"The Mind Is Like A Parachute"

I'm sure that most of you have heard the above aphorism. It is, in my experience, usually bandied about by folks who lack the skills or willpower to employ critical thinking and find this as a nice excuse to just believe whatever they want. It is the sort of attitude that makes people like Deepak Chopra and JZ Knight (SEE NOTE 1) very wealthy.

Despite the cop-out common usage of the mind/parachute metaphor, I think it is a good metaphor. It is, in its commonly used format, however, incomplete.

Consider the application of a parachute in guiding one safely to the ground. There are many uses for parachutes, but this is the most commonly-thought-of (SEE NOTE 2). Picture yourself in freefall, then pulling the ripcord to activate your chute. With any luck, your chute opens. But does it open all the way? You'd better hope not.

A fully open parachute is nothing more than an assemblage of textile flapping in the wind as you accelerate toward a very nasty result. The chute only works if it is held in a position that allows you to control the amount of air flowing through and around it. The mind works in much the same way.

If you open your mind completely so that you have no control over it or the flow of information into and around it, it is not of much use in protecting you. You need some form of shroud lines to hold in in a controllable, useful state. Let's call these shroud lines "critical thinking" and "compassion" -- that is, the ability to use fact and reason to discern what information is best suited to help you live a happy, productive life that is not harmful to others.

Cut those strings and your parachute will indeed be more open, but that's not really a good thing for you and anything else that might get in the way as you plummet toward the ground.

So, yes, your mind is indeed like a parachute. And you should treat it with similar respect and care.

XXX

NOTE 1: In the case of JZ Knight's (trademarked) Ramtha "teachings," one's mind not only needs to be open, it needs to scraped clean of all gray and white matter, bleached, and replaced with nothing more than your credit card information.

NOTE 2: When I was stationed at Fort Bragg, the aircraft I worked on were often parked next to those of the Army's parachute team, The Golden Knights, and I knew some of the mechanics/crewmen on those aircraft, so the parachute metaphor reminds me a bit of my younger days.