How To Get Out Of The Rut?

Let's close our eyes.

One of the most important things that we can do to live a richer life,

A fuller life,

Is to try and understand how our minds work,

Not from books but through observation,

Through studying,

Practical studying.

A simple act of seeing or hearing is responsible for a lot of suffering in our life,

A lot of unhappiness,

A lot of tightness,

Stiffness in our lives.

Not the seeing or hearing per se,

But how we see,

How we interpret what we see,

What we believe about the interpretation,

And how dearly we hold on to that belief.

You replace seeing with hearing,

With thinking,

With feeling,

The same rule applies.

Perceiving is a more generic word.

The first step,

Whatever we perceive through our senses,

We consider that absolute.

Of course,

We don't say it,

But that's how,

That's what we believe deep down.

There is a satire on this,

Where a bunch of people were blindfolded and asked to draw an elephant,

And each person was standing at different parts,

Body parts of the elephant,

And based on what they experienced,

That's how the elephant became.

That's what they drew,

That's what their interpretation was,

And they thought that interpretation is true.

And what happens is,

My teacher likes to give this analogy where he says,

If you are wearing yellow tinted glasses and you are looking at snow,

The snow is gonna look yellow to you.

If you wear it long enough,

You will get used to the yellow snow,

And if someone is not wearing the same colored glasses,

Maybe they are wearing pink,

Both these people can argue their hearts out about yellow snow or pink snow.

They are both right and they are both wrong,

It depends,

Because we think perceiving is absolute,

But what we don't realize is we are only perceiving from one point of view,

Just like in the elephant experiment.

There have been so many times where we saw something,

Heard something that no one else saw or heard in the exact same way,

And we've argued,

Both have been true or both have been wrong,

But the way I like to say it and see it is,

Both are right.

We live in a world where in order for someone to be right,

The other person has to be wrong.

For me to be correct,

You have to be wrong.

But when we go out in nature,

When we start exploring our minds,

When we start exploring our own experience,

How we experience things,

What we'll realize is there is more than one right answer.

And I had a very experiential and visceral insight about this.

Almost eight years ago,

I was in New Zealand during Thanksgiving,

And a few of my friends were in Cincinnati and they called me,

They said,

Hey,

Let's catch up,

We were here in the outlet mall,

We would like to come and see you.

At that time I was in New Zealand and I was a solid day ahead.

So it was already the day after Thanksgiving for me.

For them it was Thanksgiving,

For me it was the day after Thanksgiving.

How can this be possible?

How can two people be right?

We all understand time zones,

We all understand sun and everything.

Yet,

When it comes to tolerance and accommodation,

We become very absolute.

That's what leads to differences,

Miscommunication,

Arguments,

Isolation,

Righteousness.

Nature knows no such definition or limitedness,

And it's open for us to explore it if we are interested.

That's why I said learning how our minds work can be the most interesting thing we explore.

If we look at the sky and it looks blue,

And some scientist,

Astronomer tells us,

No,

The sky is black,

But because of refraction it seems to be blue.

The next time we will see the blue sky,

But know in our hearts that it's not blue.

We can be okay with two contradictory ideas in our minds,

And that's where the strength comes from.

I heard a really wise person say this,

That you know when you have matured,

When you can hold multiple contradictory ideas in your mind,

But they are painful,

They are uncomfortable to hold.

This other person that we are talking about in example,

Let's say,

They were rude to you.

What we see is action,

What we perceived is action,

We interpreted based on whatever our beliefs are,

Whatever we attribute the intention,

And it's almost always malice.

If someone did this,

It's never by mistake,

They intended to be rude.

Therefore,

This person is a bad person.

No matter how nice they have been to you in the past,

Everything goes down the drain because of this one thing and one interpretation and one attribution of intention.

They can act rude and be nice at the same time,

But it's very hard for our divisive minds to understand because by definition all minds are divisive.

It wants to break things down,

It wants to isolate,

It wants to categorize,

It wants to judge.

That's why we just don't have our minds,

We have our hearts as well,

To keep our minds in check.

I mean even between husband and wife,

Between me and my wife,

Although we are connected through our hearts,

Our minds only want to find problems,

What was missed,

What was not missed,

Etc.

But the person in charge here is the heart,

Not the mind.

The mind by definition is a very deductive,

Divisive tool,

Very strong,

Very imaginative,

Designed for survival.

And then once we believe this interpretation that the mind comes up with,

We have somehow turned down the volume on what the heart has to say,

Then the interpretation is the only interpretation,

It's the unanimous winner,

And we tend to believe it.

