MIND - Managing Multiple Minds with Meditation

This episode summarizes my current thinking (as of September 2024), about how we can manage our minds to flourish as we age.  I suggest that the quirky nature of our mind is more understandable when we realize that we have multiple, semi-independent minds that compete for our attention. 

I offer four examples of multiple minds . Each one causes its own form of confusion and suggests just how we need to manage our minds to overcome conflict, confusion and mental distortions. The four multiple mind frameworks are:

• Hemispheric Lateralization
• The entropic Mind
• The Extended Mind
• Functional Brain Networks

I conclude by explaining how  various practices of meditation effectively address the mind-management objectives for each framework. 

I succumb to my weakness for acronyms and suggest an A.I.M. approach to mind-management. Awareness - Impact - Modification. We can: 1) use the disciplines of meditation to become more aware of how our mind works, then 2) we can evaluate the positive or negative impact of the various mental states that compete for our attention, and finally, 3) we can learn to modify those mental states in ways that enhance our ability to flourish as we age. 

Transcript

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MANAGING MULTIPLE MINDS WITH MEDITATION

Hi there. Welcome to the Flourish As We Age Podcast. 

Over the past six months or so, my Flourish As You Age podcasts have been exploring what I call mind management; how can might manage our mental states to promote happiness and wellbeing as we age. 

I feel as though the big picture of mental management is beginning to come together in my mind and I want to try to summarize that big picture in a single podcast. So this is a kind of state-of-my mind as of the end of August, 2024. I’ll start with a few big-picture snapshot and then get more specific. 

Let me start by saying a few words about what I think it means to flourish as we age. 

To flourish, I want to have a good life - a good old age. I’m almost 77 and I want my remaining years, however many years I get, to be fulfilling, pleasant, and lived with ease, dignity and equanimity. My most recent episodes have focused on this aspect of flourishing.

But, there’s another important aspect to flourishing in this period of old age, because I will, of necessity, be preparing to die. So, to flourish in the last years of my life, I need make sure that I have a good death. Or, more specifically I want my process of dying to be as dignified and graceful as possible.  I will be focusing on what it means to have a good death in coming episodes. 

For this episode, I want to focus on some of the big picture ideas about crafting a good life in my mature years. 

As I see it, flourishing in old age - or, at any age for that matter - involves two core areas of attention - Brain Health and Mental Management. 

First, we can improve our chances of flourishing as we age if we can keep our bodies and brains as healthy as possible. I organize my thinking about structural health and well-being with my eight Behavioral Roots of Brain Health. I’ve got a series of podcasts that deal with those eight core areas of concern in more detail, so I’ll just summarize the approach very quickly  

There are eight behavior and lifestyle areas that have shown to influence our brain health and our general health. They are Physical Exercise, Mental Stimulation, Social Engagement, Stress Management, Quality Sleep, Good Diet & Nutrition, Medical Care and The Environment. 

To improve the health of our body and brain, we take a risk management approach. There are risk factors associated with each area and we need to reduce our exposure to those risks. There are also protective factors associated with each of the roots of brain health and we need to increase our engagement with them. That’s the formula for keeping  body and brain healthy and in good working condition.  

But that’s not enough.  A healthy brain is, as they say, required but not sufficient to actually flourish as we age. To flourish we have to be able to use our brain skillfully. We need train, or manage our mind to stop making us miserable and, instead, to make our live more interesting, peaceful and enjoyable. So, in addition to brain health, we need to work on mind-management.   

When thinking about mind-management, I’ve been guided by the observation that the “quality of our life is determined by the quality of our mind.” It is our mind, our consciousness, that determines how we perceive the world around us and how we interpret what we perceive. Whatever happens happens, but it is the way we interpret what happens that will determine whether we suffer or whether we flourish. 

More specially, we might even say that the nature of our attention determines the kind of life we will live.  The neuroscientist Amishi Jha has devoted her career to using the tools of neuroscience to study attention. In her book, Peak Mine, she says that what we choose to pay attention to and how we choose to pay attention have profound effects on how we think, feel and behave. 

Jha says that your attention - what you pay attention to and how you do it - determines: I quote

• “What you perceive, learn and remember;
•  How steady or how reactive you feel;
• Which decisions you make and which actions you take;
• How you interact with others; and
• Ultimately, your sense of fulfillment and accomplishment.” 

