Movies of the Mind
Introduction
We live in mind movies of our own creation. If our inner movies are more like horror flicks than It’s a Wonderful Life (starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed) we’re in deep trouble. Misery will be our daily dose of life. By changing our inner movies, we recover the capacity for greater happiness, creativity, wisdom, and success.
Our lives are diminished by the negative movies of the mind that we watch regularly. Some movies are so engrossing they become like whirlpools that dominate our attention. By awakening the observer in us, we are able to see the ego as the principle script writer of the mind. At that moment, we gain the power of balance and the capacity for a new kind of freedom to live and be. Anytime we fall into a debilitating drama, we must see something and learn something in order to shift to new thoughts that will serve us better.
How do we become aware that our thoughts are just thoughts, so we can get back into our theater seats and exercise judgment? It is through deepening awareness of our major movies, making new choices about what we think and then creating new thoughts and daily practices in order to make a change in our lives for the better. “Movies of the Mind” is an exploration of the many movies we run in our minds. Its purpose is to put us back in our theater seats, where we can clearly observe and shape our thoughts rather than being under their tyrannical rule. This ability to observe with a higher degree of detachment from our thinking gives us greater access to freedom and an increasing capacity to cultivate more inner peace, happiness, creativity, and success in our lives.
When we look closely at our thinking, we discover our dual nature. We are of two minds about everything because our language and thinking are made up of opposing tendencies: For example, happy and sad, caring and callous, interesting and uninteresting, engaged and lazy, tolerant and intolerant, good and bad, attractive and unattractive, generous and stingy, thankful and unthankful. If we are living in a movie called “doubt,” by looking for the opposite within us, we can find a part of us that experiences certainty.
The freedom to create new scripts for our movies is enhanced when we understand that we have opposing tendencies and resources. Since we are of two minds due to our dualistic nature, our movies can be changed by realizing that we have the capacity to make a shift to a positive thought anytime we are living in the grip of a negative one.
As you become more aware of your mind movies, you will discover your dual nature and how it is a blessing because it offers you choices. In balance, nothing is excluded from awareness. Instead of being dominated by one half of a mental equation, we live in the tension of opposites. Living in the middle, we are able to choose one side or the other. For example, a balanced person experiencing self-pity might say: “Oh, there I go again, feeling sorry for myself. Now, what am I thankful for in my life and how can I change how I’m thinking and feeling with thankfulness in mind?” That person may even decide to wallow in self-pity for a couple of hours or even a day, just because it feels good to experience the soap opera called “Poor Me.” But knowing this is a conscious choice to feel downhearted, there is laughter in the background from the part of the mind that is still in the theater seat.
When we get caught in the negative dramas of our inner movies, we lock up our energy and undermine our happiness, creativity, and effectiveness. By stopping those dramas, we learn to live in balance with a higher degree of flexibility, so we are better able to manage our thoughts and put our energy into constructive channels. This increases our freedom of choice.
The Six Life Principles
Our inner movies take their shape from various forces that control human beings automatically. The most basic of these principles is the instinct of self-survival. We are constantly thinking about ourselves and those we love in relationship to the issues of danger, safety, and providing sustenance to stay alive. This is the realm where our fears live in all their glory, scaring us and making us cautious. Our fear of death and our instinct to live molds the movies that are repeated over and over again in our minds. Much of our worry is about survival at a physical, but also self-esteem, level. In terms of physical danger, we lock our doors and avoid neighborhoods and streets that are unfamiliar. We may avoid flying in airplanes or dangerous sports. On a self-esteem level, we avoid rejection, looking bad, being wrong, losing independence, and coming under someone else’s control.
The second life principle is that human beings are always in interpretation and judgment. We constantly make decisions about what is “good” and “bad,” which includes what is “safe” and “dangerous.” Imagine waking up in the morning and immediately grabbing two bags, the “good” bag and the “bad” bag. All day long, you will be making judgments about everything–what you say and do, what others say and do, how the day is going, and how you are feeling. Imagine each time you make a judgment you put it in one of your bags. By the end of the day your bags will be full. The next day you will start with empty bags and fill them again. It is that way everyday, because human beings interpret and assess everything. We are judges. Judgment is so automatic and pervasive that we hardly notice how much it rules us, our relationships, and our lives.
In the movie Fanny and Alexander by Ingmar Bergmann, we see the power of a child developing the internal parent who judges. In the film, Alexander’s stepfather, a cleric, is Alexander’s worst critic. He is constantly pointing out errors in Alexander’s ways. The tragedy of the film is watching Alexander internalize his stepfather’s harsh judgments, so at the end he has created the stepfather within himself. You know that he will live a life of self-condemnation and that it will be automatic. His inner movie, created in his interaction with a cruel man, will be one that diminishes his potential and his life. How many people have crafted mind movies which included a similar fate? How many of us are still carrying the judgments of parents and teachers who were our vigorous opponents?
