Simplicity: Self Reliance

 “Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string.” (Emerson.) A cornerstone of simplicity is self-reliance, and simplicity is the only practical antidote to the headaches of complexity.

A new study at UC San Diego reports the average intake per person in the USA in 2008 was “33.8 gigabytes of information and 100,000 words per day.” A gigabyte is a billion bytes. No wonder people feel bombarded, if not trampled, by the “confused jabbering of men.” (Thoreau’s phrase.)

The over-looked downside of complexity is that it leads to living second-hand lives. The incessant drumbeat of should-dos, should-bes, and just plain noise that rolls in from every direction 24/7 makes it difficult to know thyself. Nothing can be heard above the din. So, by default, we do as and what we are told and sold by others.

Emerson continues: “Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation. But of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. What I must do is all that concerns me; not what people think.”

It is very easy to be a spectator of, rather than a participant in, life. It is possible today to side step reality, to avoid loving or hating or making difficult choices—taking some risks. All one has to do is dwell in the wannabe, fantasy world concocted by media and ad companies. Then “life” is via secondary sources. The technical name for this is living “vicariously,” an adverb defined as living one’s life through the feelings or actions of others, for example, through celebrities, reality shows, and mindless chatter, even from peers, that substitutes for thinking on one’s own.

The Grey Twilight

At the opposite end of the how-to-live spectrum is the gold standard set by President Theodore Roosevelt in a 1899 Chicago speech: “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

Feasting on external messages reflects a want of self-reliance, an “infirmity of will.” (Emerson) As the current UC San Diego study points out, the steady diet of bytes is many, many, many times the amount people’s ancestors could assimilate. Technology has outrun evolution, a human’s capacity to absorb.

Eric Sevareid, a major CBS news journalist from 1939 to 1977, forecasted what is happening today: “The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness.”

So, just what is self-reliance? Autonomy? Rugged individualism? Independence? A useful colloquial definition is: standing on ones own two feet. Autonomy, yes. “Standing” with no props. Individualism, yes, rugged or smooth. Independence, yes. “Ones own two feet.” But self-reliance is more. It requires action. Consider Emerson:

“The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.” But... “The virtue in most request is conformity.” “There is really no insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.”

Simplicity is the antidote to complexity, and the cornerstone of simplicity is self-reliance.

Freedom & The Way Things Are

I was recently asked to ask myself this question: “Do I think there is any freedom for me in allowing things to be just as they are?”

I assume this means what if I tried to…

-Stop trying to fix intractable health problems in the family.

-Stop trying to change things the way they are and re-engage and be satisfied with what I have going on or within reach.

-Stop trying to smother or get around emotions that sneak up on me, emotions I have not experienced before, like loneliness.

-Stop thinking maybe I should retreat and try to re-live wonderful events in the past that are today just memories.

Overall, I interpret the question as: What if I just ‘cooled it’ and went with the flow, enjoyed, or at least accepted as O.K., the now, the present moment as it is coming to me. Meditation books and CDs advocate concentration on a single item: Breathing. Follow the breath. Why the breath? Certainly breathing is NOW. And it’s handy—always available (one hopes). If I can focus on my breath—innnn…..outttttt. Innnn….outtt for a spell— during that period I am not thinking about yesterday or tomorrow. So I am in the present moment. As I allow or accept things to be simply what/as they are, then I am not worrying about the next moment…and the next one….and….

My reaction to all this is that certainly I would have less on my mind, were I to take things as they are. But I am not sure I could handle the idleness, the void created by not worrying, wanting, wishing….and trying to fix/control things that are, as I have tended to do for a lot of years.

Of course, there might be some benefits. Were I to pry open some “freedom for me,” doing so might provide space for a modicum of creative activity, which right now is as low as it has ever been for me. I am not writing, starting a business, working on a photo project, learning anything new, "saving" any islands or lakes, or doing a project that is useful to others. I have idled down to near zero RPM.

Freedom might also lead to my putting less pressure on myself to fix things that I should recognize by now simply are not fixable or reversible or stoppable. I am, at best, a spectator to family health challenges, my own aging, to my friends’ aging and ailing, and even to the unfolding lives of my own children and grandchildren.

I am and have been pretty much a thinking machine, and I have no complaints or regrets. I have always planned ahead and worked to make desired things happen. I have tried to control, or at least influence, my destiny. And I have lived a fairytale life until recent times. Now, at best, I make feeble attempts to “affect the quality of each day,” per Henry David Thoreau. But now…..  Maybe more freedom (by recognizing and accepting what is reality NOW) could open some space for fresh experiences unfamiliar to me. Maybe.

