"Rattlesnakes & Rationality"

He stopped speaking and looked directly at me. A small man, ancient, frail but with iron in his voice. Thin face dominated by a sharp beak of a nose, and eyes that knew all secrets. He resumed speaking. I knew it was to me. “If you would truly come to know the peace that you seek so diligently, you must begin to watch your mind like you would watch a rattlesnake. How would you watch a rattlesnake,” he continued, “three feet from you, coiled, poised, ready to strike?” The image was compelling. “With a hell of a lot of attention,” I answered to myself. “More you should watch the mind,” he went on. “The rattlesnake can only strike and kill the body. The mind can strike and destroy your capacity to drink the sweet nectar of God’s cup of existence.” Thinking of it still gives me goosebumps.

It was 1980 in Ojai, California. Lyte and I were touring Unity Centers doing our musical medicine show, Mellowing the Drama, for anybody who’d let us in for a love offering. To keep expenses down, we hung out in campgrounds, slept in a pup tent, cooked on a hibachi and ate a lot of whatever was in season and cheap. Artichokes were ten for a dollar. A little steam, a little butter, hog heaven! We’d come from Mesa, Arizona, where we’d done a gig for a crowd of six people. We had almost a week before our date in Ojai, so the artichokes saved our bacon. For variety we found a Denny’s that was pushing Grand Slams for $1.49. One evening in the campground we were enjoying a little honey wine and singing some old folk favorites when a couple stopped and joined in for a while. As they were leaving, they invited us to attend a dharma talk their teacher was giving the next day. We accepted after determining that it was a freebie. Lyte inquired who the speaker was and the girl replied, “Krishnamurti.” “The Krishnamurti?” I asked, “the one who blew off the whole Theosophical trip after a ton of prep?” “The same,” they confirmed. We were front row center.

The prime directive that Krishnamurti ran off on me eighteen years ago was my first invitation to consider cultivating the grace of mindfulness in a focused, conscious kind of way. At least it was the first that had caught my attention. Some time later, as I sat contemplating the “rattlesnake,” Charles Fillmore’s comparable teaching, recorded in Christian Healing, drifted into awareness. “Mind is the one and only creative power . . . Any attempt to understand creation from any other standpoint is futile . . . Therefore, our most important study is our own consciousness.” “Pay attention to what you are paying attention to,” Poppa Charlie counsels.

Seventy years later Krishnamurti’s looking at me confirming Fillmore’s recognition that the key to authentic transformation lies is developing an intimate relationship with the play of the mind. Pay attention, dummy,” I heard the Muse scolding. “Okay, I replied, “I’ll watch my mind like a rattlesnake. I’ll study my own consciousness. But, please, can you let me in on what I’m supposed to be looking for?”

Ask and you shall be given. I remembered Myrtle Fillmore suggesting in one of her letters that the primary reason we embark on this spiritual inquiry is to develop a discriminating awareness that readily perceives the difference between thoughts that are true and thoughts that are filled with error. Bingo!

This line of inquiry eventually led to the realization that I hadn’t begun to scratch the surface of the ramifications contained in the Mosaic injunction to “Bear not false witness.” All of these teachings I’d encountered pointed in the same direction. The quality of my earth experience is determined by the clarity of my thinking. Skillful use of mind creates a light-hearted sense of celebration (aka heaven) . . . unskillful use traps me in the pits of doom and depression (aka the place of sulfuric out-gassing).

I’ve got a hunch that the role of the causal mind was what Jesus was referring to when He announced, “You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free.” These days I hear Him telling me that there shall come a time when the thoughts I use to describe my world are so clear and free of distortion they will reflect only what is truly there. Then, and only then, shall I be free of all the self-imposed suffering I create by describing my life with thoughts that don’t come close to telling the Truth about my experience. I had at least awakened to the point of recognizing that (1) most of my thinking was “false witnessing” and (2) it was time to do something about it. But how? Enter a modern version of the ancient wisdom... “cognitive therapy.”

