Michael Pollan

but now tens of millions of people do do, especially since the pandemic, there are a lot more meditators than there were, is how strange our minds are and how little volition is involved.

And that we think we're calling the shots as conscious human beings, but to a remarkable extent, we're not.

And where that material is coming from, we can call it the unconscious, we don't really know.

But it's just defamiliarized, right?

I mean, you're just estranged from your own mental processes.

And this whole idea that that great meditation exercise will look in your brain for who's thinking those thoughts, who's feeling those feelings, and you won't find anybody.

Oh, yeah.

I think so.

So what is it and what do we know about it?

Well, the wandering mind is just what's happening when you're bored.

That's the precondition in a way for a wandering mind.

It's like, I've got nothing to do.

There's no task here.

I'm just killing time.

And suddenly we're off and daydreaming or mind wandering.

They're very similar things.

I forget how Kalina distinguishes them, but she does.

She thinks it's a really important part of life that we haven't studied because it's not productive.

And that all the work in psychology goes into productive areas of thought.

I think that's changing now.