The Puzzle Room of Our Mind

Puzzle rooms or escape rooms. Used to be the latest rage.  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, dead end 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, a doctor who 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, or being in an automobile accident.  So, our mind tries to fix, rise above, or get rid of the unpleasant parts of our lives. 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 my mind 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 so you can use your mind for the wonderful tool it is, but not be lost in it? 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.” At first, this is very difficult for us to grasp. It is like speaking 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.  It takes time to speak this new language fluently.

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 how 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 trying to lose weight or fix a relationship or make cancer go away. The heart reminds you to give the struggles in your mind space and to touch them 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 – they calm 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 as 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, which knows how to be with what I am experiencing rather than resisting it. 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 edgewise. It is with your heart that 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 resonated with you, and you’d like to explore more of my work, then I invite you to listen to my podcast on Dreamvisions 7 Radio: Possibility! It will air on Thursday, March 5th and 12th at 5am and 5pm HERE. After the 12th, it will be available on demand, along with every other podcast I’ve ever done HERE. Please feel free to explore my catalog and listen to topics that call to you.

Offerings:

DATE CHANGED Free Live Call with Mary: My Good Friend Cancer, Really???

Thank you again for a wonderful free night! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. We will be meeting on March 3rd, now March 17th, at 5:30pm PT as usual. Here’s the topic:

Mary has been working for 6 years with a rare form of blood cancer. While it has had its challenges, it has also healed her in ways she couldn’t imagine before her diagnosis. Join her in exploring all of the gifts this cancer has brought into her life and how you can access all the gifts that come with the challenges of life.

As always, even if you can’t make it at that time, if you are registered, you will receive a recording of the event for you to listen to at your leisure. Registration is now open! Click HERE to learn more and register.