The notion of mind as primary creative cause of all human experience is of enormous philosophical and transformative importance and central to the cognitive therapist’s method. The idea that our thinking patterns can profoundly influence the nature and quality of our emotional life has been part of the philosophic tradition going back, at least, to the aforesaid Mosaic injunction to “bear not false witness,” and most recently articulated by folks like Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Arnold Lazarus, Aaron Beck, David Burns, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, and my personal contemporary favorite, Albert Ellis, who theorized that the lion’s share of our emotional suffering was due to our tendencies to “awfulize” and “musterbate.” (I must, you must, we must, they must, it must, etc., etc.,)

The most profound mentors in this tradition include Jesus who encouraged us to keep our minds clear and simple when He advised “let your words be yes or no,” and reminded us that “anything beyond that leads to deception,” (Lamsa Bible) and the Buddha who encouraged us to embrace a spiritual practice designed to reveal the bliss of the “beginners mind,” the “empty mind,” as the path to a laughing heart. A contemporary awakened master, Chogyam Trungpa, who moved on a few years ago, put it this way . . . “The epitome of the human predicament is to be stuck in a huge traffic jam of discursive thinking.” Can you relate?

The first principle of cognitive therapy is that all your moods are created by your “cognitions,” or thoughts. A cognition refers to the way you look at things . . . your perceptions, mental attitudes, and beliefs. It includes the way you interpret things, what you say about something or someone to yourself. You feel the way you do right now because of the thoughts you are thinking at this moment.

Second principle: When you are feeling depressed, your thoughts are dominated by a pervasive negativity. You perceive not only yourself but the entire world in dark, gloomy terms. Then, to compound that foolishness, you’ll convince yourself that things really are as empty and meaningless as you imagine them to be. And, if you are really plugged into your fantasy, you will even begin to believe that things always have been and always will be one long nightmare of despair and disappointment. As you look into your past, the tendency is to fixate exclusively on times when your unenlightened thinking was creating pain and woe and misery on high. Your fantasy journeys into the future will tend to be filled with catastrophic scenarios, that validate your sense of fear and foreboding. Being trapped that completely in what is called “bearing false witness” in the Judeo-Christian tradition or “unskillful use of mind” in the Buddhist teachings is guaranteed to leave you stuck in an ongoing sense of fear, despondency and hopelessness.

And it makes no difference that the quality of the thinking that got you there is as suspect as the dubious wisdom of the second six-pack. That’s the bitch about “reality.” It’s always whatever you “think” it is, no matter how illogical or irrational the thought process creating it. And it will remain so until you wake up and take a look at your distorted notions from a point of view that shines a little Truth on them.

This ancient wisdom has been most recently validated in the 1980’s by mental health professionals at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center’s Mood Clinic. They have been practicing and evaluating a contemporary version of the ancient wisdom that “as a man thinketh, in his heart so is he.” They call this modern version “cognitive therapy.” Their research has documented that the negative thoughts which cause emotional turmoil nearly always contain gross distortions. Although these thoughts appear valid, they are, in fact, irrational at best and just plain wrong at worst. The researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, backed up by research at other major academic institutions, have concluded that “twisted thinking is the exclusive cause of nearly all your emotional suffering.”

The implications are enormous. Your depression is not based on accurate perceptions of reality, but is the product of mental slippage. Depression is not a precious, genuine, or important human experience. It is a phony, synthetic counterfeit that depends on you staying spiritually and cognitively asleep for its continued existence.

Now let’s suppose for a moment that you sense there might be something to this notion that cognitive clarity promotes emotional well-being. The question remains, “ How do I apply this in my own life?” Now we come to the most important results of the clinical research done in the area of cognitive therapy. The results indicate, beyond the shadow of any doubt, that you can learn to deal with your depression more effectively if you master a relatively simple set of techniques that will help you pinpoint and eliminate the mental distortions which cause you to feel upset.

The methods are not complex and don’t require any background in psychology beyond your willingness to do some earnest and honest self-reflection. It does take a modest commitment of time to become familiar with the methods and how to apply them. A careful reading of the book, Feeling Good by Dr. David Burns will give you all the background you need to start practicing the techniques that can truly “transform your life by renewing your mind.” As your practice refines your thinking to more accurately capture the authentic reality of your circumstances you will experience a rapid and profound emotional transformation. For some helpful insights into the nature of these “mental distortions,” you might consider purchasing tapes of the Sunday series I’m currently doing on “The Blue Mood Makers - AOMDJMESLP.” They include Sunday, July 12th, 19th, 26th and will probably run through August 16th.

Remember, if you want to “drink the sweet nectar of God’s cup of existence, watch your mind like you would watch a rattlesnake.” Remember, “your most important study is your own consciousness.” Embrace that discipline with a fierce and steady determination. Watch as you refine your capacity to tell yourself the Truth about that everchanging flow of form and circumstance you call your life. Celebrate when you discover that God did not plant the Garden of Your Life between a rock and a hard place. And give thanks for that spiritual warrior named Jesus who spent it all making sure we’d all know there is a Truth that sets us free.