The Tao of the Mind
by
Joseph Dowdy
Copyright ©2011 Joseph Dowdy
Published by Joseph Dowdy at Smashwords
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"As a person who has often taken ‘the road less traveled by’ in my own life, I find Tao of the Mind by Joseph Dowdy a fascinating read and I highly recommend it."
Sara Marie Hogg, author of Catho Darlington, Blade Chatter and five other books
"Joseph's ‘Tao of the Mind' will anchor you into your heart and present moment living in new ways that will bring you to life. Joseph is a living example of consciously shifting his world to be designed in a way that is empowered, alive and ever-expanding. Connection is everything and this book is a powerful activator for you to connect to all that's possible in the deepest parts of your heart and your experience of being fully alive."
Lynn Rose, "The Voice of Transformation" - www.lynnrose.com
Foreword
I’m going to start with an unusual premise in this book which needs to be made clear immediately:
You know more about you than I do.
The real value in this book will be in the questions that I share with you. I have found that life is profoundly different when you ask why, and more importantly, ask why of yourself.
My intention in this book is that you ask more questions that lead you to a more profound, conscious and vital life; even if you think you already know enough.
If you indulge me in reading this book as if you have a life-threatening disease (or more accurately an “aliveness-threatening” disease) and that this book is the cure, then you will gain enormous benefit from this book. You will be amazed by this book if you read it this way.
Chapter 1: An Interesting Question
I was asked a very unusual question long ago that has taken me nearly 25 years to answer. One of my best friends from high school had written down this question to me in his notebook during biology class. At the time we were learning about cells and how the body meets the needs of the cells; the body brings nutrients to the cells and the cells release their waste to the body. The body provides all that is needed for the cells to meet a broad definition of life: they feed, they excrete, they are born, they multiply, they die and the body helps them do all this. He wrote down his question on a piece of paper and showed it to me. It said…
“Do we live to serve our cells or
do our cells live to serve us?”
This question and many like it (such as someone asking you out loud “Are you hungry?”) will take on a whole new level of complexity when you consider how the question is received, processed and answered by the cells of the body which are the subject of this question “Do we live to serve our cells or do our cells live to serve us?”
To receive the audio version of the “Are you hungry?” question requires the cells in the ear to translate the physical energy of sound waves which reaches the nerves in the cells of the ear; it becomes a biochemical energy which runs along the living nerve cells into the brain. Once in the brain, those signals get translated as words with meaning and form some type of understanding which can produce an answer to the question.
If you have been saying to yourself in recent moments that you are hungry then there may be an immediate internal response like, “Yeah, I’m hungry” or “No, I just ate.” That answer will be ready fast. Otherwise, there may be a more time-consuming check of the stomach area to see if we are full or hungry and that requires more neurons and other types of sensor cells in your midsection to provide that feedback. If there isn’t a clear hunger being indicated, then we may try to remember the last time we ate and that requires yet another specific pattern of firing cells in your short term memory part of the brain to do that. When there is an answer, the brain sends nerve signals to move the mouth, tongue, face and body in a way so as to put together a verbal reply to the question which we call speech. There may also be other things that go along with the answer such as the fact that you are asked that question when you are on a diet which provides a context which may affect the answer (such as “Yeah, I’m hungry as a bear but I can’t eat for another two hours.” or “It depends on what kind of food you are offering.”) and that involves yet another set of specific firing patterns of neurons which is to say that this is all an oversimplified process of responses to three little words: “Are you hungry?”
Can you imagine how much more is involved in responding to three other little words such as, “Do you love me?” What cells are called upon to answer that one and where are they in the body? When feelings are involved it brings up yet another level of complexity that is really not completely understood. Are there cells in the heart that respond in any to the question “Do you love me?” or is it silent while the brain is in overdrive? What if there is a lot of sexual attraction involved? What cells in the body answer this question?
