Underminding

‘Mind’ is a very loose and vague term we often use to refer to almost anything that is not immediately connected with physical activities. Materialist assumptions often led to implicitly identify mind and brain. Commonly, we recognize our mind from the ‘inner chatter’ that like a radio keeps pulling out sentences, or whole speeches, during our waking hours.

As a working definition, I’d like to use the term ‘mind’ to describe goal-oriented intentionality (in line with some of Sri Aurobindo’s intuitions, see here). The paradigmatic case of mind activity would then be that of having to solve a problem or a puzzle: I have a goal to reach, and I need tools or means to reach that particular goal, rather than something else. I need to get lunch, so I figure out my way to a restaurant or to the grocery store. I need to solve an equation; hence I use the formulas and rules I’ve learned to do that. I need to write a grant proposal, so I start organizing ideas and plans about future research that can fit the grant agency’s interest and be appealing to them, in order to get the funding.

The above examples illustrate what I would call ‘first-order’ goal-oriented intentionality, namely, cases in which we aim at a concrete goal, and we pursue that directly. However, it is also common to have ‘second-order’ goal-oriented intentionality, which is more counterfactual and connected with possible goals, alternative scenarios, and things that might happen. I anticipate what would it take to do X if I had to purse it.

Goal-oriented intentionality entails metacognitive functions too. In order to reach a certain goal, we need also to monitor the execution of the action(s) needed for that, and keep assessing whether they’re unfolding in the way that we anticipate to be conducive to the desired outcome. The ‘judgmental’ attitude that is often associated with the ‘inner critic’ is an inflation of this metacognitive skill. And if we put together second-order goal-oriented intentionality with inflated metacognition, we get into the common phenomena of mental restlessness, hyperactivity, stress, self-criticism, and bewildering inner-chatter that we often associate with (and blame about) the ‘mind’.

I suggest that we can relate to our mind along a spectrum of possibilities that range from mind-less-ness, to mind-full-ness. I also suggest that the best place on this spectrum is more towards the middle, rather than at any of the two extremes. If we completely stop any mind-related activities (we suppress all goal-oriented intentionality), we’re left with reflexes, instinctual impulses and responses, automatic movements. Mindlessness makes us spontaneous perhaps, but since most of our movements are either reactions to external stimuli or coated rehearsals of memorized patterns, without any kind of goal-oriented intentionality we would be mostly enslaved by outside forces or by our past, incapable of learning something new or deliberately altering established habits. Mindfulness (in the sense I’m using here) makes us extremely self-conscious. Every single action becomes deliberate, we know exactly what we are doing, why we are doing it, and how we should be doing it. Everything goes towards a precise goal, nothing happens randomly, we are constantly monitoring everything. This is another kind of enslavement, since we then become blind to the immense shadow of uncertainty, fuzziness, and under-determination that characterizes most of our reality. We can make plans, but the goals we set are often based on limited information, skewed views, partial perspectives. By wanting to always move from one goal to the next, we follow along the railways of our mind, but miss much of the landscape that we let pass by, without ever being able to get in touch with it.

How can we navigate between these two extremes? What would feel like to be neither mindless nor mindful? The key is probably to use the mind itself to defuse its potentially constrictive activity. If we can set a goal that is by itself undetermined, we can use the goal-oriented intentionality and its metacognitive monitoring functions to keep us in a relatively open space, in which we are not committed to do anything specific, while at the same time we are also not subjugated by any external influence or past conditioning. Let me call this ‘Under-mind-ing’ to indicate that we use the mind not to go somewhere in particular, but to create a space of openness that somehow undermines and frees us from both established patterns and forceful grasping for control.

Underminding can be both an attitude and an activity (as the gerund suggests). We can ‘get into’ underminding by simply recognizing the more concrete and determinate goals we’re pursuing at any given moment, and releasing (undermining) the need to follow them up, by rather focusing on the fact that, no matter how clearly we think we know the reasons why we want to do something, this knowing is always surrounded by an immense halo of not-knowing. Once we acknowledge that the not-knowing is always already there, we can ask ourselves: what else is possible here, in this condition, with these circumstances? Inducing this shift in perspective (from a well-determined goal-oriented intentionality, towards an under-determined intentionality) is itself a goal-oriented intention, hence it is something we have to do with our mind. Yet, it is form of mental activity that instead of leading us to a specific place, brings us up into the open of our experiential field.

In this way, the mind is not thrown away, nor engaged in a compulsive way. We use it, say, only to 50% of its potential, what is enough just to get us in a position of suspension, openness, and curiosity. We use its nuances and subtleties to recognize this condition and preserving it as possible, but we defuse its potential for suffocating experience with the need for categorizing, anticipating, and forecasting it. It’s like finding the right middle between complete muscular relaxation (which makes all action impossible) and extreme muscular tension (which eventually also turn action into just a spasm). Underminding is a way of using the mind just enough to not having to worry further about it, allowing other forms of cognition (e.g. intuition) to naturally emerge and flourish.

While underminding, there is no thing that we need to do, and no specific reason for doing anything in particular. This does not mean that action does not arises, but rather that any action can arise and be explored, provided that it keeps us within the undermining itself. In this sense, undermining creates a constructive constraint, a self-imposed limitation that we set in order to overcome our ordinary limitations—as there is no freedom without constraints. We do not need to worry whether action will arise without us imposing well-determined goals, since we are already and always moving within dynamic systems in which actions happen all the time. We do not need to worry about making anything special happen. We do not need to be afraid of not being interesting enough. We only need to be interested, and listening attentively to the ever-changing and shifting conditions through which we move anyway, regardless.

Once we get into underminding, we do not need any further justification to stay there or explaining why we need to be there (the urge for that justification comes from the ordinary mindset based on determined goals). And once there, we can just use our mental metacognitive skills to keep balancing our activity in order to simply remain within that condition of openness, adaptability, responsivity, improvisation.

In my experience, Contact Improvisation can be very conducive to underminding. By focusing awareness on the experience of gravity (in both its passive and active aspects, as a yielding force of relaxation, and as a propelling force of attraction and movement), CI brings experience back to the kinaesthetic plan where all action naturally unfolds. By fostering a state of disorientation, while simultaneously inviting an attitude of responsiveness to any situation that arises, CI trains the ability not to anticipate the unfolding of action, not to commit to an a-priori plan, but simply respond to what is arising, choosing among the many options that are always possible. Since the performance of CI is precisely the bringing into display of this constant flow of questions and answers, affordances and possibilities, its goal or form does not entail executing a fixed shape, but the ‘choreography’ of CI includes precises all the multifarious and diverse turns and twists, flows and falls, sublime and awkward moments that emerge in the exploration (for more details about CI see here, and here, and here).

If there is something that needs to be done, you do it. If there is nothing that needs to be done, you take rest. If there are possibilities, you can explore them. Everything is open when nothing is firmly grabbed. Everything flows when nothing is clung to. You can be everything, or nothing, or anything in between. For as long as one is underminding, it does not matter what exactly is happening, but rather the ability to let it come, let it be, and let it go. The advantage of entering underminding via CI is that this attitude is deeply embodied and fully rooted since the beginning in our original intercorporality and interconnectedness. Don’t think about it, just undermind it.