And this is not like a one-time thing that this has happened once,

Therefore I'm married to this conclusion for the rest of my life.

No,

We do this every time.

We do it consciously the first few times,

But after that it just becomes a shortcut we rely on.

What we perceive is never absolute.

Perceiving includes seeing,

Hearing,

Touching,

Tasting,

Smelling,

Thinking,

Feeling.

It's only a perception,

Not the perception,

Because there is no the perception.

If I'm looking at a rose and you are looking at a rose,

We are both looking at it from different points of view.

Based on your experience,

The rose might trigger a different interpretation.

Based on my experience,

Rose might trigger a different interpretation.

That doesn't make rose inherently good,

Which was my interpretation,

And bad,

Which was probably your interpretation.

No,

Rose is just rose,

And our interpretation is our interpretation.

The only problem that occurs is we think our interpretation is the only interpretation.

One of my mentors,

A brilliant guy,

He had this reminder to us during the 30-day workshop that I did with him,

Which was,

If you knew what they knew,

And if you believed what they believed,

You would act the way they are acting.

That requires an openness,

Openness of more than one interpretation,

And the openness that there are more than one correct interpretations.

One interpretation leads to divisiveness,

The other might lead to connection,

Community.

You can't really change the interpretation at whim without studying how interpretations happen.

Otherwise,

It will just be a surface-level change of words,

But deep down are roots which are buried in the feelings.

We might still feel differently about this issue.

So it's important to understand we feel a certain way because we have been exposed to it again and again and again and again.

But once we start studying,

Once we start seeing this mechanism of perception,

Of interpretation,

Of beliefs,

Loosely held,

Tightly held beliefs,

And the corresponding feelings and the quality of life that we have,

We are cracked open from inside.

All interpersonal relationships that we have,

Social,

Intimate,

Professional,

They are all based on this cycle.

All people have grey color.

There are no black or white,

Including me,

Including you.

I am rude and nice at the same time.

It depends.

But our minds cannot handle grey.

It needs black or white.

It needs to put something in right or wrong category.

Without that,

It is unsettled.

And once we put something in the wrong or right category,

Then every time we interact with them,

We find evidence of our categorization.

If we have put them in the right category,

We will find evidences of that decision.

Our minds are programmed to look for those.

I think there's a scientific term for it called reticular activation system.

It's the same system that makes you find the same car that you are driving the moment you buy it.

Before you buy it,

You didn't notice those cars.

But the moment you buy that car,

You'll start noticing that car everywhere around you.

That's how our minds work.

And once we understand this,

We will quickly switch out the mind from being in control to the heart being in control.

Because we can't rely on the mind to make these decisions of relationships,

Conclusions that dictate the quality of our life.

And nothing I can tell you about your decisions will ever result in changing your mind because it has found so much evidence to support that.

That's why it's very hard for people to change,

Even if they want to.

But change cannot happen unless we see the mechanism,

We try to study it,

We see what this tool called mind is,

How it works,

What are the limitations,

What is the nature of this mind.

And then we get to choose if the mind will be in control or the heart will be in control.

Mind was designed to survive.

What truly makes us a human being is our heart,

The love,

The beauty,

The truth that we experience.

Then the decision becomes ours to live a truly human life,

Intelligent life.

Intelligence is learning what we have,

How it works.

Surely there are books about it,

Talks about it,

But we are always in the lab.

We are always experiencing,

We can always study.

Every time we study,

We realize,

Yeah,

That was a really heartening conversation.

I wonder what was different here.

Was I more open?

What was different?

Or when you just pass someone who you have categorized as not a nice person based on previous experience,

You suddenly become closed to whatever they have to say.

And you can feel it in your body.

It's all a palpable reaction.

That's why we can't get along with certain team members or teams in a professional environment.

Professionally,

Nobody ever tells us to think with our hearts.

And again,

I'm an engineer,

So I'm coming from that background.

There's no way for me to possibly know all professions.

Maybe there are some professions where you think with your hearts.

The moment the mind runs the show,

Fun,

Connection,

Community,

Celebration,

Enjoyment goes down the drain.

And this is not something that I'm speaking from as my opinion.

This is based on what I've explored my experience.

And all of us can do that.

Surely there are friends who can ask us questions,

Who can guide us to navigate through this dense forest.

But that's what makes it fun.

No matter what we are doing,

We can explore our experience.

And the more we explore,

The more we are removing the unconsciousness with which we operate,

The mechanical habits in which we operate.

All the decisions of the past that were made in darkness are questioned.

Our work upgrades.

Our relationships are upgraded.

The world can be a beautiful place if we allowed it to.

Thank you.