Mine, Mine, Mine …

There is a scene in Finding Nemo that I always laugh at for some reason. Even thinking about it now brings a smile to my face. Nemo’s Dad, Marlin, and Dora are looking for Nemo and at one point are flopping around on a wooden dock in front of a flock of seagulls who are eyeing them hungrily. Nigel, a friendly pelican, offers to save them if they will jump in his mouth pouch. As they do the seagulls all chase them yelling “Mine, mine, mine, mine …” in a voice that sounds just like seagulls squawking. (Can you feel the smile on my face right now?)

Part of the reason I smile at that is because it strikes me as very clever to interpret the seagull’s squawking as: “Mine, mine, mine …”. Another part of the humor, and this is dark humor, is that I see myself and all the rest of us in this scene. It is a parody of a lot of what is wrong with our way of being.

So much of our society and personal interactions are based on us squawking “Mine, mine, mine…” at each other. Some of our biggest professions and institutions are based on resolving the conflicts inherent in “Mine, mine, mine …”. Lawyers, counselors, the patent office, the courts, legislatures of the world, influencers, and let’s not forget all the wars and the military and supporting industries – all either feeding or responding to “Mine, mine, mine…”.

The struggle for power, the competition for money, mine, no mine, NO mine!!! What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine. Mine, mine, mine. It’s not so cute anymore.

See how quickly we can move from a cute, loving, popular animated movie to serious problems with worldwide implications?

There is no way I hope to deal with the causes, implications, or resolutions of “Mine, mine, mine…” on the global scale or even the community scale. But, as with most things, it starts with each of us.

Let’s Get Personal

So, let’s start there – with me … and with you.

What do I claim is mine? What do you claim as yours?

Going from all the way ‘out there’ in our everyday physical world where conflicts and competition reign to all the way within where it is very personal. What about those thoughts we are thinking? Are they mine? Are they yours? Are they anybody’s? Or are they, possibly, just thoughts – belonging to no one in particular? Are they just there (wherever that is) for filling the mind of anyone who latches on to them, tunes in?

For a long, long time, I thought that the voice in my head was me. I thought that those thoughts were me speaking to myself, very often critically or bitching about my conditions and the behavior of people I encountered every day. That thought, that the voice in my head was me, gave credence and importance to those thoughts. After all, those are my thoughts, Mine! Looking back, I see that I could and did make myself miserable, scared, happy, successful, and even sick based on those thoughts.

Then I heard someone (I wish I could remember who so I could thank them and give them credit) say:

“If the voice in your head is you speaking, who is listening?”

That really gave me pause. The answer, they suggested, is that I am the listener, I am the witness. And the thoughts are just thoughts, thoughts from anywhere and everywhere, thoughts circulating around in the shared consciousness that we all live in.

I now believe that 99+% of the thoughts that run through my mind, good ones – loving ones, painful ones, and harmful ones – are just thoughts that my brain has somehow tuned in to like a radio or TV can tune in to signals that exist unnoticed in the air. I may add my own flavor to the idea, like customizing it to my particular situation, to make it “mine”. But does that make it my thought?

Continuing down this path …

Consider the molecules of water that make up most of your physical body. Is that ‘your’ water? Some of those water molecules just arrived in your body very recently and some of it just recently left your body. When does the water become ‘yours’? When does it cease to be ‘yours’? And to whom does it belong when it is in the rivers, lakes, and oceans, as it is most of the time?

What about the oxygen that you just inhaled and absorbed into your bloodstream to fuel the energy-producing furnace within your body? Is that ‘your’ oxygen? What about those red blood cells, the trillions of them carrying oxygen to your cells? Did you know they will all be replaced in the next three weeks by the cells in your bone marrow? Are they ‘your’ red blood cells?

I don’t pretend to have an answer to these questions. I don’t even have a clear answer for myself. But I do know that considering these questions has considerably loosened my grip on what is ‘mine’. It has also taken me deeper down the rabbit hole representing the question: “Who/what am I?” We are not going to go there now.

The Bottom Line for Me

Here is where this line of questioning has brought me. The thoughts that pop in and out of my head, occasionally running around there for too long, are not my thoughts. I don’t know or care who they belong to if anyone.

There are so many different lines of thinking running around ‘out there’ and I can tune in to ones that make me feel good and serve me well and help me succeed at whatever I choose. Or I can tune in to thoughts that make me miserable and cause me to withdraw and withhold my abilities.

I get to choose which thoughts I entertain in my mind. The major thought themes I choose to tune in to repeatedly then become habitual. This makes for a much pleasanter, more loving and motivating, and inspiring mental atmosphere. In time it becomes habitual and continues automatically as the default consciousness.

I have assigned a part of my Witness consciousness to monitor these thoughts and let me know when they go off my chosen track. I call this aspect of myself Captain Consciousness. He is the skipper of my mental ship setting the course for where I want to go. I am the owner of the ship he sails it for me.

Captain Consciousness has many brothers and sisters one of which would be glad to be of similar service to you. They provide a great service for very little wages. Here is the deal:

• You must provide the Captain with clear directions for where you want to go in this ship that is your body/mind.
• Don’t hesitate to give the Captain directions because you aren’t sure where you want to go. If you don’t give him or her any directions, the Captain will sit on the deck relaxing or your ship will go nowhere. More likely it will continue going in the direction it is headed right now toward a destination that you may not like.
• You can change your destination as often as necessary as the trip progresses and you get more clarity about the specifics. This is natural. But if you change too often or make too large a change (like wanting to go in a totally different direction), it will take you longer to get where you want to go. In the extreme case, you can spend your time doing a lot of sailing around but never getting even close to any desirable destination.
• You own the ship that Captain Consciousness directs but you have an additional role in this. You are also the person at the wheel making turns in your course according to the Captain’s guidance and you also must maintain the ship and keep it in good running order.
• If you never follow the suggestions and guidance of your Captain, he or she will retire to sleeping on the deck. After all, what is the point of providing guidance if it is never trusted, appreciated, or followed?

So how’s that? Do you want to hire one of them? They come with my very highest recommendations. Let me know how it works out for you.