The Ultimate Filter

Our mind is the ultimate filter. The newest cliché in a long list of ‘feel good’ labels is mindfulness. It comes after a long list of mind-altering techniques, with or without chemical enhancement, to see more clearly the world around us and thought patterns inside our head.

Starting in high school, I was always intrigued and curious about how to see the world in a different perspective. Back in the day, that would have included fueling up with Mary Jane, (marijuana), magic mushrooms and LSD. Mixed media concoctions made me uneasy. I wanted to journey inside my head sans chemical enhancements.

Then I stumbled upon Carlos Castaneda and I was hooked. Granted, his approach to cerebral Valhalla was with magic mushrooms but the journey mesmerized me nevertheless. Reading western novels introduced me to the concept of the ‘vision quest’ used by many indigenous people to find clarity in their ancient world.’

Despite my own divorce from organized religion in the early-sixties, I was mesmerized by a hip, chain-smoking priest who really caught my attention. Malcom Boyd was ordained an Episcopal priest after a successful career in advertising and television. Malcom’s approach to life wasn’t your semi-hippie ‘transcendental meditation’ approach that held my attention. Rather, it was his attention to detail. Malcom spoke openly and honestly about real feelings, real emotions and real consequences in my own very real world. A world that most nuns, priests, and adult councilors up until that point didn’t seem to know existed.

Time Magazine dubbed him “the coffeehouse priest” when he read his prayers accompanied by some of America’s best-known musicians. He long served the cause of civil rights, commencing with the Freedom Ride in 1961.

About the same time that Malcom was telling it like it was, another book told us we could lighten up a bit and be our best supporter. The Beatles made a splash when they went to visit the Dali Lama and practiced meditation and yoga. Then the ancient practice of sitting cross-legged and contemplating one’s naval became in vogue.

Down through the decades, we’ve been introduced to a myriad of new-age dynamics that are guaranteed to change our lives. A recent trip to the library introduced me to this years ‘best seller’ and finally it seemed to make some sense. Without audiotape box sets, podcasts, U-Tube lecture series or in-person seminars, there seemed to be a rather simple approach to getting inside one’s head.

A quote from a book I recently read said it best: ‘Until we look directly at our minds we don’t really know ‘what our lives are about. Everything we experience in life goes through just one filter – our minds – and we spend very little time bothering to see just how it works.’

I would suggest that once people get a taste of it - it’s so completely fascinating, because really our life is a clear manifestation of what our minds are telling us.’ Good, bad, right or wrong, it’s all there for our perception, acceptance, denial, rejection or embracing.

Coupled up with these mind relaxing techniques are steps to facing our anxieties and learning to live with them. Almost all of the books refer to nature as an all-encompassing, all around us, every day, every time, kind of therapy.

I tried to touch on this subject in one of my blogs about my ‘secret garden’ and other quiets spots around my home. Each area provides a very peaceful daily dash of zest to my life. The journey inside one’s head is a life-long affair. Most of us don’t even know it in our lifetime. A few of us made that discovery a long time ago and are still exploring where that pathway might take us. Carry on, fellow traveler, carry on.