Wishful Thinking

Human beings are very imaginative, and wishful thinking is an innate skill. It works along with the denial to shield us from the pain of facing reality, but can only work for so long. Eventually, reality intrudes whether you wish it or not. The remedies are discernment, self-knowledge, and courage.

Transcript

Hello,

And welcome to Mindfulness Live.

This week we're talking about wishful thinking,

Something that we all do from time to time,

Especially when we're children,

And some people just keep doing it.

So why?

What does it amount to?

Where does that need come from?

And what are the consequences of wishful thinking?

Can it be good?

Sometimes it can raise your spirits,

Make you feel happy.

But you know,

There's a price to pay,

Because it doesn't jive with reality.

So,

First of all,

Make ourselves comfortable.

Take a nice breath.

And let go.

And here we are.

And this is what is.

There's nothing wishful about this moment.

It simply is what it is.

You breathing,

Paying attention,

Being aware,

And gradually slowing down.

And the slowing down is quite natural when you focus on the breath.

You don't have to think I'm going to slow down.

You just watch the breath.

And the rhythm of the breath gradually infuses into your mind,

Into your thoughts and your feelings,

As if it regulates everything.

And in fact,

It's not the breath that's regulating it.

It's the attention.

That's what makes everything manageable,

Understandable,

And within reach.

So we watch the breath come in and watch it leave.

And between the in and the out is a pause.

So we watch the breath coming in,

Pause,

Going out,

Pause.

And you notice that each breath has its own character,

A little longer or shorter,

Deeper,

Shallower,

A little more relaxing,

Or maybe a little more forgetful.

Every moment is different.

The breath is different.

Your body is different.

It feels different.

Your mood changes.

Your thoughts are always changing,

Bubbling,

Percolating,

Sometimes too many to manage.

And that's when you come back to the breath,

Back to the presence,

Back to right here and now.

And the breath comes and goes.

And the moments come and go.

And you too.

You come and go.

It's not the same you that started this meditation a few minutes ago.

You're changing.

Your perspective is changing.

Your thoughts change,

Your feelings.

Who you are is a product of circumstances and history and memory and intention.

And all of these things are always shifting,

Adapting,

And being replaced as other thoughts take over,

As other feelings nudge you into action.

But now you stay with the breath.

It keeps you here and now,

Keeps you focused.

And the breath is everything.

Breath comes in,

All the way out.

Pause.

And breath goes out.

Pause.

And now taking three more breaths,

Open your eyes.

I don't remember how old I was.

But I do remember it vividly.

And I remember what I was thinking,

Sort of.

I know I was young.

And I got confirmation,

It's not my imagination.

My mother did recount the story to me too.

I was reminded of it fairly frequently.

And the story is quite simple.

In the back of our apartment where we were living,

When I was young,

There was a balcony with about a 10-foot drop onto a concrete area,

The back of my dad's restaurant.

And for some reason or another,

I was quite convinced that if I thought about it hard enough,

I would be able to fly,

Or at least to float down from the balcony.

And I thought about this a lot.

And I used to stand there and then I'd go indoors and I'd think about it and I'd come out again and I'd look and I'd imagine.

And one day I decided that I had enough determination that my mind was ready and I'd be able to do it.

So next day,

When my parents picked me up from the hospital,

I was quite confused.

I didn't understand why it hadn't worked.

And it took me a long time to figure it out,

That I couldn't just wish for something and it would happen.

But it took me a long time.

Now you think it would be obvious.

And if I'm old enough to remember,

I must have been old enough to reason a little bit.

I mean,

I was reasoning in the sense that I was thinking,

Well,

I'm not ready yet,

But I will be,

You know,

Later on,

Now I'm ready.

So there was something going on up here.

It wasn't science,

It wasn't logic,

And it wasn't real.

But well,

The thoughts were real.

See,

This is the important thing.

The thoughts were very real,

And I acted on them in a very real way.

And I survived,

Fortunately.

But this is plain,

Old fashioned wishful thinking.

Who doesn't want to fly?

Wouldn't it be great if we could just open our arms and float above the earth?

I can see the appeal.

So at what point do we break with reality?

At which point do we just go off and do it?

