Mudita Journal

Mind Identification

November 22, 2003 · Filed under: Buddhism, Eckhart Tolle, Mindfulness, Mudita Forum
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Just posted to Mudita Forum in response to David Axel’s excellent kick-off essay for chapter three in our topical discussion of The Power of Now:

I greatly enjoyed David Axel’s kickoff essay for chapter three. I’m particularly glad he brings up the subject of “mind identification,” as I find this to be one of Eckhart’s most important, and yet most challenging, ideas to understand and apply fully. David writes:

As much as I agree with Tolle’s recommendation that we “disidentify” from what he calls “mind,” I nevertheless remain unwilling to disown my mind or to treat it as anything less than a part of who I am. The same goes for my teeth, hair, skin and so on. Granted, changes in some of my aspects are more “essential” than others. If I need to get a tooth pulled, much as I may once have loved that tooth, if that’s necessary for my well-being, it’s not a problem. ;-) If I get my hair cut, my self has changed, but in a respect that’s not central to who I am.

So, in summary, I’m more inclined to regard the issue of the relationship between self and mind from the vantage point of the whole-part relationship, rather than maintaining that the mind is no part of the self.

I am fairly certain that the “identification” process Eckhart cautions against is an automatic, unconscious process of identification, rather than the conscious conceptual process of identification that David describes above. Further, the “self” that one should learn to disidentify from the contents of one’s mind is the felt sense of self, rather than the whole organism or some conceptual understanding of the self.

As such, there would be no need to exclude the mind from one’s conceptual identification of the self. Rather, we should learn to disidentify our felt sense of self from the (often automatic and compulsive) thought processes that constitute so much of normal mental life. How do we do this? By taking the unconscious process of identification and making it conscious.

Here is an example:

You have an argument with your boss in the morning. It’s only a minor disagreement, but later in the day you find yourself replaying the argument in your mind. As you continue to replay the conversation in your mind, you become increasingly unsettled and, ultimately, angry.

In this example, you become angry because you identify with the imaginary you (mental self) in your mentally recreated argument. But it is not your teeth, hair, and skin that you identify with the mental self; rather, it is the felt sense of self. This is key: When you’re in the mind-identified state of awareness, it is your felt sense of self — and not your bodily or even conceptual self — that “identifies,” so to speak, with the mental activity.

Note also that this identification process is not conscious. Rather, it happened automatically, probably by habit; you’ve had many such mental conversations in the past, and you normally relate to those conversations as though they were real conversations, instead of observing that they are mental creations that can be safely dropped.

I am convinced that this entire process — of how we form unconscious identifications, and how they can be broken — is of truly inestimable significance. No one could count how much human suffering has been created by imagining some scenario (e.g., she doesn’t like me, he is out to get me, I’ll be annihilated if I don’t stick up for myself) and

Posted by Joshua Zader · Trackback URL · Link
  • Chris Kelly

    Hi Josh

    Comparing my own observations of myself with what you have said, I agree that it is our ‘felt’ sense of self that identifies with mental constructs. So, we can either have our ‘felt’ sense of self here and now ‘feeling’ NOW or we can bodily be here, but our ‘felt’ sense of self could be utterly out of the moment.
    With practice I have strengthened my own ability to draw my presence from the mind to the here and NOW and I am just beginning to realise how useful ‘feeling the inner-body’ can be, both for keeping energy from going up into the mind, and as a portal to what ‘is’ going on NOW. And as a side note I have observed that through many years of unconcious identification, there are some places and activites that my ‘unconcious’ patterns prefer, (like certain organisims grow and feed in preferred conditions) lying in bed or bathing are good example, as these are places where I switch off from my body, in order to relax.
    Anyway.
    Good Health to you.
    Chris Kelly. England

  • http://urbangurucafe.com areti

    Hi all,
    What is this mind that is identified with and what but a mind can be identified with it?

    Always when the you (nothing more than a collection of ideas and memories) is thinking that you are an identity with will and voilition, there is a knowing that this is happening – there is an observing – so ‘who’ or ‘what’ is the observer of this. Who or what is the observer of the activities of the mind.

    You don’t have to be thinking for the knowing of presence to be there – you are present before you have this thought ‘I’, and you don’t have to go around saying ‘I am, I am,’ to know of this presence.

    There’s some terrific free podcasts on urbangurucafe.com if what I have written rings true for anyone – if anything will end your seeking, the podcasts on this site surely will. It is the same stuff Eckhart is speaking of – being here in the present (can you be anywhere else? – just try and leap out of the present moment).

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