As I was driving home the Sunday after Thanksgiving, it struck me that a Global Positioning System (GPS) is similar to the mind as it directs you to your destination. I set the GPS and it calculated what it thought was “The Best Route. I thought… my mind also believes it knows “My Best Route.”
An hour into the journey I encountered closed lanes due to construction and I knew it was time to make a choice. Was I going to stay on the multilane interstate and crawl through the construction zone or would I get off the interstate and travel on smaller state highways? I made a choice and headed onto the state highway. As soon as I did this the GPS indicated I needed to make a U-turn to get back on the interstate. Like the GPS, the mind does not like changing its direction or doing things differently. I then continued in the direction of “my” new route with the awareness that the GPS was doing its programmed task of keeping me on “it’s route” so I would not get lost. The mind does this all day long. Proposing options that will keep us safe and not get us lost. Of course we are safe and we are not lost, but the mind does not believe this.
Over the next several hours, I traveled in amazement as the GPS gave me dozens of choices to get back to the interstate. At every single opportunity it relentlessly recalculated a course to get me back on “it’s route.” I listened with awareness, considered the new information and chose the direction I wanted to go. If I would have slipped out of awareness and followed the GPS directions, I would have added hours and many miles to the trip and wondered–“What just happened?” Likewise, when we follow the programmed directions of our mind without awareness, we again wonder, “What just happened?”
Dealing with the mind we must also be relentless in our actions and repeatedly tell ourselves that the mind is just “a device” like a GPS. The GPS was programmed at the factory which is no different than the programming of our minds during domestication.
Are you going to let your “device” direct your route or will you challenge the device and move forward when it is telling you to make a U-turn?