am insistent and persistent, they recede. I know that there will be time when I think about them but that time is not now.
Don’t get mad with you or your mind. Just be determined.
Congratulations
Congratulations, you are now governing your mind. It may be the first time in your life.
You are not “controlling your mind”. That would be a battle that your mind would love to join. You are also not suppressing anything. In fact, you will consider and inspect any and every thought that your mind throws at you. You are not stopping your mind from doing anything. Let the thought stream flow, as it does naturally. You are simply letting it know that for now, you will not be dwelling on thoughts. You have stepped out of the stream. And, from this point forward, you will be dwelling on a thought only if you affirmatively choose.
Like any new skill, this requires practice. I try to do this every day. I don’t have to be alone. I can be on a plane, I can be sitting in a noisy terminal, or a quiet tub, or the hospital. Thought-banishment is a relieving, relaxing skill.
Alternatively, if I have not practiced “mind-relief” for a week (for example being in the midst of an interstate move), it can take me two hours to empty my flotsam, detail-filled mind. I much prefer to do it each day.
Doing this each day is a great exercise. When you first wake up, and your mind “hits you” with the agenda for the day, you have a wonderful opportunity to fulfill your governor’s role, inspecting and rejecting each of them (after all, do you really have to resolve who is picking up your mother-in-law in a month, right now at 3:47A.M?) Each day, you become a stronger governor and your mind emptying exercise becomes much easier, even natural.
When you get to the point that the thoughts all but ask permission to be thought, when you can inspect them before they capture you, you have arrived.
You are deciding what you think, not your mind. And in the process, you have given yourself clutter-free space.
What do to with the new space
To many people, the vacated mind is the goal. They are now free to be at complete peace with themselves.
Some of your most creative ideas can “come to you” from here. This is the root source of innovation, where the ”Eureka” moment is found.
So enjoy the thought-free space. You have earned it. In this new space, use your discipline to write.