Here’s another way to look at your place of residence.
I would invite you to answer this question: “Where do you live?”. Please mentally respond to this before reading further.
It appears to be a straightforward question. Most people, when asked, would respond with some variation of a location – a country or state, a city, a place within a city, a neighborhood, or address.
Here’s another way to look at this: a person does not really live so much in a place or in a house. She lives in her mind. All experiences of living feed into her senses (eyes, ears, nose, skin, and tongue) and are felt in her mind. All her thoughts, her anxieties, her joys, her dreams, her goals, her longings arise inside the mind. It is here that sensations, thoughts, and emotions are experienced. So, it is in the mind that we all truly spend our lives. We live inside our minds.
We typically invest a fortune in the places where we live– both time and money. We often fret about how good our house should be and spend considerable energy maintaining it. And yet, we often neglect the place of our real residence – the mind. As expected of any neglected house, a neglected mind becomes a dreary place. Just as a person living in a dreary house would seek to spend more time outside it, a person living in a neglected mind would try and spend more time focused on the world outside and recoil from spending any time inside her mind. Personally, good quality time spent inside my mind could be on reading, writing, meditation, reflection, or in any other mindful activity that gives me a deep sense of satisfaction (you may have a different list). This becomes my time to truly relax. It is a bit like taking a vacation from the hustle of the world and recharging my batteries. Even short breaks spent like this are very rewarding. And with time, I have been able to spend more time in the comfort zone of my increasingly hospitable mind. The opposite would also be true: A life devoid of a hospitable mind as a retreat is missing out a lot in terms of self-fulfillment and happiness foregone. Such a life would move frantically from one activity to another in search of the rejuvenation that the mind does not provide.
We welcome weekends and vacation time because we implicitly believe that we would spend time in a rejuvenation zone (one that the mind may not be able to provide). Nonetheless, we keep looking forward to spending time in a hospitable mind each weekend. If, however, the mind is a neglected place, a person may not find much benefit from a weekend. Alternatively, a person who has maintained her mind well may find that she is already in a good place – not just going into the weekend break but in general through her life.
How can one make her mind hospitable – like one would her house? The analogy of a home is quite useful here. In my experience, here are three things that one can look towards. This list is by no means exhaustive and I invite you to edit it to customise it to yourself.
First, just as a house needs physical maintenance, a mind needs good physical health. This is simple enough and quite widely accepted. Adequate sleep, good diet, and exercise are crucial and much has already been written about these in innumerable other sources. So, I will not dwell more on them.
Next, we need to transform a house into a home. And this needs constant work. In a home, we would look for a feeling of well-being and warmth that an empty house would never provide. A good analogy could be that of a child living with her parents. If negative things are kept away from this home (e.g., too much anger, selfishness, conflicts, and other negatives that are harmful to a family), this child would have a natural tendency to enjoy her childhood and be happy in the company of her parents. Transforming a healthy mind into a warm and hospitable place for a person would similarly require keeping negatives away. These negatives would be the usual suspects from a spiritual perspective – unchecked desires1 and anger between themselves can account for most of the negatives. Sweeping them away with exercises that promote introspection or mindfulness would create the conditions for the mind to become a more welcoming place for the person. My personal favourite is the TAME exercise – a meditation technique that can be done at any time (once practiced). I have found it pretty handy for casting aside negatives that inevitably keep surfacing in the mind.
Finally, the third requirement would be self-fulfillment. It is very helpful for a person to be engaged in some activity that provides her meaning. This may or may not be through her day job. It could also be volunteer work on the side or any other channel through which she sees herself as contributing and giving back to the world. Without such an anchor, there is a real risk that a person becomes more and more centered on the wants of the self at the expense of the needs of others.
The above three are the pillars on which a hospitable mind rests. They can also reinforce each other. For example. A healthy body and mind provide a good foundation for a person to foster mindfulness, self-awareness, and fulfillment. That, in turn, leads to a person being better placed to contribute to others in a manner that also raises self-satisfaction. Being self-satisfied also creates the stability needed to stick to healthy routines when a person faces schedule pressure and the temptations to flip long term priorities to make exceptions for each day.
Closing note
The good news is that a person does not need to have tons of material wealth in order to live in the best “mind-home” in the world. Conversely, even the wealthiest people cannot just buy a good “mind-home”; they need to actively maintain one – like everyone else. And once the basic needs have been met, money can be more of a disadvantage than an advantage (see this article).
As the mind becomes a more and more comfortable place to live in, a person would start experiencing more happiness. Surely, if the quality of my home keeps getting better, that would happen.
Footnote
1: These naturally arise in the mind and have the tendency to subordinate other things needed in a balanced life. Examples could include the drive for money or career advancement taking precedence over enough sleep and exercise. Or, craving for unhealthy food taking precedence over need for healthy diet.
