I am sometimes encouraged to develop a ‘beginners mind’, to put aside notions of reality I already have and to begin again. For me this is like developing a fresh mind. I want to develop a steady habit of keeping an open mind with minimal influence from the past or future. I like to step away from my memories as much as I can and to avoid the planning function of my mind when it does not serve me well.
This, for me, is a habit of fresh mind.
I want to approach most situations without any pre-conceived notion of what is happening. Maybe this is a matter of becoming totally situational. This is something my old teachers warned me about. I now think they were misguided and tried to misguide me.
I like to keep a discerning awareness of what has happened in the past and what is likely to happen as a consequence of what goes on right now. This especially is true of actions I take.
But I do not want the past or the future to become the default position of my mind. I want the default position to be what is going on right now. I want to use the information I have of the past only as it helps, not obscures my awareness of what is happening right now.
I want my fears and my desires for the future to have minimal effect on what I see right now. I don’t want to rid myself of all fear or all desire, I just want to be in control of how much I am dominated or heavily influenced by them. I want my fresh mind to have priority in how I see what is happening right now.
As I look at my personal world, I am aware of how much my feelings about the past influence me. I have absorbed the messages of my culture very well, and those too often guide me in how I see what is happening and how I feel about it. There are many examples. My view of being in a nuclear family and how I should feel come not just from my own past experience and what I have been taught. They are rooted in hundreds of generations of my ancestors and what they learned.
My discernment and feeling about sexuality is likewise highly shaped by my past and all the lessons I have absorbed. My culture tells me in great detail how I should feel, react and act. It is hard to have a fresh mind about sex, influenced neither by feelings rooted in the past or desires based on the future.
The same can be applied to how I regard race, community, possessions, friends, property, parenting and so on.
It is a daily struggle to rid my mind of the barnacles of the past and future and to see the day with a fresh mind. First I want to apply it to myself. I want to be present to myself with no contamination from the past and with limited planning for the day. I will then give myself permission, freedom to approach each moment with a fresh mind. I want to question every notion I bring to my experience.
One of the first things I do in the morning is create moments of fresh mind. Then I am ready to launch freely into an adventure of exploring what happens next.