Vicariousness
Introduction
Specific instances of vicariousness
Demonstrating the value of putting yourself in other’s shoes
This very moment, as you sit down and read these words, I invite you to join me on some flights of fancy. Let us imagine this very moment that you and I are spending poring over these words, with the idea that perhaps this book will be interesting or edifying, or on a lucky day both. This very moment as you read a couple of words, the surface of your mind is (hopefully) plugged into these words. However, there are multiple layers of thought within you that are interpreting your experience, and giving you what you experience as reading.
There is that identity within your head that makes this transaction about ‘what’s in it for me?’ and this is an identity that is very useful, but this is not the same as your reading identity, which simply absorbs content. There is also the identity in your head that thinks about something that you were doing right before you picked up this book. There is also the identity that is worrying about something that you plan on tackling after you finish your current session with this book. There are more identities, too many to name in fact.
Just as there is a multitude of identities, different contexts and different hats that are constantly assumed and then rapidly shed, within your psyche, such a multitude also exists for me. It is almost as teeming and bustling a metropolis as your own mental city. However, this is not all. There exists a city like this for every human being on this planet. If we are to take notes from wise teachings the world over, there exists a city that is perhaps simpler, yet frighteningly complex, for every sentient being that exists, whether on this planet or on other planets, should such things be possible.
The point is, all of our mental cities exist, and they intertwine, and they stretch in all directions, for each and every one of us. The mind has no spatial or temporal limits. This means that we can use our minds to conjure up the farthest of distances and the grandest of scales, just as we can use our minds to conjure up the most ancient past or remote future. Indeed, we can even move transverse to the time line, and collapse all of time into a concept that we toss around. It is technically possible, while we may not do it very often, or even acknowledge that we can do all of this.
The mental universes of all sentient beings everywhere have been described above, and the potential power contained therein has also been described. However this is not all. The physical correlates to these mental universes exist as well, as do the physical entities within whom those physical correlates are expressed. I include all energy forms in this fold as well.
Neuroscientists are better suited to and far more competent at fully fleshing out the physical correlates of mental formations, so I will leave that out of these pages. About the physical entities that house such correlates, however, I will give you a brief flavor.
In this very moment, as you read this, you know that multiple different physical bodies are engaged in multiple activities, with so many varieties of thoughts and energies. For instance, as we pore over these words, there is someone who is coughing somewhere. There is also a couple arguing over finances, and then there is a person on a rooftop contemplating suicide. Imagine that. This very minute. We don’t know who that is, but that person is there. This very minute, also, there is a person attempting to rape another person, and this very moment, a bullet has been fired with lethal intent by one person at another person.
It isn’t all bad news however. There is a couple making love in the most mind blowing and the most passionate of ways, right this minute. Then there is a child that is playing with soap bubbles and laughing delightedly, enjoying the transcendent delight that only an uncomplicated mind allows. This very minute, there is a spiritual master somewhere who is sunk into the deepest of meditations, and whose efforts are making the sum total of all our mental universes slightly more beautiful. Perhaps only slightly, but that small measure makes the difference between breakdown and thriving. This very minute someone has experienced enlightenment for the first time. It is a rare thing for such a thing to happen, and yet it is bound to happen.
In a nutshell, this minute that you are reading these words along with me, there are so many myriad things occurring simultaneously, that to have an idea that one can grasp all of this sounds like sheer madness. You may ask me this – why would one even entertain this idea? Of what importance is it, to grasp all of the things that are happening this very moment, and to tie them together in some way? Is this not a fool’s errand? Of what philosophical benefit could such a seemingly pointless exercise be? Never mind the lofty philosophical benefits, is there any practical benefit to this sort of mental meandering?
To actually appreciate that there are myriad activities going on this minute, even as you and I are engaged in the seemingly mundane task of reading, gives us perspective. Simply put, this perspective is far more powerful than we know when we first glimpse it. Imagine that you actually taste, in some small measure, every one of the little things that you know are going on right now, and do this simply to taste the moment in all that it carries. This itself confers the immediate benefit of enlarging your imagination, and expanding your inner eye, the eye of visualization, that allows your mind to replicate actual experience. This means an immediate increase in your intelligence, since this is all that intelligence is – to see clearly with your mind. Now, does this mean the analytical apparatus in the mind is improved as well. I believe it is. The faculty of the mind that allows us to distill information and to sort it into categories and to use these categories to answer the questions that perplex us, this is strengthened through giving it clearer information, and more complete information.
So, if we learn to vicariously live other’s experiences as they are embedded in this moment, or even simply be aware of their happening, this enhances our imaginations and our intelligences. So far so good.
Now imagine that you wedded yourself to this expanded perspective for a few hours, as you pursued the things you usually do in your life. Imagine going in to work. Let’s paint this out so we can taste it viscerally. Let’s say that I go into work, and that I am worried about what my bosses think of me. That is, their opinion matters too much to me. Clearly this is a mental pathology, and for any objective observer, it is clear that having your mind in such a place is deleterious to your mental and physical health. Nonetheless there are many amongst us who actually obsess over what others think of us. So, I go in to work. Now, imagine that I did so with my own habitual thought currents, and allowed myself to be swept away by the fixation that – oh she looked at me funny, I must do something to assuage her thoughts about me; or he looked at me angrily, I must bend over backwards to please him so that I don’t lose my job.
