The Puzzle Room of Our Mind

Before Covid-19 turned our world upside down, the latest rage was puzzle rooms, or escape rooms. They are essentially a giant puzzle. You are locked in a room with a group of friends, and you attempt to find the clues in order to get out of the room. All sorts of challenges and obstacles are set in your path and may lead to secret rooms, passages, and more clues that could set you free.

This is a great metaphor for life. We all live inside the kind of mind that is like a puzzle room. If you look even more closely, you will see that nothing is ever quite enough for the problem factory of your mind. You get one problem solved another one pops up. It is like an endless game of whack a mole!

It is startling to see how much our minds are addicted to problems – mostly small ones like an itchy scalp or a doctor that is late or your dog has fleas. But we all come across really big ones on our journey through life – a difficult diagnosis, the loss of a loved one, being evicted, being in an automobile accident. I am not saying that working with the big and small challenges of our lives is unimportant. But when we become exclusively problem solvers, we become cut off from life.

If you could step back and watch your mind you would see that it is always trying to figure out how to get to the pleasant and leave the unpleasant behind. With my cancer diagnosis, I am getting a very powerful chance to relate to my mind rather than from it. It really, truly, does not like how my body feels right now and what the cancer may bring. But It is fascinating to slow down enough and actually watch how much it is addicted to resisting what I am experiencing. It also judges and reacts, likes and dislikes, and loves to try to fix things. But my struggling mind does not bring clarity and peace to this process. So, I ask you, “Has your mind ever brought you deep and lasting peace?” Probably not, because it is your mind trying to fix the problems your mind creates! If that isn’t an endless puzzle, I don’t know what is!

So how do you get out of this puzzle room of your mind? The true keys, the hidden keys, are different than how we have been conditioned to be with the challenges of our lives. What are those keys?

The most important thing I can offer you is that the healing you are ready for doesn’t come from fixing or changing anything. Instead, it comes from the ability to see and be with what is.  It is about learning the art of relating to your mind rather than from it – moving from, “I am so afraid” to “I see you fear.” In the beginning, this is very difficult for us to grasp. You’ve learned a particular language since you were a baby and suddenly there is a new language, a language, that when you learn it, will set you free from being aligned with your struggling mind.

This new language is the language of your aware heart. It is important to expand our definition of the heart beyond the limited view that permeates our culture. Science is now showing us that our heart is actually a brain and that it is the core of our being—not the physical organ, but the energy essence of the heart. Pull up a memory of someone you deeply care for and allow yourself to really feel how much you care. If you pay attention, you will notice that the energy in your chest opens up. Now call up a time when you were angry and reactive with someone, and notice that the energy in your chest contracts.

When our hearts are closed, we struggle with life. This is like living in quicksand. The more you struggle, the more you are caught – like with trying to lose weight or fix a relationship or make cancer go away. The heart reminds you to give the struggle in your mind space and to touch it with compassion. This is the difference between saying “Oh God, will I feel this horrible for the rest of my life?” To “I see you fear, and I am here with you.”  Over and over again, when my mind struggles with the cancer and then I respond to it with my heart, I see that our minds are just like you and me. When they’re not judged or resisted – when we actually say hello rather than getting lost in its stories – it calms down and the upset passes through much more quickly.

This is why I love Stephen Levine’s quote, “When you finally see how much fear there is in your mind, you turn to it like a mother turns toward a frightened child.” In that quote there are many feelings that we can replace the word fear with – anger, despair, loneliness, jealousy, resistance, trying, frustration, sadness, and despair to name a few. We can learn to turn towards our feelings, giving them the compassionate listening they long for.

So, when I get tight, resisting how life is right now, it wakes me up and I return to the peace and clarity of my heart that knows how to be with what I am experiencing rather than resisting it. For our hearts know how to include rather than exclude, to accept rather than judge, to allow rather than resist and to unite rather than divide. And when your heart is open, it fills your whole being with its wisdom energy.

So, get to know your mind. Become curious about what it is talking about. Do not be embarrassed or ashamed of what is there. We all live in the same kind of mind and your mind longs for you to say hello.

The more you can see your mind rather than being captured by its stories, your attention becomes freed from its grip and your heart can get a word in edge wise. It is with your heart you can discover how to use the wonderful tool of your mind rather than being lost in it.   And the more your heart is your guide through life, the more you will be present for life.

Is this a quick fix? No. But it is my experience that it is the way back home to an intimate, alive, joyous experience of life.

If this calls to you, to get to know your mind rather than being lost so you can come home to your heart please join me in my interactive online course What’s in Your Way is the Way starting on January 13th. We will explore how challenges in life are a roadmap back to true and lasting healing. Please contact Devrah for more information on our sliding scale.