The Mind Game

Richard Lang

'The mind game' is a version of 'the face game'. Playing 'the mind game' is living and acting as if my mind is here, as if it is central, inside my head here, a thing that is separate from the world out there.

When I think about another person, or another planet, where are my thoughts? I find no mind or head at centre in which to keep them. My thoughts are centrifugal, connected to the objects I’m thinking about: my thoughts about another person connect to that person there; my thoughts about another planet connect to that planet there. In other words, my thoughts are at large, woven into the world: they are an aspect of the world, of my view out, rather than an aspect of a central self. (I find no central self.) However, in everyday conversation I divide the contents of my mind, my view out, into two kinds of things: things physical and things mental. I say that my desk, for example, is physical and is outside my head, but my thoughts about my desk are mental and are inside my head, separate from my desk by about half a meter. I do this because I know that others see my desk (and my head) but not my thoughts. Accepting the view that my mind is inside my head (and your mind is inside your head) is a useful convention when communicating with others. However, my private reality is different. My thoughts about my desk are not divided off from my desk. They arise not in my head but in this boundless ‘no-head’, in this ‘no-mind’ in which I find not only my thoughts but also the world. I find no dividing line between my mind and the world, between inside and outside. What is your experience? Is your mind separate from your world?

It takes energy to play 'the mind game' – to maintain the fiction that my thoughts are inside an imagined head here, separate from the rest of the world there. And though it’s a useful, indeed necessary convention for living in society, believing it is my private reality as well is not only tiring, but gets me into all kinds of trouble. Under the illusion that my mind is all bottled up in a tiny container at my centre, it’s no wonder if I feel depressed, lonely, isolated, alienated, uncreative, under pressure, angry, and sometimes quite mad. When I stop pretending and see my mind as it is, including where it is, I correct a fundamental mistake and heal a deep wound in my psyche – the wound of making a thing of my psyche and separating it from the world. This healing, this seeing through the illusion of being contained inside anything – this Liberation – releases energy, creativity and joy.

All this is for testing.