Now I have another story,

A parallel story,

Not exactly,

But a different person.

This was somebody I was talking about the other day.

And this person believes that Bill Gates is planting microchips in everybody's brain,

And taking control of the planet.

Now,

I can't prove that that's not true.

And I keep an open mind,

I pride myself on keeping an open mind.

But keeping an open mind doesn't mean that I'm,

I believe it.

It means I'm open,

If you give me the evidence,

I'll consider it.

But when I asked for the evidence,

All we get was,

Well,

If it wasn't true,

All those people wouldn't believe in it,

Would they?

Which to this person was very final and very convincing.

But not to me.

I need a little more than that.

However,

It's enough for this person.

And this is very,

Very common.

Nowadays,

We're in the era of conspiracy theories.

And,

Again,

Some of them may actually be true.

I'm not,

I'm not trying to get involved in that particular argument.

I'm more interested in getting to the root of why people think that way.

And why is it just them?

Am I immune?

Well,

Obviously,

I'm not,

Because I jumped off a balcony once thinking I could fly.

I did lots of other things,

Too.

I practiced astrology and astronomy and palmistry and dowsing.

And I explored all those things.

And they didn't deliver what I expected.

So I let them go.

So I'm sort of proud of that,

In the sense that I think I kept my mind open until reality took over.

Reality was so convincing.

And yet sometimes we don't do that.

The reason that people do this has got nothing to do with logic.

It's got nothing to do with science.

It's got to do with a need to believe.

And that need is personal.

It's something to do with who they are,

Who we are,

What I believe defines me in so many ways.

And if I'm,

As I once was,

Very skeptical of government and skeptical of our leadership and skeptical of capitalism,

I became a communist for a while,

I was young.

And I believed that this was,

Well,

Before I believed that that made sense,

First of all,

I had this deeper sense that something's wrong.

Something's wrong with our system.

Something's wrong with this society.

Capitalism is based on endless growth.

It's a pyramid scheme.

That's the way I saw it.

So I couldn't believe that.

So I was skeptical.

People are skeptical now,

These people are more than skeptical,

They're cynical.

And there's a determination to not believe the status quo.

So anything which goes against the status quo,

Which goes against the way that most people think,

The reality that most people accept as normal,

Binds you to that social group.

Those people who think like you that this can't be happening,

This world is not right,

Something's wrong,

Let's prove it.

Ah,

It's Bill Gates.

Okay.

Or it's a vaccine mandate or whatever it is,

Whatever you decide it is,

That is causing the problem,

You choose to believe in it,

And you get,

You get the reinforcement for that.

We need reinforcement to believe we need other people to believe along with us.

And the more people there are,

As this person inadvertently explained the other day,

Then the easier it is to believe something which you don't know,

For which you don't really have evidence.

And this person certainly didn't have any other evidence,

That's all,

That was the entire argument.

So looking in our minds,

Looking for our own wishful thinking.

As a meditator,

I believed for many years that if I close my eyes and did the meditation right,

And if my concentration was good enough,

Eventually I would be freed from all my obstacles and delusions and all those things which weighed me down,

All my baggage.

And so I kept meditating and I kept doing it and I'd wake up or I come out of meditation,

And I'd go into the ordinary world,

And I would do ordinary things,

Like I'd be angry and I'd be upset and I'd get frustrated and I'd want to kill people.

And it was shocking to me,

I couldn't understand,

There was this huge disjoint.

So I finally realized that my attitude towards meditation was wishful.

I thought it was going to give me what I wanted,

Which goes against the spirit of mindfulness completely because mindfulness is about seeing what is and letting your own thoughts,

Biases,

Expectations,

Judgments,

Hopes,

Wishes,

You let them go.

And these are the sort of things that,

These are your obstacles,

This is the work of mindfulness,

Is letting go of all that stuff.

And of course in order to let go of it,

You have to first see it.

So when I was meditating on my breath thinking that this will free me from everything,

I wasn't paying attention to the fact that I didn't see everything,

All I knew was that my life was sort of a big confusing jumble and I wanted it to go away,

And that's why I was meditating.

So that's magical thinking,

It doesn't just go away because I sit quietly and breathe,

And you know,

Breath meditation is good,

It's very good for you in many ways,

But it's not magic.

