I don’t trust my mind. But it’s not my mind’s fault. It’s been riddled with so many bullets over the years: harsh, staccato words from loving, well-meaning parents who were otherwise emotionally underequipped. As a newly married person, I broke into cold sweat navigating landmines planted with blind, sudden rage. If I wanted to connect with my then-husband, I needed to tread cautiously.
My mind became adept at dodging these bullets and mines over the years. Fleeing my body and getting me the hell out became its default mode. I relied on it to keep me safe.
My parents mellowed with age. I’ve forgiven them. They were doing the best they could with the little they had. I’ve carried myself to safety, away from the landmines. I’ve moved on. And my mind is still desperately doing its best to protect me from all my phantom dangers.
Working Definitions: “What is the Mind?”
Rik, a fellow writer, asked me last week, “What is the mind though, for you?”
Fair question. Mind, Body, Connection, Spirit. They get thrown around so much it means everything and nothing.
For me, my mind is my thoughts and how it interacts with my emotions. How it impacts my creativity, my ability to work through problems, and my capacity to take action.
I both admire and fear my cognitive thoughts. It has an inordinate amount of power over the rest of me. A simple thought can be responsible for a whole host of outcomes. It ignites entire cycles and patterns of yet more thoughts and behaviors.
Take “Maybe I’m not good enough”, an unwelcome and frequent visitor. Too chicken to pester me on its own, it’s called back up: Overcaution, Dread, and Fear. Something about this gang gives me a knee-jerk reaction.
Overcaution keeps my foot on the brakes, makes me divert, move away, and get small. Dread weighs me down. I sink. Fear? I can’t see it, but I can smell its noxious fumes from far away. I do an about-face, and turn around.
Slow down, move away, get small, sink, and turn around. Where does that bring me? I’m absent. I’m missing from my own life.
When I’m out of sight for a while, people forget I’m around. They stop asking me to hang out. No one wants to spend time with me. When I drown in Dread, I’m hardly audible. No one can hear me. They stop listening.
The I’m-not-good-enough sticks. When it’s stuck long enough, it calcifies into I’m bad. The belief that I’m bad cements me into a cycle of ways to hold myself back. And I start believing I’m bad.
That’s when I know I’m doomed.
Captors and Wild Mares
I’ve become accustomed to being held hostage by the never-ending trap of my mind. There was a time I’d fallen in love with my captor. The Stockholm Syndrome thing. It wasn’t entirely evil. I’m grateful it helped me stay alive and survive. Though surviving isn’t a way to live. Especially when we come to see that we have choices.
What if I don’t actually have to evacuate?
If my mind was working full-time to help me flee the pain I felt in my body, what could I do to keep myself from taking flight? What could I do to anchor down so my mind doesn’t evacuate me from the present? I’d do the opposite of what I’d been doing:
Instead of letting my mind lead, what if I listened to my body first?
This was a radical act my mind didn’t appreciate. My mind bucked like a wild mare. She fought. She ducked. She neighed. She sabotaged all efforts to let my body speak. It was an exhausting handover. Then, my body said, “Wait. Tell her she can speak. We’ll listen.”
I didn’t agree at first. I felt like a conflicted parent trying to keep a united front with the other parent, so as not to confuse a child. I wanted more agency than that. I took a breath and scanned my heart for an answer.
I told my mind she would have a say in what we do. Just not the first word. And not the last word. I promised my mind that she would be invited back into the conversation after we heard from the body. The mare, exhausted but not defeated, settled in. She had been so busy she hadn’t noticed she needed rest.
Photo: Rex Picar, Unsplash
Everyone has a place. Everyone wants to heard. I want that for both my mind and my body. I want that for my heart, too. There’s just an order that needs to be respected.
If I were to give meaning to Mind, Body, Heart, and Spirit?
The mind for me is the domino of thoughts and actions. Up to now, it’s default mode has been “I’m not good enough. Actually, I’m bad.”
I know now I can change the default to possibility, or “test for failure”. The mind is an easy traveler; it can travel into light, as it can into shadow. When my mind goes into the light, “I’m no good” starts to sound like:
“What if I have a lot of support?”
“What if I’m actually good at this?”
“It doesn’t have to be hard. This might be totally doable.”
When any of them visit, they call on me with three friends: Hope, Service, and Action. Hope helps me keep the light on. Service opens my heart, and uses Hope’s light as a torch to guide all the helpers my way. Action ignites me to move forward.
Meanwhile, my body is a repository of knowledge and wisdom, sensing, recording, moving, and processing. The body keeps me grounded and connects me to the present moment. It’s a maker of wise presence.
My heart is the place where the earth inside me meets my infinite sky. The place where unconditional love is born and returns. It’s the place we learn to attach and let go. I’m still figuring out a working definition for my heart and what it does. But for now, it feels like a muscle for connection, the place where I practice acceptance, and where healing for myself and with others take place.
Spirit for this animist, is connecting to something, a power that’s greater than me. The awe I feel when I see Mount Yotei. The wonder when I see a baby and all of the miracles for each of us to come into existence and cross paths at this very moment in time. A wave of possibility turns into a tsunami within me when I see a million women marching for sovereignty over our bodies. And the deep and simple humility that quiets me when I read passages written a thousand years ago, and notice how human nature remains quite similar despite our technological advances.
What Next?
This is the beginning of a journey. I’m so glad you’re here. I'll continue exploring the relationship between my mind, my body, my heart, and how spirit weaves itself throughout upcoming pieces. I’ll write about the before and after of my healing, what’s worked for me, and what I know now that I didn’t know before.
While my mind and I are not always on the same page, I care about her, the wild mare. I’m not interested in taming her. I’m getting to know her. I’m choosing the pastures where she can graze and grow. I choose the places we can ride through the countryside, sometimes steadily, sometimes carefree and exhilarated. I make sure she’s safe. We’ve come to understand each other. We trust each other more.
The mare and I, we’re becoming friends.
My deep gratitude to fellow writers Rik van den Berge, Fatima-Zahra Ma-el-ainin, Lyssa Menard, Chris Coffman, and Leo Ariel for their curiosity and questions to bring this essay come to fruition; to my teachers who have helped me to practice stillness, movement, and connection, and the Hoffman Institute for their work in deep compassion and personal change.
