“One can be conscious of the limits of everything except one’s own consciousness.”
Steven Hayes
It’s a toss-up which I love more – therapy or teaching – but what I love the most about each of them are the people on the other end of the process, the clients and students. I recently taught a nine-week class stretched over twelve weeks and fell in love with the warm humans and their bright faces and curious minds who showed up every Monday night. You can’t do therapy without clients and you can’t teach without students. My mind just works better when it is relating to other minds. That connection is why I’m here.
The class, as I’ve mentioned in previous columns, drew most of its material from a book by Russ Harris called The Happiness Trap, which is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT. Steven Hayes, a psychologist from the University of Nevada in Reno is widely credited with developing ACT along with his colleagues Kelly Wilson and Kirk Strosahl.
For therapists who have been through ACT training, we use it because it is empirically-based, relies on acceptance and mindfulness methods, has a present-moment focus, and helps clients connect with and act from their core values. And it works. And for someone like me who has been in private practice for nearly 28 years, ACT has transformed how I do therapy over the last decade.
One of the unique aspects of ACT is its recognition of the observing self or mind, which is similar to the Buddhist notion of Buddha Mind or Buddha-nature. The observing mind is very different from the thinking mind. For me, it is like a mirror or camera. It sees, notices, reflects, observes, perceives, attends and describes. It is pure awareness and as such, is not rooted in time or place or even person.
I can access it. You can access it. But it does not “belong” to you or me. It is not my pet. It is not my possession. I do not own it or keep it in a cage. We cannot contain it or hold it because these tools of grasping and clinging are exclusively found in the thinking mind. The observing mind is like a room without walls or a ceiling or a floor. We can step into that room anytime we like and when we do, we notice how different the world looks from there.
Our thinking mind is different. It plans, judges, compares, creates, evaluates, blames, praises, criticizes, approves and rejects. It is the aspect of our consciousness that most of us identify with.
Steven Hayes describes the observing mind as “an aspect of self that metaphorically cannot be looked at but instead must be looked from. From the inside out, it is seemingly not an ‘it’ at all, and having multiple names reflects the challenge of naming a process that has no ‘thing-like’ properties that one can readily detect. It is not possible to contact fully the limits of (unlimited) consciousness consciously.”
Our observing self or awareness can notice thoughts but it cannot create them. It does not think but it can see or notice thoughts. It can observe the process of thinking. The time-bound, thinking mind thinks about experiences that have happened or are happening or will happen. The observing mind, however, is rooted in the now and is therefore rootless, timeless and ageless and cannot “think about” experience. Instead it is one with the experience and can be described as “the experiencer.” It acknowledges our experience of reality while our thinking mind engages in endless chatter and commentary about it.
A skilled basketball player “in the zone” is not thinking about shooting a ball into a hoop. Instead, she is acting out of her deeper self, the part of her that transcends thinking and is not worried about success, failure, doing or not doing. This pure awareness is freed from the “back-seat driving” or distraction of the thinking mind.
I can enjoy watching a sunset from the serenity of a deserted beach, you can enjoy “losing yourself” while dancing to music or we can sink into a glorious and peaceful state of wonder as we rock a child to sleep. In each case, our thinking mind is a hindrance. Our thoughts cannot add to the experience and can easily interfere and diminish the moment.
At all times, these two processes are engaged. The world is happening and we are happening with it and our pure awareness (another name for the observing self) notices it. It is “with” it. It “ones” with it while our thinking mind hops around like a hyperactive monkey making the focus of its attention a problem by judging, resisting, clinging or worrying about it. The more we identify with our thinking mind, the more disturbed we could become. The more we identify with our observer, our “awareness-er,” the more we just are. We just are. What other words are necessary?
Our thinking mind is a radio that never shuts up. It broadcasts all day every day. There is no “off” button. It is always on. The observing mind does not “care” what is on the radio. It can notice it or not. And it can notice other things. It is “fine” with whatever. It does not have a preference. It is a mirror. Whatever or whoever stands before it, is seen, but the observer does not vote. It does not prefer. There is no thumb pointing up or down. It is all just passing show to the observing mind.
Must we care what is on our radio? We cannot control or change the past, the future or other people. We cannot always control our own thoughts and feelings. We can only control our attention and actions in the present. Meanwhile, the radio plays on. Let it play. Let it be. If listening to the radio helps, then listen. If it does not help, we can focus elsewhere. We can “know” what is true and real, here and now as we ignore the broadcast of our radio mind.
Click here to read part 2 of Chasing Happy.
Doug Craig graduated from college in Ohio with a journalism degree and got married during the Carter administration. He graduated from graduate school with a doctorate in Psychology, got divorced, moved to Redding, re-married and started his private practice during the Reagan administration. He had his kids during the first Bush administration. Since then he has done nothing noteworthy besides write a little poetry, survive a motorcycle crash, buy and sell an electric car, raise his kids, manage to stay married and maintain his practice for almost 25 years. He believes in magic and is a Sacramento Kings fan.