And if you are reading this (as opposed to hearing an audiobook version of this writing), it requires yet more cells which move the eyes back and forth and up and down and helps the brain to decipher the letters, words, sentences and paragraphs; and yet another specific pattern of firing neurons to understand and process those letters, words, sentences and paragraphs.
The important thing to gather here is how we are absolutely and inseparably dependent upon our cells for everything. So then do our cells serve us?
We can’t even function, or even begin to have an idea of what it is to function, without our cells. Quite literally, without our cells, we’re dead; there is no you without your cells.
Indeed, without the correct and very specific pattern of firing neurons, I no longer can answer the question, “Are you hungry?” What if my cells firing pattern was all messed up as it is for people who are in a coma?
How can I answer the question, “Are you hungry?” without those cells firing in specific, and reliable, patterns? It might be relevant to consider that the purpose of sobriety check points is to make sure that “you” are driving your car and not someone who is much closer to being a coma than someone who is sober.
But isn’t it a bit more complicated yet? One hallmark of being alive and being human is to ask a question of oneself such as “Who am I?” Any computer can be programmed to repeat the question or even attempt to answer it, but it takes something that is alive and has cells to ask such a question.
That question “Who am I?” can take on some very odd answers, so consider what cells are being called upon to answer the question when grappling with these questions:
Am I a lawyer after I pass the bar, after I graduate from law school, after my first day with a law firm or after my first day in court as a lawyer? Am I a lawyer if I am in a coma and unconscious, after I have had a stroke leaving me mute or after I change my career?
Some days I might feel like I am a fraud or other days I might feel like who I am is the best of the best. Even without such a drastic influence on brain cells such as a stroke, who I think I am may be different from day to day if my neurons are not firing in the same way each day so that I can answer that question.
What if the part of my cells that stores my name is not firing properly and I can’t recall my name or other important items necessary to answer that question? This is the problem of people with amnesia. Doctors may ask a patient if they know their names to determine how traumatized they are. They may ask if they know where they are.
Is someone we know still that person if they have Alzheimer’s? I remember watching my grandfather go through a dreamlike waking state called dementia and how the small wheel of a hospital gurney fascinated him. He sat there in bed trying to reach for it even though it was over ten feet away just as a baby might reach for a toy that they cannot understand is beyond their grasp.
I was standing next to my grandfather and he didn’t recognize me at all. Occasionally he would call for my grandma who had been dead for more than ten years. Was that my grandpa? Or was my grandpa, as I knew him, already gone? Was my grandpa, as he knew himself to be, dead? He looked the same except for what he was wearing. There was that same smell I can only describe as how my grandpa smells. His expressions were the same types of expressions as when he was who I remembered.
As the expression goes, the lights were on, but no one was at home. Was that my grandpa? Or was that my grandpa’s misfiring neurons that I was trying to talk to?
Which cells in your brain are the ones answering these questions?
Is someone who experiences total and persistent amnesia the same person as they were before amnesia? Who are the people we know if they aren’t their specific patterns of neurons firing in ways that we know and remember?
Who are they to us if our neurons no longer fire in a pattern that recognizes who they are? Who was I to my grandpa when his neurons were not firing the right way when he simply did not recognize his own grandson he had known for over 20 years?
Is who we are limited to some kind of adjective such as handicapped, fat or smart? Are we a skinny person or fat person if we were once skinny, get fat, work it all back off and then start to gain weight again?
What if we get extraordinary grades in high school and then flunk out of college but then are given an honorary degree, were we ever not smart or were we never smart?
Are there cells in your brain that determine who someone is based on other ideas? How do the cells in your body answer a question as to whether or not someone is a Christian, Buddhist or atheist? Where in our body are the cells responsible for answering that question? Are we divine or are we evil and who determines that if we can always be forgiven? What cells are involved in answering? Are we descendants of monkeys or are we biochemical machines? Is the person who we think we are today going to be limited to what will be on our gravestone in 300 years? Who, after all is said and done, are we? And what answers the question?
