Lesson: You must understand your mind in order to make sense of the world, and meditation is one of the best ways to do that.
In order to understand life, you must understand your own mind, because your mind determines how you experience, interpret, and react to the world around you. When you understand your mind—including its biases, fears, and complexes—then you can choose your actions more wisely and execute them more effectively. There are many ways to get in tune with your mind, including art, therapy, and physical activity. The author’s method of choice is meditation, which takes your attention away from the noise and distractions of the external world and focuses it on the reality of your breath and bodily sensations. Observing each inhale and exhale keeps your attention on the present reality, which offers a clearer view of life than any story or dogma can.
The better you know your mind, the more you’ll realize that your thoughts and emotions are not as straightforward as you probably think. As we’ve discussed, your thoughts are a reflection of your brain wiring and your external influences. Furthermore, your emotions are a reflection of your physical sensations: External events trigger a physical reaction, and your emotions reflect that physical sensation. For example, if you read a politician’s offensive tweet, the hot feeling in your stomach is your first reaction, and the anger you feel is a reaction to that sensation. Additionally, when your mind inevitably wanders during your meditation, you learn how little control you actually have over your thoughts—and that realization is the first step in gaining that control.
While scientists know much about the brain—and ongoing research with new technologies are constantly adding to that database—they know little about the mind. Whereas the brain is a physical organ with a network of neurons, biochemicals, and synapses, the mind is the source of feelings and subjective experiences, including love, pleasure, pain, and anger. Experts assume that the experiences of the mind are products of the brain’s activity, but there is no evidence because the mind can’t be studied in a brain scanner.
Currently, there are only two ways to study the mind:
In order to take useful notes of the workings of their own minds, scientists need methodical strategies. There are few modern methods for self-observation of the mind, so researchers could turn to meditation techniques, which were developed to help people observe their minds and bodies methodically and objectively.
Increasingly, scientists are studying the brains of experienced meditators—but this approach only goes so far. When researchers scan a meditator’s brain, they gain information about how meditation affects the brain, which is valuable, but they don’t gain any insight about the mind. In order to truly observe the mind, scientists would need to practice meditation themselves. This approach requires time and dedication, because when most people begin meditating, they struggle to concentrate for more than a few seconds at a time. Scientists would have to train for months or years, as astronauts do, to finally be able to collect the data they need.
As for the rest of us, we’d be well advised not to wait for science to take on this task. If you don’t begin to learn about your own mind—through meditation or some other means—then algorithms will soon know your thoughts, fears, and desires better than you do.