That list covers a lot of ground. Our attention - our awareness, our consciousness - determines a great deal of how we live our lives and how we feel about our lives.  Some kinds of attention - some states of mind - put us at ease and make us feel good, while others do the opposite, and cause us stress, anxiety and pain. 

Often these different reactions are in response to the same event. Shit happens - life rarely works out the way we planned it. We can’t control what happens, but we can learn to control how we respond to what happens. We can train our minds to be more skillful about how we attend to the world. We can learn to activate the states of mind that will do the best job of meeting the challenges of our aging lives. 

So, how do we go about effectively managing our mind -  or, more accurately our multiple minds? 

MULTIPLE MINDS

I have found it really useful to think about mind- management within what I’ll call a “multiple minds framework.” The wonder and strangeness of the human mind - the complexity, the contradictions, the ambiguities and paradoxes - are a lot more understandable if we recognize that we don’t really have a single, unitary mind. We have multiple, independent minds. These individual minds collaborate with each other, most of the time, but not always.  Frequently they argue with each other and too often the one that wins is the wrong one for the job - and when this happens we feel stress, confusion and conflict. And, we lose our ability to focus our mind on what is really important.

So how do we begin to work with this notion of multiple minds? What are they? What do they do? 

There are four ways of working with the multiple minds idea that I find very useful. They are all, fortunately, grounded in sound science and theory. Let me give you a brief description of each of these frameworks for thinking about our multiple minds 

First we have Hemisphere Lateralization - There is clear evidence that the left and right hemispheres of our brain have very different ways of processing our reality. In that respect, each hemisphere represents a semi-independent mind. Each hemisphere lives in its own world. These two mental worlds are able to communicate with each other across a relatively narrow bundle of connective nerves called the corpus collosum.  These connective nerves regulate what information is able to pass freely from one hemisphere to the next and what information is suppressed. 

The science about hemispheric differences has been explored and explained brilliantly by Iain McGilchrist in his books majestic books, The Master and His Emissary and The Matter With Things. McGilchrist make the case that we suffer these days because the LH - the verbal, conceptual mind - dominates and suppresses our ability to fully engage with our RH - our experiential mind. 

The second useful framework is The Entropic Mind Theory, a theory of consciousness put forth by neuroscientist Robin Carhart-Harris. In essence this theory suggests that our minds operate along a continuum that connects two extremes, running from highly organized, even rigid, at one extreme, to highly disorganized, even chaotic at the other extreme. Our mind, or an aspect of our mind, can be rigid and fixed like a block of ice, or as vacuous and chaotic as water vapor in the wind. Or any variation between those two extremes And the key point is that neither extreme helps us to flourish. We need to find the middle ground in which our mental operations are highly flexible without becoming chaotic. 

The third framework is The Extended Mind, as suggested by philosopher Andy Clark. The take-away for me is that it is a mistake to think that our minds originate exclusively from within our own skulls. The reality is that the contents of our minds are porous and are connected to everything that comes into our attentional field. 

The products of our mind derive from multiple minds within our own skull and the multiple (multiple, multiple) minds in the outside world that are constantly competing for our attention.  How many of our core ideas, for example, are implanted in our minds by others? We suffer when we fail to appreciate where our thoughts and beliefs come from and when we fail to pay attention to how they are affecting us.  

The final framework for thinking about multiple minds is the recognition that our brain is organized around Functional Brain Networks - Functional Brain Networks. Current neuroscience recognizes that mental functions are generated and emerge through the coordinated activation of different networks of brain cells spread across the entire area of the brain. This is a dynamic process. The connections and activations change from second to second.  

Some areas of the brain specialize in performing specific functions like hearing, sight, generating language, forming memories and so on. Others are more generalized. 

Neuroscientist Jeff Hawkins suggests that the human cortex is made up of “a thousand brains.” These are hundreds of cortical columns that perform like general purpose computers. Each one can perform myriad functions depending upon the type of input it gets from the rest of the brain.  

These specialized and generalized areas of the brain connect in dynamic ways that give our mind’s their incredible power and flexibility. 