That question, “Do we live to serve our cells or do our cells live to serve us?” expresses a fundamental question about the existence of life as we know it. Who’s running the show here? Is it clear that our cells determine everything about us? If it isn’t clear, then what would you think about that question today if you knew you’d be in a coma tomorrow?
Do we really live to serve our cells? Are we who or what we think we are? Do we make decisions based on the assumption that our cells are functioning properly or not? Is who we really are, despite what we want to think of ourselves, determined by the consistent and specific pattern of firing neurons in our brains day in and day out? Is that all there is?
How can we trust our cells to answer questions for us if there are ever moments when we are wrong just once? How can we assume we are always right if we are ever wrong even one single time? What cells are we counting on to be right that are different from the ones that gave us a wrong answer once before?
What can we trust our cells to answer? Would you give your life for a principle or idea? Would you give your life to save someone’s life? Would you kill to save someone’s life? Would you give your life to preserve freedom in America? What specific pattern of firing cells tells you that you would you prefer one of these two options: to kill for your country or to kill for your own survival? How did that specific pattern of firing get formed? Can it be changed by having a stroke or a tumor or perhaps by having an epiphany? Is it that easy to change your mind? How long do those cells actually live that are giving answers?
Why is it that everything we know and love depends on billions of cells?
Why is everything precious to us dependent on the incomprehensible idea that billions of microscopic cells are running your life? Have you ever seen a single one of your billions upon billions of brain cells? Did you know that you need a microscope to see what is running your life?
If you don’t believe that what you know and love can be taken away from you so easily, then would you allow someone to give you a lobotomy if they paid you enough money?
Are we not truly, completely and absolutely dependent on our cells?
Do we live to serve our cells? Or do they exist to serve us?
What if this notion that the question, “Who Am I?” is something that can never be answered once and for all? What if it is simply a misguided notion that it can be answered? What if the answer is right one day and then wrong the next? What if who we think we are is completely capable of being altered, whether intentionally or even unintentionally by a blood clot or cholesterol-hardened arteries?
What if who we think we are is completely malleable the way that you can turn gold into a necklace or a ring or a coin or bullion or even a cap for a tooth? Maybe who we are is as malleable as gold, but not as changeable or transformable as gold into lead.
But what if all this is wrong? What if people can’t change? Or is it something else?
This notion that people can’t change (and for so many other problems we have) is because we navigate our lives the way that sea captains navigated the seas at night not so long ago. They would fix upon a star and use the stars to determine their true heading and their course. Centuries and centuries of captains relied upon the fixed positions of the stars because the stars were reliably fixed in the heavens.
We live our lives in much the same way: expecting things in our life to be there from one day to the next and one year to the next and the decisions we make once to be true the rest of our lives. We park our car in one spot and expect it to be there the next day. We go to get our keys and they are not where we thought we had left them. We think we know how much is in our bank account until we look and then we are upset if it’s not what it was yesterday. We expect our computers to run just as well today as they did yesterday. We show up at work and we expect everyone we know to behave exactly as they did the day before. We watch TV and we expect our lives to be the same as they were before and not changed in any way by terror or some other news that affects us the rest of our lives. We expect our bodies to be the same with no new lumps or skin growths.
We chart our lives in our minds in the same way where we think we have our lives events mapped out where we live as long or longer than our parents, we will only be married once and that we have our place in our family that we already know. We expect our friends to be there forever. We don’t expect change overnight because that is too sudden.
What if there is no fixed reality in our lives like the stars that are fixed in the sky?
What if what you believe is not real? Did you know that you can’t spell b-e-l-i-e-f without l-i-e? I’m not saying that God or love or other things you can’t touch are not real; they are to me! But why believe in something you know is real? When you can live like something is real, then there is no need to pretend it is real by using belief.
