An Untrained Mind is an Anti-Meaning Making Machine
An Untrained Mind is an Anti-Meaning Making Machine
If you don’t know your real problem, you have no chance of solving the problem.
If you are new to Mindset Shifts U, you will find the sessions on Meditations a helpful backdrop to Frankl’s work. Marcus Aurelius understood he had to train his mind and mind training was a daily practice. The temptation to think and act wrong-mindedly—apart from Reality—was always present.
Years ago, I had an absurd dream. I remember the dream because I used lessons from it in my leadership workshops. Now, as then, it affords a deep dive into a principle considered in Session 2 of our coverage of Man’s Search for Meaning: “Self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
In the dream, we had built a large parking lot in the meadow in front of our rural home. In the middle of the parking lot, we built an enclosed shelter like you’d see at a train or bus transfer station. The shelter was a glass structure heated for the comfort of travelers. As the contractor showed me the finished shelter, my attention was riveted on the thermostat. I was annoyed. Why had the contractor set the heat to 75°?
I woke from the dream and realized I had not questioned why we had turned our meadow into a parking lot or why a shelter was needed. The parking lot was not puzzling, but the thermostat was a problem.
Still worse, while waking, I felt myself pulled back into the dream. I had to resolve the thermostat problem. More of me was required; I was ready to return to work. I had to catch myself and awaken fully to separate myself from this nonsensical dream.
But here's the not-so-funny thing: Our waking life is not so different from our dream state. We assume that our problems are real and that more of us, more of our thinking and doing, is required to resolve them. Part of our mind is determined to be constrained by the parameters of our thinking.
Viktor Frankl teaches that each moment is an opportunity to make meaning. Yet our wrong mind turns those opportunities into anti-meaning as we make ourselves and others miserable.
If you don’t know your real problem, you have no chance of solving the problem.
How do we train our minds to recognize “thermostat problems” and get out of the loop of anti-meaning making?