Imagine for a moment what this says about my mental state, if indeed such thoughts made the rounds in my head. Let’s be clear, we will all agree that this is pathological. What we may not agree on, is the fact that a whole lot of us, myself included, carry this pathology around in our heads, and it has become our frenemy. At least we think of it like that. There is comfort in the familiar. So, we feel some measure of comfort in the icky feeling that goes along with ‘I want to please my boss’, even though there is something inherently wrong here. Now, imagine the same mental setup, but imagine that I entered it with perspective. That is, imagine that I went into to work, and I still have my habitual thought currents about what my boss thinks about me, and should I bend over backwards for him or her. Add to this the vision of seeing that in this moment, even as my habitual thought currents exist, so do the habitual thought currents of others, the highways, so to speak, in their own mental cities. Not only this, there are the ever changing priorities and action items that are running like high velocity bullet trains in all of our minds, each one very different from the next. Imagine that all of this was added as well.
I am not saying that I have replaced my habitual thought currents with other thoughts. That is a very handy psychological implement as well, but this is completely different. I am saying imagine inserting into your mind all of the appreciation of the other, the things that are going on alongside your habitual thought currents, and imagine allowing these to cohabit in your mind. What does this do to your habitual thought currents? It starts to make them porous – since you know that options exist. You can move mentally into other places, if you wanted it to. Your habitual mind has neighbors it can talk to. It can move to another city. It can expand to include more vision, were you to allow it.
Now, magically, let us remove everything except for the habitual thought currents. What do you notice? Relief? That’s exactly right. There is tremendous relief. The relief is double edged. There is the relief that you are holding so much less in your mind this moment, than you were a moment ago, and you are only in the company of your most familiar fr enemy, your habitual mind. Then there is the relief that has been tasted when you knew that your habitual thought currents are not your only options. You have the freedom to move out of your own mental highways, and to take bypasses to highways that lead to far more interesting places, perhaps even happy places.
This is only the beginning however. The more time you spend jumping from one highway to another highway – the easier the process of distancing yourself from those highways that don’t serve you well becomes. It is very interesting to experience how rapidly this ease comes into being, and how we can make this happen at any time in our lives. It is simply a shift in internal perspective.
Now, imagine entering the workplace, where your ever present boss is likely to mentally condemn you, having practiced such relief. Imagine that the habitual thought shows up – ‘oh my God – there (s)he is – I can see the look in his/her eyes’. Now you have already experienced the possibility to think something far more expanded, and you are in that state of relief, so it becomes easier, only slightly, but it does become easier – to dilute that manic habitual voice just a little bit. Imagine instead adding mentally – ‘I wonder what else occupies his head this minute?’ Imagine that – imagine thinking about your boss’s other priorities. What may (s)he be going through other than thoughts of you? What are the other challenges? Is the long face directed at you, because it is directed at you, or is it directed at all of the troubles of his/her life? Now imagine that you let this thought sit for a minute, and then swiftly, drop all of it, and instead direct yourself to ask – what else is going on this minute – this very minute? What is going on?
Imagine that even as you mope around in the office, there are toddlers who are incredibly happy, and simply seeing them in your mind makes you smile. Imagine that in the same moment, there is a stupid cat – that launches itself onto a shelf, and but lands short on the sofa – and then shakes her head, shrugs it off, and coolly wanders off as if she owns the house. This very moment an elephant somewhere has water in his trunk, and is spraying it on his back, and on the backs and fronts of others. This very moment someone is sitting and smoking a hookah – and wondering why they were worried about anything in the first place.
Imagine inserting this perspective, just as your mind starts to mope and rant and rave – precisely when you need to insert it. Imagine how diluted the rants and raves become, because of all this fresh water flowing in. In my experience this gives an enormous feeling of grandeur and rock solid peace. Your boss just may notice the calm expression on your face, as you go about the office. Even if he doesn’t notice it now, he will notice it soon, and it will calm him down. Even the bitchy, whiny colleague will notice it – and he or she will become a little less bitchy, a little less whiny.
In a nutshell, we took this very moment, then imagined in this moment all of the other activities and thoughts and energies and vibrations that inhabit this moment, and then we allowed all of this to exist alongside our habitual thoughts. Then we simply went back to our old ways of thinking, and alertly scanned our minds and hearts for what thoughts and feelings were expressed. We experienced relief, perhaps lots of it. This is another way to meditate.[Now, this may not seem obvious at first. In meditation, you take one object or one concept and you place that in front of your mind, and you redirect your mind to it as often as needed, until your mind acquires the ability of staying focused on that object or concept for increasing periods of time. There will come a time, with proper practice, when your mind becomes so good at this practice that you can almost instantly become one with the object/concept of your meditation. This ‘state’ is referred to as Samyama in yoga – where the state of flow comes into being almost instantaneously, solely because of earlier efforts, direct or lateral, in this direction. Now, in what we’ve examined above, instead of placing our attention on one object or concept, we learn the art of instead placing our attention on the mechanism of attending. So, the object of our attention is the field of awareness. By doing this, we can learn the art of making every life experience a meditation session.]