You can only do yourself a favor by writing a list of things you believe and then decide if they are real for you or not. If they aren’t real for you, then stop pretending. If God is important to you and yet God isn’t real for you, then do something about it like looking for the miracles you have seen in your life and asking others about the miracles they have seen in their lives. Is there anything else that isn’t real for you? What about friendship? Can you see that these things that you can’t touch are real when others agree on them? This creates knowledge and reality.
We build in our mind what is real to us based on experience and when those things seem unchangeable, then we organize our lives around them.
Our “Thinking Brain” can’t stand mystery. It requires us to suspend disbelief often enough. This happens when we watch movies. We are asked to think that there is a galaxy far, far away and long, long ago that one of the most popular movie series took place and you don’t even realize you are suspending your disbelief because you are using your “Creative Brain” while you watch the movie. Because our “Thinking Brain” can’t tolerate mystery, it will allow some things to go unsolved or even create belief as an interim solution, but belief is like quicksand and can lead to erratic behavior: only removing doubt can you choose what is real.
Belief is a product of the “Comfort Brain” and thus is just as dangerous as eating junk food to feel better. It may produce a seemingly real benefit, but it is short term in benefit and dangerous long term. If you can eliminate what you believe and understand that it’s OK to accept things as real even if you can’t touch them, then you’ll be living in reality. It only requires that you interact with others that something you can’t touch is real just as we do with many things already: love, leadership, the mind, etc. What other things can’t be touch but yet we all interact with as if they are real? Is Bugs Bunny real? Just ask Warner Bros.! Is Santa Claus real? Just watch a Christmas parade! It’s a lie to say that Santa Claus brings gifts, of course, but Santa Claus is just as real as Bugs Bunny.
The “Comfort Brain” wants you to make these fuzzy connections and lie about things and then spread those lies to others. It’s a way of taking comfort in things that aren’t real.
It would be easy to take comfort in miracles being real if you needed a miracle to solve your problems, but what is easy to overlook is that when we believe in or hope for miracles, we aren’t facilitating them or doing anything to make them real. Eliminate (requires action) hope and belief (requires inaction) and watch the love and miracles happen (result).
It’s because we take comfort in a known future that we live comfortably. When we don’t question what we think we know about ourselves and our lives, then we are “set” as we say which means we are fixed in place like we say that glue sets and glue fixes things.
Are things ever exactly the same from one day to the next or does it just seem that way because it’s safe to think so? Have you ever had a day with a life-changing event and, if you did, does that prove that things can be fundamentally different from one day to the next? Would it be too much work to challenge your assumptions about life? Is it possible to be someone completely different from one day to the next?
We act like we know things and what we discover over and over again is that we are not always 100% right about everything. What we don’t see is that the fixed stars in the sky are all moving away from each other at incredible rates of speed and we don’t perceive it.
We don’t act as though we know that as we go through life that nothing can be exactly the same as it was from day to day, but we do expect it to be the same and that is where the problem comes in. We don’t think about the small choices we make today that if we keep making them will eventually lead us down a path that didn’t want to be on.
We know conceptually, if we really think about it, that things will be different in small or profound ways but we expect to be the same.
And then if we do start thinking we are going to be different or that things will be different that they will always be better than they are today.
As we go through life, we assume that tomorrow we will be the just same as today or a lot better. Each year we hope our lives will be better than the last. We hope we will be better off and a little wiser as each year approaches and passes. This is all with the assumption that who we are is going to be is the same person year in and year out and that we will know whether or not what we thought was true: that we did become a little better off and a little wiser with each passing year.
That sense that each year will be like last year but better implies that life will be more comfortable as time passes. We certainly don’t hope for less comfort, do we? Each year will bring us more prosperity and more wisdom…a little more comfort in our own skin.
Who we know ourselves to be this year will be a little better next year and the result will be that we will be more…comfortable? Is comfort our goal and reason to live?
The problem again, is that we think that things will be the same when we know that they will be different and we assume they will be better. In other words, the problem is that we expect things to be the same or better. Said even simpler, we expect the comfort that comes from things being either the same or better. We expect comfort and that is the biggest problem we will ever face. We feel like we are smart enough about who we are and what we know to be entitled to the comfort we expect.
