Breaking Love's Code

Our swirl of mental activity drowns out what is essential.

Photo by Farai Gandiya on Unsplash

British pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park changed the course of World War II when they broke the Nazi Enigma code. The 80^th anniversary of their use of the world’s first digital computer was recently marked.

Some of Turing’s superiors had scoffed at his unorthodox methods and thought his time and resources invested in code-breaking were a waste. His commander Alastair Denniston told the head of naval intelligence: “You know, the Germans don’t mean you to read their stuff, and I don’t expect you ever will.”

Facing resistance, Turing took the unusual step of appealing directly to Churchill. In his appeal, he wrote: “It is very difficult to bring home to the authorities finally responsible either the importance of what is done here or the urgent necessity of dealing promptly with our requests.”

Churchill recognized the urgency of the code-breaking work. “ACTION THIS DAY,” he directed Chief of Staff General Hastings Ismay. “Make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this has been done.”

At the time Turing made his appeal, attempts to break the Enigma code were failing. The German code changed each day. Turing realized the British code-breaking machine was at a disadvantage; all combinations were being searched, and there was insufficient processing power to complete the search in a day.

The breakthrough came when Turing realized certain words were used at the beginning and ending of each message. In the movie version of Turing’s efforts, The Imitation Game, Turing finds a new direction: “What if Christopher (the name given to the code-breaking machine in the movie) doesn’t have to search through all of the settings? What if he only has to search for ones that produce words we already know will be in the message? Repeated words, predictable words; the weather and Heil Hitler.”

Many of us go through the day with a jumble of messages passing through our heads. Like Turing and his team, we may search for messages that will clarify our course of action. Days end, and we feel we didn’t accomplish what needed to be done. Years go by, and we still search for a purpose in our life. We search, feeling exhausted and dispirited.

What if our problem is like that of the Bletchley Park codebreakers? Are we searching for all possibilities?

How many thoughts in our heads are false messages that could be dismissed?

Many thoughts take the form of I need more of this and less of that. What if these messages are mostly senseless? What if our problems are not what we think they are?

What if the quality of our life depends on discerning and dismissing irrelevant thoughts? As we will see, Marcus Aurelius trained his mind daily to look past the irrelevant.

Hugh Prather is another author we will work with in Mindset Shifts U. In his book How to Live in the World and Still be Happy, he asks these pointed questions about the many ways we search for all possibilities while ignoring the present:

When will you stop fighting your appearance? When will you enjoy your child? Will there ever be a time in your life to drink in what your friends have to offer—it seems so little, but have you received even that little? When will you first feel a breeze passing over your cheek? Will there finally come a meal in which you will taste, really taste, your food? Just where are you going anyway? All you will ever discover about the future is that it remains the future—and so why do you still turn it over and over in your mind like some delicacy?

The ego’s swirl of mental activity drowns out what is essential. Yet, we mistakenly believe the jumble of messages in our heads means something. Our ego has created a logjam with way too much thinking. Inspired ideas cannot get through. The ideas we need most to guide our actions are inspired by our values and purpose, which flow from Love.

Like Marcus Aurelius, Prather reminds us there is a lot on the line: “This life of yours is not an easy habit to break, but do you really wish to continue missing almost everything of value only to end up on your deathbed wondering why you never took the time to love?”

Prather advises us to invest effort to uncover and examine the beliefs and assumptions directing our approach to life:

We are speaking here of your approach to life. You are not yet approaching it because you have not yet recognized where it lies. Where is happiness found? You have a thousand assumptions about this you have not yet questioned. You are currently living those assumptions. Almost everything you think and do stems from them. And that is the way it has always been… It will take enormous effort for you to walk past your ordinary way of doing things. And yet, once you have decided to make the effort, and have committed yourself completely, all of it will eventually become surprisingly easy.

Could we uncover the essential messages that do not serve the needs of our ego? What if we could find those thoughts that Love inspires among the jumble of messages? Could we break “Love’s code”?

For example, messages from Love don’t attack. We can ignore attack messages like I stink because… or You stink because….

How do we do that? Detect and drop the faulty belief that others cause our feelings. Letting go of false assumptions and beliefs creates the space for Love messages to get through.

The codebreakers were searching for false messages. Notice how many times a day you embrace your own false messages.

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. --A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Take a moment and identify one non-loving sticky thought about yourself, others, or your circumstances that keeps coming to mind today. Are you willing to let it go?

No is too often our answer. Prather observes most of us are stubborn:  

Time and again I have watched even those who are desperate proceed doggedly ahead with an approach that they know in their hearts will not work. A kind of blind fear takes over, and they convince themselves that there's nothing left to try. So they stick with failure to the bitter end. They have lost their natural instinct for knowing when to stop and regain perspective.

Prather adds, “A decision must be made. It can be made now. It is simply this: ‘I will begin’.”

I know no better place to begin shifting perspective than with Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations.

My overview of the first session of Mindset Shifts U will be posted this Saturday.

Mindset Shifts U Begins This Month

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