Pema Chodron said at the retreat that Wavy Gravy (?) said “if you don’t have a sense of humor, it isn’t funny.” she said our minds create our worlds.
we can see this in our lives all the time. if i have a modern art aesthetic, i am attracted to modern art. if i like traditional furniture, there is something about that style that speaks to me. if i am pessimistic, i am likely to pick out the signs of doom in my environment. i am more inclined to like a sad song when i am sad, especially if the lyric is telling my story or i resonate with the tune.
yes the material world exists and it has features that can trigger certain “feelings.” if i leave a clock in a drawer in a dark room, that clock still exists when no one is watching it (i think! 😉 ). if it is a red clock, it may even be safe to assume that it is still red when no one is watching it. there’s a continuity to objects that make things seem more permanent, at least for relatively short time spans.
i believe the most important concept i learned in my education is theory of mind or there being multiple perspectives that are “right” from those perspectives. the world is not how we, as individuals, see it. our image of the world is a co-creation of the material world and the meaning we attach to it.
a joke isn’t funny if there is no sense of humor. a joke is just words, or even just sounds if we don’t know the language. a red clock in the store does not mean anything to me unless it looks exactly like a clock that i loved as a child. the world is not a scary place if i’m not scared.
it is an insensitive and flippant stance to say a heartbreak is not devastating if we just don’t “see it as devastating.” we are humans, and we have propensities. we have hungers for love and belonging, for safety and security. if we did not care about outcomes and just remained inert, we may not feed ourselves, or learn things, or have relationships. yet somewhere in the attempt to ease our hungers or suffering, we may become more hungry and generate more suffering. sometimes our habits become stronger than our wisdom.
it is helpful for me to be aware of safety issues as i walk through a notoriously unsafe city, it is helpful for me know that poisonous snakes may kill me… but when i overdo these habits, i become scared to ever go out or i never get to experience what lying on the grass without worrying about snakes feel. i create demons and snakes in my head even at times when in reality they are not there. my healthy fear of avoiding what’s dangerous becomes pervasive and i create it in my mind, and there is suffering that can pervade my entire life. in extreme cases, essentially i have taken what i fear and then plastered my life with it.
the powers of our imagination and the capacity of our mind to evoke responses in our body and whole being is powerful! yet our wisdom of discerning reality from imagination, can also be as powerful.
so when we label a person as boring or ugly or worthless, when we label an idea as meaningless or untrue, or when we deem a situation to be unsafe, it is important to ask is that always the case, is it seen like that by everyone, are my feelings facts right now…
the idea is not to blame ourselves for being wrong or finally believing that “the problem is with us”… it is about allowing space around these concepts or ideas so we can liberate ourselves and others from the grips of a fixed sense of reality that may be causing us more suffering.
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