Our cells don’t perceive change beyond their lifespan and when you are living to serve your cells, change isn’t real.
Chapter 2: The Problem of Comfort
By comfort, I am referring to much more than the ordinary sense of the word. I am saying that the notion of comfort I am using extends far deeper and far more extensively than you have ever considered or realized. I am referring to the level of comfort that we all experience on a second-to-second and moment-to-moment basis. I am referring to the ready-made comfort you expect in knowing the answer to any question.
You have the answers for everything and that is where you take comfort in knowing things. You know how you should be, should feel, and what you should think and should know and that is the house of comfort and it is a trap.
As you read this, you are either sitting or standing or lying down perhaps. Are you comfortable in that position? Would you rather change positions? Shift your legs maybe?
Are you experiencing comfort? What cells are you using to answer that question?
The problem is much deeper than body sensations and the demand for having comfort although the immediacy of comfort is the same thing. In fact, the same cells that are in charge of your ready-made comfort are in charge or your ready-made answers.
What cells of your body are running the show when it comes to your moment-to-moment comfort and your ready-made answers in life?
The real problem is that any answers you have about your comfort don’t really require any thinking. The answers are just there without much language involved. You don’t ask yourself, “Am I comfortable?” You just move a bit and see or perhaps you just say, “Of course. What a stupid question.”
You could say that it requires less effort on your brain just like it takes less effort to know if you are hungry if you haven’t eaten yet today than if you just ate. If you haven’t eaten yet today then your answer is going to be a quick “Yes I’m hungry!” as opposed to a slower “Hmm. No, I just ate.”
We are talking about the area of the brain that has already done the thinking for you and its thinking is based on information that is pre-screened and filtered out. It’s really as if there is a “Comfort Brain” that we use to avoid thinking because the ready-made answers are already stored there waiting to be used.
By the way, be aware that if you yawn that it is because you are perturbing your “Comfort Brain” since you are making your brain wake up and work. Your “Comfort Brain” doesn’t like this and may lull you to sleep or get you to stop reading. I’ve actually experienced people’s phones ringing when their “Comfort Brain” is unusually engaged at times so as to avoid actually going the distance to do some real thinking.
What is even worse is the depth to which this level of ready-made decision-making determines the quality of our relationships. Much of the time in relationships we make our decisions based on what is comfortable (using our “Comfort Brain”) rather than really thinking about something. Some people would never actually solicit advice from someone who has opinions that they value because it might mean that they may say that if they were in our shoes that they would do something that is uncomfortable to us.
Let me try to bring this a bit more down to earth because it is absolutely everywhere in ALL of our thinking and non-thinking. Comfort rules absolutely unless we are aware of it ruling over us with absolute control.
For example, I am wearing a sweater this morning and as I sat down to write, I didn’t think much about the fact that I put on a sweater. I was thinking I might get hotter and then have to take it off (and these were my background thoughts), so why not take it off to start? Then I told myself to ignore my “Comfort Brain” and focus on writing and just sit down and write already. So, as I am writing, I am getting warmer and now I am going to take off my sweater. I know, from my past, that if I get too warm that I won’t think clearly enough for writing. You see it is my “Comfort Brain” that is making me take off my sweater. It was my “Comfort Brain” that told me to put it on in the first place as well because I felt a little chilly when I first got up this morning and I didn’t recall that it was forecast to be a warm day today. My “Comfort Brain” told me to put on my sweater and then it told me to take it off. Why didn’t I just use my thinking brain and figure out that a sweater was just simply a bad choice to start? It’s because I let my “Comfort Brain” run the show from the beginning of the day.