Neuroscientists have begun to identify large functional regions that support major cognitive tasks. They have names like the the Frontal/parietal control network, the Default Mode Network and the Salience Network. 

Each network can be considered a different kind of mind in that they represent different modes of consciousness and different ways of paying attention. The Default Mode Network, the network that generates our sense of self and how we interact with others is particularly important to our ability to flourish. We tend to suffer when the DMN takes over and flourish when it is quieted. 

So, how do we work with these multiple minds to minimize suffering and optimize our ability to flourish as we age?  

WORKING WITH OUR MULTIPLE MINDS

The exciting thing for me, is that these four multiple-mind frameworks  suggest practical corrective measures we can take to manage our minds more effectively and improve our mental flourishing.  Let me give you an idea of what I’m talking about. 

Hemispheric Lateralization. Our mind works best when the left and right hemispheres are collaborating, but under the guidance of the right hemisphere, Unfortunately, in our modern culture, the LH - what I characterize as the conceptual mind - has come to dominate which gives us a distorted view of our reality. 

So, the mind management objective here is to limit the dominance of the LH, get more in touch with RH modes of processing, and improve the collaboration of the two hemispheres. 

The Entropic Mind. We get ourselves into trouble when our mind becomes stuck at either extreme of the entropic continuum -  either to fixed and rigid, or too disorganized and chaotic. 

Our mind-management agenda, therefore, is to increase the flexibility of our mind and find what’s called the “point of criticality.” This is a balanced point in the middle of the entropic continuum where we have the greatest ability to shift fluidly from one mental state to another. 

The Extended Mind. We need to recognize how connected our mind is to other minds beyond our own skulls, and then understand how those other minds influence the way we think, feel and act. Most of the people competing for our attention are more interested in emptying our wallet than they are in advancing our health and well-being. 

Our objective is here is to train our selves to avoid being distracted by the myriad minds trying to worm their way into our attention. We need to be much more selective about the ideas, mindsets and worldviews that are trying to take control of our consciousness. 

Brain Networks - In very broad terms, we seem to get ourselves into trouble when we obsess about ourselves, our self-image, and our status in society.  We become nervous, anxious and stressed out when we time-travel, when ruminate about the past or catastrophize the future. We are much happier when we are fully engaged with the here and now.  

These troublesome mental activities, as I mentioned, are largely the work of the Default Mode Network. We know the DMN is activated with we lose focus on a specific task and start day-dreaming. When our mind wanders, it tends to focus on regrets, worries and anxieties. 

Our mind-management objective is to recognize when our mind wanders or is distracted and train it to stay focused.

MEDITATION

How can we achieve these mind-management objectives? 

Fortunately, there is an existing system of mental management that has been refined over centuries of practice and is now being verified and amplified by modern brain research. And it achieves all of the objectives we identified above. The mind-management system that is proving most effective is meditation. Now it’s important to remember that there are numerous different types of meditation. Neuroscientist Amishi Jha notes that meditation is a general term, like “sports.” It  covers a diverse set of practices that cultivate different mental skills.  

Let me give you some examples.

The simplest, most basic form of  meditation develops two, incredibly important, sets of mind-management skills. The practice involves sitting in a comfortable and alert position and focusing on some kind of sensory anchor. The most popular anchor seems to be your breath. You sit quietly and see if you can simply pay attention to your breath without getting distracted by any thoughts or images that might enter our mind. This practice, obviously, develops our ability to focus your attention and to avoid being distracted - which is pretty hard to do. 

The second major aspect of this simple process is to become aware of when you have become distracted. And, we always get distracted. All of us. But we don’t normally realize that we have become distracted. Our mind just wanders off, following some random train of thought. 

The objective is not to avoid being distracted, but simply to realize that you have been distracted. When you realize you have been distracted you simply return your attention to your breathing. And, this will happen over and over again.  

This practice is like doing push-ups for your mind. Our minds are weak and ineffective when they get distracted, so we need to strengthen our ability to recognize the distraction and get back on track. If you want to maintain your strength, you do your push-ups every day. If you want your mind to get stronger you do your meditation work-out every day. 

Just learning to recognize that our attention has been kidnapped by a thought, and then being able to return it to the present moment of breathing, is a profoundly important mental skill. 

