As often happens during our little sesshins, this talk turned into a lengthy discussion.
This is another talk concerning story mind, which could also be called dream mind, dreaming your life. It was based on some questions that I asked the group.
What are the benefits of our story minds? Somehow, it seemed that this question was the best place to start, as we Zen people seem to have a tendency to demonize it. (Interestingly, virtually everyone initially answered as if the question were "What are the evils of our story minds?")
Story mind sets us apart from other animals. Two things:
This ability to model the world, with entities, attributes, and relationships, is the foundation of our science and technology.
Our models of people, especially our self concepts, are the foundation of our social matrix, upon which our civilization is built.
So, yeah, looks like there are a couple of positive aspects of story mind! Plus, hey, it wouldn’t be too much fun to read a book or watch a movie without a story mind, would it?
The social matrix is fascinating. What has nature, evolution, created here in us? We are born as the recepticles of culture, as the dreamers of a culture. And we think that our dreams are our own, not noticing that we are all dreaming essentially the same dream. We are socialized to the hilt.
Tom Liu has a science background in this, and he pointed out a couple of interesting things:
What makes the dream real, is the way our emotions are tied in. Yeah! Look at how movies can make your palms sweat and your heart pound.
Our brains are designed to reflect what we see happening to another person. If they move their arm, our brain acts like we moved our arm.
One more thing about the social matrix: how many of our thoughts about ourselves are actually thoughts about what others think of us?
Alright, so given all of this, what is wrong with the story mind? Why not just live out our lives as nodes in the social matrix?
What are the issues with story mind?
Perhaps first and foremost, socialization requires that we lose ourselves in the dream, and take on an identity defined in the dream. It enforces this all the time and very ridgidly. Look at the current presidential candidates; they can’t even make the slightest mis-step without it being broadcast around the world. Technology now is re-enforcing the social matrix.
The point is that we lose ourselves, our real selves, in the dream, and we lose essentially all connection to what we really are. How can this be anything other than a hollow existence?
I don’t think that this is anybody’s fault. This quirk of humans has been very successful in reproducing more humans. And so, here we are, the products of this success, genetically designed to repeat it.
But past success does not necessarily imply future success, and some humans do have a way, and even some desire, to find their real selves (e.g., sesshin). Perhaps the future for humans, if they are to be successful, is retain the capacity to dream, but regain a connection to reality.
On to the second issue. Our little brains produces very incomplete models of reality, and by the time they create a model, reality has changed. We have to base our actions on something, so this is as good as it gets, and not a problem in itself. Where we get into trouble, is forgetting that the models are just models. Because we think these models are reality, we are reluctant to just discard them when they are no longer useful. Lost in the models, lost in the dream, we act in crazy ways.
What ties you to the dream? The group had lots to say about this one:
As mentioned above, we are designed to be dreamers. It is in our genes, and the result of the survival of our anscestors that had this trait.
We don’t want to rock the boat. We are designed to look to our social matrix for survival.
As Joni pointed out, some of our primal physical survival instincts seem to have been co-opted by our dream mind - perhaps another result of evolution.
We are hooked in through our desire to be something, to be someone important. We feel incomplete in the dream, and the dream provides a never-ending parade of things that promise to complete us.
Related to this last one, there is something that keeps us in the dream, even when the dream is not panning out well.
What keeps us in the dream?
Beyond the items mentioned above, there is something special that keeps us in the dream, "in the game" - hope:
It will be better next time.
If I can just make this one more purchase, own my own home, get a better job, marry her, get a boat, get a new car, then, THEN it will be OK. I’ll be happy, and I will live happily ever after.
Imagine a conversation in a nursing home: "Things will get much better once I recover from this stroke and get back from my hip replacement."
Does this make any sense? Hope doesn’t make any sense. It is living a lie. What ultimately keeps you in the game, is a lie.
What will it take to get you to turn away from the dream?
As Dick Cheney says so well: the American Dream is non-negotiable. As we talked about earlier this evening, although we think we are independent dreamers, we are all pretty much dreaming the same dream, and, for us here, this is the American Dream.
Look at what happens when your image is threatened. People kill each other over this sort of thing. We will defend our story until the bitter end! We will defend our honor! We are in a desperate struggle to maintain the dream.
Obviously, turning away from the dream is no easy task. This cannot be some hap-hazard demolition project. We depend on the dream, as we have talked about.
It is hoped that the appreciation and understanding of story mind that came out of our discussion this evening will provide some independence from it. It is the way we humans function. It is not what we are.
Sam Gabriel, San Diego, CA
http://home.roadrunner.com/~clothespin
sam_gabriel@yahoo.com