Now this example may seem like a not very impressive one to you and you can see yourself doing the same thing perhaps, but the most important part that you will want to see about this is that there was no contemplation from the beginning when I dressed myself this morning and I was simply on automatic pilot. It’s true that I am observing myself as I write because I was able to shine a light on my automatic nature, which is shining a light on the “Comfort Brain” in action and that is what enabled me to illustrate this example. I mean to ensure that I shine a light not just on my “Comfort Brain” but also on the other part of me that was able to see the “Comfort Brain” in action.
I have found that it is when the “Comfort Brain” goes unobserved that it will make decisions that destroy your life. It is the “Comfort Brain” that tells a drunk to take that next drink; there is an avoidance of thinking about the outcome of their action. The “Comfort Brain” says that cheating and lying is OK when people cheat and lie; there is an avoidance of the conscious brain realizing that they wouldn’t want someone to cheat on them or lie to them. The “Comfort Brain” tells someone that they have to get money so badly even if it means breaking the law; thinking about it might give them other options.
It’s as if there is always this “good angel” on one shoulder and the “bad angel” on the other where the “bad angel” is the “Comfort Brain” and the “good angel” is your conscious/choosing/rational/thoughtful brain. This is the “Problem of Comfort” and, said more specifically and more or less by definition in this book, the “Problem of Comfort” is when the “Comfort Brain” is making your decisions for you and running your life. The “Comfort Brain” is the unconscious decision maker in your life and thus makes bad decisions that serve to protect its own ideas about life and its own sense of self-perpetuating comfort. It seeks to prove its value and seeks to stop you from thinking any other way that might involve “changing your mind” about its ready-made thinking.
It’s extremely important to watch the “Comfort Brain” in action, but remember that it is not like you should. If you think you should, then you are missing the point. It is the “Comfort Brain” that thinks in terms of should, could or would. The thinking brain knows the difference between what is real (what can be measured or agreed upon by agenda-less observers) and what is not real (things that can be disproven by someone who does not agree or thinks differently).
Keep in mind that the things that are not real are the things which are measured by the “Comfort Brain” internally; concepts such as “good” or “bad” are examples of things that are not real since not everyone can agree upon what those things are. The “Comfort Brain” has its own guidance system, rules for right and wrong and ideas based on experiences that could be absolutely incorrect even though you don’t know they are.
For example, eating with your left hand is considered “bad” in some cultures while it is not in others. There are people who live their entire lives insisting that eating with your left hand is “bad” and that is what they were taught and that is what they teach others, but it’s not rational in other cultures. And, as a reverse example, it is “bad” in American culture to want to live humbly. Why? Because you “should” want to have a big car, big house, big TV and have a huge amount of money in the bank so that you can buy a boat or invest in the stock market or buy a summer house and always live for some day when you will have so much that you won’t want anything else while in other cultures, living simply is their goal in life. It is no stranger to want to live simply without excessive wealth or fame than it is in some cultures that the left hand is considered “bad.” (And by the way, the reason it is considered “bad” is because it is the hand used to clean your bottom when you finish on the toilet.)
Are you yawning yet? Are you absorbing everything here? Is it annoying or boring?
If you do choose to watch the “Comfort Brain” closely, you should know that it largely does not want to be seen, so you would have to really focus on it and really work on noticing it on an ongoing basis.
You have to use cells in one part of your brain to be able to watch other cells in another part of the brain (the “Comfort Brain”) in action when it is trying to run the show.
This is the biggest challenge one can master in life; it is referred to in some cultures as “being awake” and “being present.” This is what it is to be a master of anything and everything. And, no, if you think you are already doing this and this is a new concept to you, then you’re not. That’s just your “Comfort Brain” trying to keep you asleep.
There are some aspects of the “Comfort Brain” that are so cleverly designed that someone else can tell you when you are being a jerk (letting your “Comfort Brain” make decisions for you) that you would refuse to acknowledge that you are being a jerk. The “Comfort Brain” is what hangs those blind spots in front of you keeping you from seeing what a jerk you can be. (Take it from me, if someone says you are being a jerk, the most awake thing you can do about it is to say “Thank you for telling me. I’m so sorry that I didn’t see it sooner.” Only the “Comfort Brain” can disagree.)
