“Becoming the architect of one’s thinking”

The meaning of mindfulness meditation We are not the architects of our thought constructs. We are trapped in thought buildings that we did not construct. Many are blind to their own thinking and live their lives without ever having taken a look at their own thinking building. If we want to become architects of our thinking and a new reality, we need to activate new networks in the brain. Through mindfulness meditation, it is very possible and also useful to look at one’s own thinking from the outside and reconfigure it. The first step towards this is the realisation that our thought structure was not created by ourselves, although thoughts suggest exactly that. Incidentally, there is hardly any insight in neurological research that is as universally recognised as the one that a large part of our thoughts take place outside our conscious perception. The brain, like the body, is a self-organising system. If I want to bring wisdom into my life, I stop following the old thought patterns. Many cultures before our time have already pointed out that life is mainly about being oneself and following one’s inner wisdom and not the respective conventions, belief systems, ideologies or the normative zeitgeist. Cultural patterns are temporary agreements that are valid for a certain time and place, but are ultimately arbitrary. In Switzerland, the speed limit is 80 on the highway, in Germany 100. Since I live in a border area where the borders are very fragmented, I have to be careful whether I drive 80 or 100. The restrictions are arbitrary and obvious. The limits of our thinking in our heads are also arbitrary, but less obvious. Cultural programming and beliefs, and the behaviours that go with them, are encoded in neural networks. The more you follow them, the more stubbornly they become ingrained in the synapses of your brain. Through mindfulness, one can learn to “hack” these processes and “decode” the automatisms. This is less complicated than learning a new computer language, but similar in structure. The first step is to observe one’s thoughts and understand that each thought impulse is followed by an action or the utterance of the thought. Example: I get the thought that eating chocolate would be a good idea at the moment. The thought is followed by action. I go to the cupboard, get the chocolate or if it is already in front of me, I grab it now and put a piece of chocolate in my mouth. After the action comes the reward. The brain releases the neurotransmitter dopamine and rewards me. This synaptic reward, if performed more often, increases the frequency of the thought impulse, the subsequent action and the dopamine reward. A stronger, neural connection, or preference for chocolate, smoking, alcohol, sugar or anything else that is easily accessible and promises immediate reward, is created. What feeling or frustration lies beneath is almost never perceived. This is how habitual patterns and addictive structures develop. The point here is not to think new thoughts or to change thoughts, but to transform our fundamental relationship to thoughts. A thought is initially just a word or an image in our mind until it begins to determine our actions and communication. Fears, desires or cravings are also initially just thoughts until we allow ourselves to be drawn into identification with them. Mindfulness meditation is about removing precisely this power from thought impulses so that they can no longer entrap us in automatic, unconscious action. By the way, my daily training programme for practising mindfulness is the mobile phone. More and more often, when the thought impulse arises, “check your mobile phone!”, I manage to be mindful of the thought = trigger and I can refrain from the action. By the way, this thought impulse occurs statistically 90 times a day, every ¼ hour. The art of mindfulness is to be able to surf on the waves of this or similar thought impulses without being at their mercy. However, the attitude behind this should not be “mental control”, because that would in turn produce the opposite. Research shows that those who hold themselves back in a controlled way fall back into the old pattern all the more stubbornly afterwards in order to reward themselves for the previous renunciation, according to the motto: “Now I have resisted the impulse, not eaten any chocolate or reached for the mobile phone; for this I can reward myself later with a whole bar or check my e-mails excessively. Mindfulness meditation, practised regularly, helps us to break out of the vicious circle of unconscious behaviour.