Isn’t it interesting how often we long to read someone else’s mind? And yet do you realize how incredibly strange and boring that would be? In general, our minds are focused on a task at hand, or wandering aimlessly through experiences and sensations, or thinking about something we have to do or dread or need to plan. Thank goodness your mind isn’t like a clear glass bottle that we can look into and see what goes on inside. What a mess! Our thoughts don’t actually represent who we are and what’s really going on. In fact, according to many researchers, most of our experience of being human happens on an unconscious level, not a conscious-thinking one. That’s why dreams, feelings, and using tarot cards, for example, can work so powerfully on our consciousness. A long time ago, before we were married, I asked my later-to-be-husband as we lay in each other’s arms, “What are you thinking?” I thought I wanted to hear him say something personal about me, but after a pause, he replied, “Nothing.” I realized he meant he was just right there, in the present, with me, and was thinking about nothing else. I realized that “Nothing” was the most romantic non-thought he could have expressed. It’s a great gift to yourself and to someone else to stop the endless mind chatter that rules your expectations, frustrations , and disappointments. Don’t impress on someone else what you think they should be thinking. Stop wishing you knew what that was. Relax into just being.