The “Comfort Brain” is nothing more than a specific set of firing neurons that wire together in such a way as to create a mind that cannot be changed easily from within or challenged willingly by others. This does not mean that if you are going to be free of your “Comfort Brain” that you have to have a brain that is easy to manipulate or provoke or that you are going to be so naïve that others will take advantage of you.
Instead you will have freedom to consider every possible interpretation of reality as valid (in other words, you are free to accept whatever others consider “bad” or “good” to them without letting your “Comfort Brain” try to prove they are wrong). You can simply accept whatever people say without needing to prove them wrong. Said another way, if you are truly awake, then you would enjoy input that is contrary to what you already know. Said in a more familiar way, you have an “open mind.” Perhaps the biggest problem that people have with the idea of having an “open mind” is that if they do that they will lose their morals or principles or standards; this is just more of the “Comfort Brain” resisting outside input. An “open mind” does not mean one that is easy to manipulate or provoke as I said mentioned above. Even when people are under hypnosis they won’t take any actions that they would never do if they weren’t hypnotized.
Many people say that they have an “open mind” when in fact they would never give up their thinking long enough to hear something contrary. They would never consider anything that is simply contrary to what their “Comfort Brain” says that they know or believe. This is not to say that I believe people should give up their core ideals, but there are some people who pretend that they have core ideals and they are more interested in pretending than anything else.
If you aren’t willing to say that you are wrong about everything that you have ever known, then you don’t have an “open mind.” It’s just not comfortable for people to admit they are wrong or that they have been wrong or that they could even remotely be wrong about everything. That’s just crazy talk, right?
I can tell you for a fact that just about everything that I have ever known turned out to be wrong and that if I hadn’t come to this realization, then I would still be the loser I was. At least I can say that my eyes have been opened to seeing that there isn’t just one truth for everyone. If you think that there is just one truth in life (which is yours) and you also happen to think you have an “open mind” then you probably don’t want to acknowledge how much of a menace you are to others. It’s not true that you are a menace, but you probably don’t want to acknowledge how much of a menace you are to others. Someone who has a truly “open mind” is always willing to consider that they are wrong before listening or opening their mouth. Again, it’s not true; it’s just a test of open-mindedness.
The “Comfort Brain” operates in many ways but let’s get to what the “Comfort Brain” is like at its worst.
Did you know that you could live your whole life without using any other part of your brain other than the “Comfort Brain”? Absolutely. And you would be OK with that. Absolutely. How do I know this? Because you have been using it your whole life and it really hasn’t been a problem to you (unless you are either in jail, have either hit rock bottom or are starting to see that it actually has been a problem but you hadn’t seen it before). Now that we have identified it, let’s see if you really want to let it run the show for the rest of your life. In other words, let’s see if what you really want is to be alive merely to serve your brain cells.
And again, which cells are you using right now to read this; the “Comfort Brain” or the open-minded cells?
The problem with living your life using only your “Comfort Brain” is when that “comfort” level changes to “not comfort” or uncomfortable or discomforting. Every moment we track how we feel and it is when that is disturbed that it creates a problem. We track everything in the same way that we track if we are hungry; we track everything in much the same way that you know how much money you have on you or how much gas is in your car or how many dirty clothes or dishes that need to be washed or whether you do or don’t like sushi or bungee jumping. What the “Comfort Brain” is tracking is like a yes or a no that is invisible to us until a question appears that matches the answer. And then it isn’t invisible any longer.
We could say that the “Comfort Brain” is like a tone that is resonating and any time that tone is disturbed it is as if that tone has become noise. It’s annoying, in fact. It’s disturbing. It’s disquieting and uncomfortable.
We absolutely know when something is uncomfortable. People get cold feet and run from the altar when they are just, as simply as can be stated here, not comfortable committing themselves to a particular person for the rest of their lives.