When you want to let go of something,

When you want to let go of baggage,

You have to see it,

You have to see how you hang on to it,

You have to see what it means to you,

How it's integrated into your way of thinking,

Your way of being,

How it's part of your social life and other people believe like you do that this certain thing,

And if you disagree,

Then that puts you a little bit on the outside and you don't feel that sense of connection quite the same way.

It's scary.

Losing that connection,

This is probably the biggest obstacle to letting go of wishful thinking,

Is losing the connection to fellow wishful thinkers.

So wishful thinking is not something to be taken lightly,

It's not something to be sneered at or laughed at,

Oh that's stupid,

That's ridiculous,

Don't be so childish,

Of course you can't fly.

There's a reason we do this,

Among others,

Because the world is tough,

It's harsh sometimes and it's unforgiving,

And sometimes we just want to believe what we want to believe,

And sometimes we can do it by watching a science fiction movie or some sort of fantasy book,

But when we start to take it literally,

We'll take it seriously and think that this is the way life can really be,

Then we're blocking our mindfulness,

We're not encouraging it at all,

We're setting up obstacles.

So the goal is to see those obstacles,

To recognize them for what they are and to be able to say it,

To name it,

Oh wishful thinking.

It comes in many,

Many shapes and sizes.

It surprises me,

I still find it in my mind,

Well sort of a surprise,

Sort of not.

I know that we're like that,

I know the human brain is wired to think wishfully,

And yet there's a part of me which thinks,

Oh I'm beyond that,

You know,

I've been meditating for so long,

I don't do that stuff,

That's more wishful thinking.

So beyond God,

Don't take it for granted,

Don't take anything for granted,

Keep an open mind,

Not just that anything could be true,

But that you might be full of wishful thinking too,

And the resolution,

Don't forget that just an open mind is not enough,

You need to compare it with reality and you have to see if it's viable or not,

And that's a judgment that takes practice and it takes thought and consideration.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist,

But you have to slow the mind down enough that you see it when it's happening,

And that's the essence of mindfulness.

So make yourselves comfortable,

Take a nice breath,

And let go.

You focus on the sensation of breathing,

Feeling the movement of muscles,

The opening of your chest,

Your lungs,

Movement of air,

The contrast of in-breath and out-breath,

The feeling of sitting here and now,

Sitting upright,

The sensation of pressure on your bottom as gravity pulls you down.

The sensations come from nerve endings in your body and they come only now,

The only time you can feel sensation is in the present moment.

So we focus on the physical,

Bodily sensations,

Knowing that this is the present moment,

And we know that the present moment,

Every present moment,

Feels like something.

So we look to our mood and how does this feel?

And then very cautiously,

Almost from the corner of your eye,

You look at your thoughts,

And thoughts also happen in the present moment,

But usually they're about the past,

The future,

And they propel us into a space which is not really present,

Not really aware of this moment anymore.

We're now going over the past,

We're now predicting and projecting and hoping for the future.

And now things get confusing because the thoughts are unchained from the moment and we're going into abstract thinking.

So you let go,

Return to the breath,

And connect to your senses,

Connect to this moment.

The breath comes in and the breath goes out,

And fins meet us in the Amidst Hence And you feel the money.

And you feel your body,

You feel your senses,

Sense of touch,

It comes from any nerve ending on your skin or even inside.

You know if there is tension in your body,

You know if there's pain or discomfort.

You're aware of what's going on.

You're aware of being here and now.

And you're also aware that as you watch the breath and as you stay in the presence,

That you can follow,

That things are manageable,

They don't get out of hand,

And that your mind,

Your thoughts are contained.

And you know also that this is not usual.

You have to make an effort to contain your thoughts,

To sit quietly,

To let go of your imaginings about the past and the future,

Your interpretations,

Your plans,

Your fears and anxieties.

Let them go,

Come back to the breath.

And you know that this is a safe place that you can rely on,

Your own sensations,

Your own feelings,

Your own experience.

Nothing is more real,

Nothing is more accessible,

More immediate,

Nothing is more you.

In this moment with you paying attention to everything that's going on in your body and your mind.

And now taking three more breaths,

Open your eyes.