The third life principle is that we are constantly compensating for our feeling of inadequacy by managing the size of our egos so we can feel good. If you remember how you were as a young child, you may notice that after childhood you became more cautious about what you said and did in the public realm. This conformity is most rampant during adolescence and it slowly reverses itself as we age. When reaching fifty, we may find ourselves returning to the childlike freedom of not being so concerned about approval from others, although this varies from person to person.
Young children are less concerned about public appearance because they have not yet learned to feel inadequate and they are constantly getting positive reinforcement for what they do in school. Elementary school is for building the self-esteem of the child as much as it is for learning new knowledge. When a child moves to middle school, something changes. Teachers become more critical, pointing out where students are failing to meet a standard. Through this process of inflicting negative judgments, children learn to feel more inadequate. This inadequacy makes them feel little and weak and they don’t like feeling that way, so they begin to compensate anytime circumstances make their egos feel little. Since we all go through this initiation into inadequacy, we learn a new life principle which is to be guarded and to manage the size of our egos so we can feel good–which is what all human beings want. By successfully compensating for our feelings of inadequacy, we try to feel bigger so we can feel better.
Many of the mind movies we create are attempts to manage the size of our egos, including movies that put others down so we can feel better about ourselves. Other movies may be extensions of our socialization as we learn to become the teachers who first criticized us. This inner authority is constantly fashioning movies that put us down with self-accusations like “I’m too heavy to be attractive,” “I’m not interesting,” “I’ll never be a success,” “No one really loves or understands me.” These little movies can have big and torturing consequences.
The fourth life principle is far more subtle. It has to do with our desires, ideals, and expectations as they become mental templates for evaluating any situation. Our templates include how we desire or expect every situation to be. We have a mental file cabinet full of these templates. They are like movie previews of our situations. We hope and pray that what happens will conform to our mental templates. When they fail, other movies are run, which may focus on despair, loss of hope, self-pity, or, on the positive side, determination to succeed, like we find in the movie “Chariots of Fire.” Some people, like the leading character in this film who wants to be the world’s fastest runner at 100 meters, take defeat as a challenge to rise to a higher level while others may be broken by disappointment.
When we are unaware of our mental templates, we resist life when it appears otherwise. This is so automatic that we are in the dark about what is making us suffer. We are constantly trying to bend life to fit our desires and expectations, but life does not bend easily. As the Woo Master says in The Woo Way, “Mind is funny thing. It wants things its way, but life just laughs and does what it wants.” When we understand the underlying power of our mental templates to reduce our happiness, we can script a new movie and live in a new practice.
One of the reasons it is hard to change is because we have build-in resistance to change. Even after trying to make a change, we may return to where we were rather than push further into the change. This tendency to return to the status quo is the fifth principle. One reason negative thought and life patterns persist, even when initially we try to change them, is that we get something from the negative patterns. Even though we may declare a strong desire to change, we may also strongly resist it when an inner problem delivers a payoff. Other reasons for returning to the status quo after an initial push for change are insufficient strength of commitment to make the change and the inability to fully imagine the positive results that will arise from it. Not knowing the impact of the change on us and our lives, we fail to grasp the real significance of the change, so we are more likely to give up, especially when progress is slow. A teacher who has already made the change and knows the results firsthand can help us overcome this lethargy. Knowing the value of the change, the teacher will encourage us to keep trying.
Before we get too pessimistic, there is a life sixth principle to understand. Human beings can cultivate the capacity to change by becoming more aware, making new choices, and creating new thinking and life practices. Once we see how a problem is constructed, we can draw on our natural creativity to change our thinking by designing a new mental script. For example, we have the capacity to shift our focus from self-preservation, ego management, and control, to love and giving. We can sacrifice our own interests to serve the interests of others. This is about the texture of meaning in our lives and our life purposes. We can rise above the ego and change our focus to the larger good. This life principle is where our hope for the future resides, of a growing awareness of what runs human beings automatically, so we can choose a higher path. It is about the evolution of consciousness and the cultivation of a more evolved self. We see this shift in another of Bergmann’s movies, Wild Strawberries, where an old man who was once self-centered and cold becomes awakened to the higher good of helping others. By deciding to warm up, he begins to relate to others in loving ways.
In Movies of the Mind there are many interesting movies to explore, like “Bleak Future,” “Measuring Up,” “Blemished Fruit,” and “Exposed.” New movies will be introduced at intervals. Change the scripts of your inner movies and you will change your life. Oh, happy day!
Each Mind Movie will be a post under “Categories”. Please have writing material handy, as you’ll be doing some inner work.
