The Tyranny of My Mind

From the original manuscript by Mendek Rubin,
”In Quest of the Eternal Sunshine”

Our school system teaches knowledge by rote. It is forever powerless to imbue our children with the gift of free thoughts. It fails to develop in them a stream of consciousness imbued with wisdom, love, joy, and happiness. Neither our homes nor our school system are conducive to encourage children to trust themselves, to create thought forms that are positive, loving, beautiful, playful, innocent, compassionate and sublime. Free thoughts cannot be captured in a formula, it cannot be acquired by rote, books cannot be written about it, and it cannot be verified in a laboratory. It is not amenable to testing or grading. The brain doesn’t retain the capabilities to sense, comprehend, and harmonize with the flow of life. It doesn’t resonate with the rhythm, heartbeat and the spontaneous Bliss of Creation. The brain is an instrument that can perform certain tasks only. The brain cannot deal with the human predicament. Our ego identifies with our brain. The brain, acting jointly with our approval, created the human predicament.

In the back of my mind I always sensed that man is a creature of habit, but I paid no attention to it. However, not by the widest stretch of the imagination would I ever have imagined that my outlook on life, my perception of reality, is largely a creation of habit. The end product of mechanical and repetitive thinking. That must be true to my reactions to pain and pleasure as well. I always prided myself as being a realist, but I was wrong. I don’t know myself and no one really does. If I didn’t know myself, I don’t know anything. Once I believed my thoughts and emotions are relevant, valid, based on reason and truth. I never bothered to ask: “If I am so smart, how come I am so unhappy”?

How astounded and startled I was to discover that my opinions, my drives, ambitions, needs, likes, dislikes — my emotions in general — are like fixtures in my house. They are there, in the same place where they had been installed many long years ago. What is more, my thoughts were installed in my house, in the home of my psyche when I was not looking. Like the permanent fixtures in my home, they cannot be moved about easily, they have to be pried out. My thoughts and emotions are willful and tyrannical and I do their bidding. They control me, I don’t control them. They are well established in my psyche, permanently recorded and etched into my memory, but they are not my own. They constitute my ego. 

It is the long arm of the law of repetition and habit that reaches out to the entire land, affecting every man, woman and child. It is ever pronouncing its unbreakable and unshakeable laws. It states in no uncertain terms that: Once I persuade myself that I am undeserving, unhappy, unloved, that I have low self-esteem, once I take it to my head that the world has done me wrong, my fate is sealed. I will not get a second chance again. That is how the law works, and I cannot do anything about it. My thoughts will keep on whispering into my ears again and again, convincing me that I am unhappy, unloved, undeserving, and I will believe it.

The law of habit and repetition states: If it so happens that I was deprived of love, joy, laughter, security, protection, and acceptance in my childhood I will re-experience these emotions for the rest of my life. This same law proclaims loudly, categorically, unashamedly, in unmistakable terms: If I once walked the crooked way, there is no going back. I will keep on walking the crooked way forever.

It is obvious to me that I am the possessor of a brain that I am very proud of. As a matter of fact I am so in love with it that I will never recognize its shortcomings, even if it kills me. Nevertheless, my brain produces a product that is flawed. For sure, my brain is in many ways intelligent, innovative, and intuitive. Yet, in a most important way, my brain is failing me. It is only failing because of my ignorance, pride and self-will. If I consider my brain a friend, God help me. I don’t need enemies. I am in reality a loser. Yet I need my brain, I cannot do without it.

From my experiences I learned how painful and heart-rending is the process to abide by Socrates’ motto: “Know thyself.” Again and again I experience the overwhelming frustration that the pursuit of self-knowledge brings to the fore. Not the least of it is the craving to hold on to the old, including my unhappiness, to the artificial needs, to the false opinions, to the anger and blame. It is an addiction, a craving akin to the dependency of smoking, drugs, and alcohol. How shattering it is to one’s pride to discover that the life-long convictions that I was defending with all my strength and vigor, are in fact a product of my early condition; that my opinions that I was very proud of are by and large unimportant and inconsequential. 

My brain works like a feedback system. Whatever goes in comes out. Like a computer, its decisions or conclusions are mechanical. It is not equipped to make decisions on its own. My memory is filed away in my head in the same manner as information is filed away in a filing cabinet. With one difference: with my filing cabinet I have a choice of what I want to keep there. In my filing cabinet I file away for safekeeping only information that I need, that would be beneficial for me in the future. I would certainly go through the filing cabinet periodically and get rid of old and useless stuff stored there. I don’t have the same freedom with the information that is filed away in my head. There is nothing new about my thought that has not been there before; it all comes out from the same “files” filled away in the “filing cabinet”. Original thoughts, creative ideas, never originate in my brain, they flash into me by the wonders of intuition. In my robot-like ways, I live, breathe, make love, get annoyed, make friendships, take a vacation according to the information that is retrieved from my “filing cabinet” (my memory).

If I had the freedom to think, I would most certainly prefer thoughts only that make me feel good, that bring me happiness; thoughts that tend to help and promote my well-being and others, thoughts that make life a great adventure. I know of no greater blessing than a profound thought, an ennobling thought, an original thought. If I could only be that lucky, I would be able to create thought forms that are beautiful and sublime. I would radiate sunshine, spread warmth and light all around me. I would become a blessing to everyone who comes into the circumference of my benign environs. I would inspire others to greatness; uplift them from their doldrum existence. But my thoughts have been habitually a source of endless struggle and anguish, carriers of bad news. If I had the freedom to think for myself I would choose thought forms that engender laughter, festivity, and amusement. Why should I choose negative thought forms that bring out the worst in me? Why should I be oppressed with sadness, sorrow and dissatisfaction unless I have to? If I had a choice I would be living in bliss, in the Garden of Eden. But I can’t, because my thoughts run in grooves, engraved deep in my memory. I cannot avail myself of thoughts other than those that my memory retains. I am contained in these thoughts. Thoughts from others that don’t harmonize with my thought I consider stupid, unrealistic, immoral. I am trapped in my thoughts like an animal in the cage.

I cannot break out of my cage because my thoughts are invisible, elusive, and incomprehensible, and I cannot get a hold of them as I could get a hold of the chair I sit on. Then, I am also so impressed with myself and with the intelligence I possess that I fear to let go of the unique persona that my brain created, my ego. When I compare myself with others less “knowledgeable,” less “intelligent,” I think I am way ahead. But when I observe the activities of my brain I discover that my thoughts are less imaginative than I pretend they are. When I am honest with myself, I know what my thoughts are all about; they are childish, self-serving, and banal. They can also be classified as stupid, vulgar, mechanical, repetitive, automatic. Yet, I will deny vehemently that I am in fact a robot. Perhaps a complex and sophisticated robot, but a robot, nevertheless. But I was not born to become a robot. I am a creation of love, of truth, of freedom.