Self-infliction #12: Plant a Minefield in Your Mind Field

"Philosophical thinking that doesn’t do violence to one’s settled mind is no philosophical thinking at all.” ~Rebecca Goldstein

In the spirit of unleashing the mind and generating new ideas, you must be able to drop question marks like thought-bombs into the overly secure, blatantly safe, and all too comfortable ramparts of your worldview. In order to think outside the cliché box, you must at least temporarily obliterate the box. If you don’t strategically set up tripwires for your current way of thinking, you’ll never achieve higher, more imaginative ways of thinking. You’ll never be able to “trip” into the masterpiece.

Sometimes the only way a higher order can be discovered is by sowing a little disorder into the current order.

When your mind becomes fixed and settled, it’s time to strategically plant a minefield in your mind field. Then sit back and enjoy the explosion, as your mind is blown into new ways of seeing the world.

A self-inflicted philosopher self-inflicts precisely to prevent a settled mindset. So as not to allow perception to become settled, certain, or sacrosanct, the self-inflicted philosopher forever combats it by planting minefields in the mind field. And in the process, thereby barbequing all sacred cows.

The mind field is a metaphor for the place where we think and reason. The minefield is a metaphor for an upsetting truth.

We strategically and proactively plant a minefield in our mind field to prevent our thoughts from becoming settled, content, trapped in a box, or stuck in a rut. We do this to avert extreme bias, circular reasoning, lack of imagination, or ideologies divorced from reality.

We offset the ignorance that comes with bliss by tossing truth bombs into belief states. This is a powerful way to remain at the forefront of change. It will keep you circumspect, inquisitive, and open. It will keep you aware of how easy it is to get hung up on a thought, idea, or belief, and it will deter cognitive dissonance.

The minefield unsettles the settled mind. It un-fixes fixed thinking. It trips up the certain mind. It un-stagnates stagnant thought. It blasts off the brainwash, the conditioning, the indoctrination. It balances mindfulness with no-mind and creates meta-mind.

In the end, the only mindful mindset is the one with a minefield planted in it.

After you’ve blown yourself up a few times in the minefield, after you’ve tripped over your strategically laid tripwires of thought, after the question mark bombs have obliterated everything you took too seriously, or put too much weight in, or believed to the point of dogmatism, after your mind has been unleashed, the dull blade of your hubris will have finally been sharpened into the razor’s edge of a good sense humor.

The only thing left to do is to keep sharpening the blade. Keep cutting into Truth. Keep planting minefields in the mind field.