Mental Traps_ The Overthinker's Guide to a Happier Life - Andre Kukla [56]
Sneezy … Stop this nonsense! Dopey …
Get back to thought-watching! Isn’t there
one that starts with an M? No more of this!
We would do better simply to finish the dwarf-list in peace.
Naturally, a division need not be limited to two traps. We can commit any number at one sitting. The reader may find it instructive to identify the successive traps fallen into in this representative monologue (the answers are given right after the monologue):
Sneezy … Only two more names to go. But I haven’t been thought-watching! I must get back to it. There’s no need to work on this dwarf list. I can finish it after the session … There—now I’m doing it. Just a few minutes more …
After the original persistence of “Sneezy,” these thoughts are instances, respectively, of acceleration, reversion, regulation, amplification, anticipation, formulation, and fixation. All of them together constitute a rather fierce but not at all unusual division. This is what it sounds like on the inside when we first sit down to watch our thoughts.
Everything we do to get back to thought-watching seems to land us in another trap. Yet the exit is in plain sight. There’s nothing mysterious here. We’re simply misled by our grammatical categories. We assume that “thought-watching” is something to do because it’s a verb like “eating” or “making money,” and we set out to do it right. This is like assuming that “Thursday” refers to a thing because it’s a noun, and setting out in search of its precise geographical location. In fact, thought-watching isn’t a project at all. It isn’t a matter of doing, but of ceasing to do. Thought-watching is the condition we’re in when, remaining wide awake, we no longer do anything. Thus we can’t do thought-watching at all; we can only let it happen. If we try to stop an intrusive project by an act of some sort, then that act itself must inevitably become a second intrusive project. We get nowhere by cursing at ourselves, constructing good arguments, or laying down the law. The only remedy is to drop it—and saying “Drop it!” is not dropping it.
When we’re thought-watching, we literally have nothing to do. Yet we manage to create a monumental round of chores and problems out of this nothing. Is it any wonder that we needlessly complicate our work when there is something to be done?
Primary thanks go to a succession of teachers of the art of living: Lao Tse, Gautama Buddha, G. I. Gurdjieff, Carl Jung, Krishnamurti, Aldous Huxley, Philip Kapleau, Robert Aitken, Nechung Rinpoche, Ram Dass, and Kaila Kukla. For getting the book out there, however, I have to thank my agent, Robert Mackwood. What they say is true: you need a good agent. I tried and failed to get the attention of publishers for years before Robert came along and sold the book to two of them within a couple of weeks.
Having two simultaneous publishers— Doubleday in Canada and McGraw-Hill in the US—has been an interesting experience. For one thing, it seems that there are national differences in punctuation practices: one copy editor deleted most of my commas, while the other one nearly doubled their number. But the main consequence of my dual literary citizenship has been that it brought me into contact with two of the most helpful and most pleasant people that I’ve ever worked with—my Canadian editor, Nick Massey-Garrison, and my American editor, Holly McGuire. Their enthusiasm and support have been unflagging. They’ve lavished my project with care as though it were their own. Holly sent me about a dozen e-mails on the precise wording of the subtitle; and Nick, who seems to have understood the book better than I have, made suggestions that led to major structural improvements. Thanks, Nick and Holly.
About the Author
André Kukla is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, and has taught in both the Departments of Psychology and of Philosophy. He has published