Cocoon of Habitual Patterns
One morning, a mother was getting breakfast for her son on a school day. She heard no signs of readiness coming from his bedroom. She went to see how he was doing and found his door closed shut.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” she heard him say in a very defiant voice. “I’m just not going to school today.”
“Well, then,” said his mother, “how about you give me three good reasons why you don’t want to go to school?
“I don’t like school,” she heard him say. “The teachers don’t like me. And I’m afraid of the kids. That’s three.”
“That is three,” the mother agreed. “Now I’m going to give you three good reasons why you are going to the school. First, I’m your mother, and I say school is important. Second, you’re fifty-three years old. And third, you’re the principal of the school!”
It can be difficult to “leave home” at any age. By “home,” I’m referring to our “established habits of mind.” A preeminent teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, Chögyam Trungpa (1939-1987), described this mental “cocoon” as the place we prefer to be because we can stay surrounded by our familiar thoughts, beliefs, basically our mental chatter so that nothing sharp or painful can touch us. An analogy might be the “Peanuts” character Linus, who, for the sake of keeping order in his world, walks around with his blanket to his ear and his thumb in his mouth.
The more we stay in our cocoon of habitual thinking and patterns, the more we remain in our cocoon of habitual thinking and patterns. When we are constantly recreating our basic patterns of behavior and thought patterns based on our version of how the world works, we never have to leap into fresh air or onto fresh ground. Basically, we don’t have to change our repertoires at all.
We can stay in our own dark but cozy environment, where everything is known to us and where our only companion, when it comes right down to it, is really our self. We regard this cocoon as a family heirloom or inheritance and don’t want to give anything away. The cocoon is a comfortable, sleepy, intense, and familiar home. Moreover, it could be seen as a survival mechanism deeply embedded within our genetic structure, and by venturing out, we question our security and our continued sense of our identity.
In the world of the cocoon, such things as opening the window or spring cleaning have never been known or even thought of. We feel that it is too much work, too much trouble, to clean it up. We would prefer to go back to pull the covers over our heads and go back to sleep. Again, picture Linus and his blanket.
We stay in our cocoons unless/until something wakes us up. Our first stirrings of awakening are experienced as a feeling of claustrophobia and a longing for open space. This may or may not happen.
One way we can step outside of our cocoon is to develop the capacity to look directly at our minds and continually question our perceived reality. Basically, to really think about how our mind works.
In this globalized age of increasing change, ambiguity, and complexity, there is an urgency to deepen our understanding of what can happen when we step outside of our personal cocoons. Why leave it to chance?