So I've been having fun today observing some Material Mind insights. We usually talk about Spirit Mind insights, but the Material Mind has insights too. The difference is that sometimes the Material Mind is kind of adding its own flavor or its own story.
It seems like I had an insight about something but it’s just the Material Mind making up a story about something - which is what it does.
You know, that's what we need our Material Mind for. It is kind of filling in the blanks and making up stories when we don't have information.
This morning, I was working on a little house design, we're doing a remodel and I just had another idea. I sketched it out, spent some time and I was excited about it. I told, Hisami “Oh, I have another idea I want to show you.”
And she said, “Again, when will you stop working on it?”
I was kind of hurt. I was like, “Oh, sounds like she's saying I'm bad in some way instead of being excited with me.”
And so I asked her and she said, “Oh, well, you know, we already told them that we're done with the design and we're kind of moving on to the next stage. So if you have new ideas, you want to email them real soon.” That made sense.
But still, part of me was feeling hurt, right? Like she had kind of lashed out.
And the funny thing is, this is where the material inside me came from - I had this idea because I sat with it.
I didn't say anything emotionally to her. I just said, ok and noticed, “Oh, my emotions got triggered.”
I'm just going to make a little breakfast and chill out and wait for it to pass.
When the emotions passed, this kind of story about she did this or blah, blah, blah or she might have been thinking that calmed down, I got what felt like a real insight deep inside.
It's like, “Oh, this sounds a little bit like her mom. When Hisami was young, she'd be excited about something and her mom would shut her down in some way. She said that just as a pattern that she'd had lots and I thought, oh, maybe that's, that's probably repeating now.”
So she's probably shutting me down because she got shut down. And like I said, it felt very insightful. It wasn't actually true, but it felt very insightful.
But one of the keys to noticing when it's a Material Mind insight rather than the Spirit Mind inside is “it's about somebody else, right?”
I'm feeling insightful about why other people said something to me rather than feeling insightful about why I was getting triggered and why I was sensitive. So kind of fun.
Later we had to take our dog to the vet for a little checkup and we were walking and I noticed Hisami doesn't have a jacket. I said, “Oh, why didn't you bring a jacket? It's really cold.”
She said, “Well, we're just walking for two minutes here and I've got an umbrella and there's no problem.” And then she said, ”Oh, why didn't you bring an umbrella?” And I said, “Oh, because I have a hat on and it's just one more thing to carry and it's not raining very hard.”
But again, I felt like the same insightful Material Mind was giving me information like, “Oh, look, now she's kind of doing tit for tat like I asked why she doesn't have a jacket. Maybe she felt a little bad. So then she asked back why don't you have an umbrella?” It felt like that's what was going on. Right?
I wasn't saying that I was just observing, or my Material Mind was observing and filling in the blanks, kind of making up a story.v10 minutes later we're sitting there and I finally realized, “Oh, none of this is real. What's real is that I'm feeling very sensitive today. I don't know why. Oh, interesting. Oh, maybe I'll check that out.”
Just having that thought brought me into that Spirit Mind. Having that insight really changed things and it’s very different from the Material Mind insight which is making stuff up.
Oh, and I realized something else just after I turned off the recorder there.
So I'm going to add a little extra here that the things that I felt were insightful that weren't real were just misunderstood. It's not that they weren't real, but I was applying them outside to somebody else rather than implying them inside to myself.
Let me break that down.
So when I got the insight that “oh, Hisami is responding in some way out of some old pain that she's carrying and that's why she's responding this way. That was about me.
So that was actually my Spirit Mind giving me that information that “Oh I'm getting triggered right now because of my past. That's why we always get triggered, right?”
But my Material Mind because it was so active, was interpreting that it was intercepting that information. And then saying this isn't about me, this is about that other person. This is what we call projection, right?
So the insight is real, but we forget to or we fail to notice that it's about us rather than the other person. So we put it on them.
The same thing happened when we were walking with the umbrella and Hisami said, why don't you have an umbrella? And I thought, oh, she's really sensitive today. So when I ask something like, why don't you have a coat? She hits back with, why don't you have an umbrella?
Which isn't like her. She's never been like that in the whole time we've been married. So why I would think she's like that today? I think that'd be a clear indication that, oh, it's not real.
But I just thought, oh, she's really sensitive. That's why. But the truth was, oh, I'm really sensitive. That's why a simple question like “Why don't you have your umbrella” triggered me.
Normally, I would just answer just like Hisami did. But I was feeling really sensitive.
So in both cases, Spirit Mind gave me clear insight into what was happening. But I couldn't see that it was about me. My Material Mind was focused externally. And so I was applying that insight where it doesn't belong to the people around me. Kind of fun.