Consider the hemisphere hypothesis. When we are involved in a task, our mind needs to be present in the here and now. Our RH needs to be in control.  The distractor is our LH, Our conceptual mind, the LH, keeps interrupting and pulling our attention away from the task at hand. And, what’s worse is that it fills our head with troublesome ideas. 

Meditation helps us recognize when the LH intrudes - when we are distracted by a thought or an image - and trains us to bring attention back to the here and now. While meditating, we return our attention to our breath. In daily life, we return our attention to the job we are doing. We actually listen to the person we are talking with. 

There are further mental-management skills that can be developed with this simplest of meditation practices. Rather than simply returning to the anchor, to the here and now, we can use the opportunity to learn more about how our mind operates. 

First of all, we can come to realize that these intrusive thoughts and feelings have no inherent value. They are just thoughts.  It is our LH doing its best to make sense of the world. With this realization we can gain some objectivity about these thoughts and feelings and can avoid feeling so attached to them. 

Once we learn to recognize that a thought has entered our mind, we can take the next step. First, we learn that a thought is just a thought. It is not THE TRUTH. It is not the voice of God. We don’t have to believe the thought. We don’t have to obey the thought. I is just as likely to be bullshit as to be a pearl of wisdom. Our minds just keep generating thoughts in a kind of desperate attempt to make sense of what is going on. 

Psychologist Steven Hayes, the originator of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has a wonderful trick for handling intrusive thoughts. He suggests giving the voice in your mind a name. Give it an identity. 

I call the voice in my head Marcello. Then, when Marcello starts talking to me I can, following Hayes’s advice, simply say, “Oh, Marcello. It’s you. Thank you for your ideas. I know you are trying to be helpful, but I have other things to do now. I’m meditating. You can go now, and take your thought with you. Ciao Marcello.” 

The Entropic Mind idea suggests that we need to avoid getting stuck on either extreme end of the entropic continuum. At one extreme our mind is filled with a million, conflicting thoughts and everything feels chaotic. On the other extreme we fall into rigid, ritualized ways of thinking that Carhart-Harris describes as canalization. 

When our meditation skill is developed enough we can objectively observe our mind and see what it is doing. Is it going crazy with a million different thoughts? Or, conversely, is it programmed to respond with an automatic, knee-jerk thought put there by a marketing man? Using the mental discipline of meditation, we can explore how our mind works, evaluate whether it is helping or hurting us, and learn to shift to a different mindset, one that is more connected to the here and now and to direct experience. 

In this way we also become more aware of our Extended Mind and how outside voices are playing in our heads, or how our thoughts and feelings have been programmed by all kinds of “influencers,” social media, marketing, religion, politics.) 

We can even be a little nerdy about the science and recognize how meditation moves us through different mental networks. Deciding to meditation and focus on our breathing engages, according to Amish Jha, the Frontal and Dorsal Control Networks. These are sometimes called our Executive Brain. 

Then, when we get distracted by a thought or feeling our mind is being kidnapped by the Default Mode Network, which ruminates about the past and obsesses about the future. We are rescued by our Salience Network that sees what is going on, recognized the problem and gives control back to the Front/Parietal Control Network.

This is a basic process that we can apply to all aspects of our life. And, when we do, we find that we suffer less and enjoy more. We are on the road to flourishing. 

A.I.M. 

I seem to have a weakness for Acronym, so let me close with an acronym that may capture the essence of my current mind-management strategy. The acronym is A.I.M. We want to take AIM on flourishing. 

A - A stands for Attention and Awareness - We need to develop the mental skill of knowing how our own mind works. Which mind is in control? 

I - I stands for Impact. We need to develop the skill to determine the impact each form of attention has on our well-being? Is the mind we are currently using hindering or helping us? Is it making us fearful, angry and mean? Or is it helping us to feel safe, loving and compassionate? 

M - M stands for Modification. We need to develop the skill to shift away from a mental state that is harming us and activate the kind of mental state that will be more helpful. 

So there you have it. That’s a snapshot of my current thinking about using mental management to flourish.  I find it a useful framework for thinking about my own thinking and about how I can train my own mind to behave itself and support my efforts to flourish as I age. I hope it is helpful for you. 

Until next time. May you flourish as you age.