Theater of the Mind

"There is a theater in my mind. Only it is Off-Off-Broadway. The critics have panned it. It is, I know, time to close the show, but I don't know how."

-- Eric Weiner. The Geography of Bliss, p.88

Hmmm, sounds like Eric has constructed a damn good metaphor for the universal human condition. We all have mad, mad melodramas running through our heads. They're held over, not by popular demand, but merely because we've become stuck in the repetitive patterns that generate them.

I'm a lousy typist, so sometimes I wish that there was a little machine, about the size of an I-pod, that would read my thoughts and feed them directly onto the computer screen. But each time I have that fantasy, about half way into it I realize -- Jesus Christ the editing time alone would kill me! My mind is like a drunken monkey, running all over the place, and the crap it produces at times, isn't fit for the page, much less human consumption.

The thing is, though, every spiritual tradition has practices designed to "close the show" or at least slow it to a crawl. Meditation, concentration, yoga, prayer, sacred dancing, etc., were all created to clear the mind of the stories that run and ruin our lives. Take your pick, and soon the theater of the mind will no longer be the main attraction in your life.

Me, I prefer quiet, sitting meditation, and just being present in the world. Fritz Perls, the grandfather of Gestalt Therapy, advised us many years ago to, "Go out of your mind and come to your senses." It still seems like good advice.

The show will never close as long as there is an audience, even just an audience of one. So, walk out of the Mind Theater, focus your attention on something other than your own, repetitive stories, and eventually that Off-Off-Broadway play will close of its own accord. When it does, the only game in town will be the here and now. Welcome to Reality!