                                             

The Wandering MInd

Once upon a time I learned to tie my shoes. Actually I learned to tie my shoelaces, but this is a mere technicality. I remember standing in front of a bedroom window with a foot on a chair and the evening sun streaming in. Slowly I crossed one lace over the other to form an X. Then, I suppose, I formed a loop with my left hand…and, in time, I got the laces tied. I was about five years old. It probably wasn’t too many weeks before I could tie my shoes without consciously thinking about the process; my mind then could wander off to nudge other subjects into consciousness. And it probably did.

Over the years I have developed an amateur thesis of how the mind works. There are many components to the mind, of course. One component is storage boxes for bits of information. (Please that I am a mechanical engineer by training.) Some boxes contain data at birth, and the same original pieces of data are linked to one another at birth by electro-chemical trails of some sort. This is to say, inelegantly, that we are hard-wired when we are born. We know how to make sounds, pee, digest, and so on. We didn’t learn to do this, as was the case for tying shoes, we just knew.

As time goes along, we pick up new pieces of data through our senses and store some of it in empty boxes located in various parts of the mind. Certain pieces are linked to others via the trails I mentioned. The pick up, storage, and linking is “learning.” If we use and reuse a particular trail, it becomes wider, like a footpath through the grass on a college campus. So, at later points in time, we have hard-wired trails plus some footpaths in the mind. Eventually, we have a zillion footpaths.

With more and more use, footpaths become hardened, even paved, suggesting there then exists an established connection—perhaps a whole network of connections—which we use to do things. We learn and then we behave and/or think, based on that learning. With enough use (repetition), a connection can graduate into a road or maybe even a freeway, which could be termed a habit, or perhaps a rut.

As connections become more solidified, we actually can use them essentially automatically, i.e., without consciously thinking about them. For example, most of us think about peripheral things as we drive down a relatively empty freeway. If something out of place occurs, in a flash we re-engage our mind in the driving, of course. But if everything is normal, basically our mind wanders. Now what does this mean?

Absent stimuli from our senses, it means—through some process I don’t understand—the lens of the mind rotates or roams amidst the web of trails, and it usually hones in at random on different subjects (e.g. thoughts) as if sampling what is available. Everyone’s mind wanders; at least teachers of mediation say this is so. And I believe it. [Note: Jung suggests there are also subterranean levels of the mind with arrays of paths, some hard-wired, and also a whole collection of characters dubbed archetypes. We may encounter these contents when they float “up” into consciousness while asleep, dreaming.]

Wandering can (will!) occur in a person who is concentrating on a well-developed path, even one hard-wired, like breathing. I am finding it very difficult to “stay with the breath;” my mind rushes off in one direction or another seeking fresh content from the inventory in the mind. The mind seeks on its own volition, and it makes me wonder just who is in charge here? My teachers say: Just note where the mind goes and then bring it back to the breathing. Keep working to make breathing the centerpiece of “awareness.” Breathing is handy. This process is apparently the challenge confronting those who opt to meditate.

Following is a quote from a book by Deikman titled, The Observing Self. The quote may or may not shed light on the subject of wandering.

“The distinction between awareness and the content of awareness tends to be ignored in Western psychology, its implications for our everyday life are not appreciated. Indeed, most people have trouble recognizing the difference between awareness and content, which are part of everyday life. Yet, careful observation shows people that they can suspend their thoughts, that they can experience silence or darkness and the temporary absence of images or memory patterns—that any element of mental life can disappear while awareness itself remains. Awareness is the ground (the lens?) of conscious life, the background or field in which all elements exist, different from thoughts, sensations, or images. One can experience the distinction simply by looking straight ahead. Be aware of what you experience, then close your eyes. Awareness remains. ‘Behind’ your thoughts and images is awareness, and that is where you are.

“What we know as our self is separate from our thoughts, memories, feelings, and any content of consciousness. No Western psychological theory concerns itself with this fundamental fact; all describe the self in terms of everything but the observer, who is the center of all experience. This crucial omission stems from the fact that the observing self is an anomaly—not an object (like a lens!) like everything else. Our theories are based on objects; we think in terms of objects, talk in terms of objects……  Images, memories, and thoughts are objects we grasp, manipulate, and encompass by awareness just as we do the components of the physical world. In contrast, we cannot observe the observing self; we must experience it directly. It has no defining qualities, no boundaries, no dimensions…..

“Lacking understanding of this elusive, central self, how are we to answer the essential questions ‘Who am I?’  ‘What am I?’

“Both Yogic and Buddhist metaphysics and psychology emphasize the crucial difference between the observer and the content of consciousness and use meditation techniques to heighten the observing self. As with meaning, mystics hold that answering ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Why am I?’ requires a special mode of perception.”

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So, what does all this have to do with wandering mind?

To the extent that meditating corrals a wandering mind and gathers it beneath the umbrella of “awareness,” it collects the material world in one place so possibly there is a wholeness experienced. Possibly.