Blind thinking - any of this sound familiar?

As I gradually became more and more familiar with the ways of this blind thinking I came to the conclusion that the success of my whole enterprise hung on my ability to emerge from it. For I realised that it made learning by experiment quite impossible. The essence of experiment is to have some desire or plan and then to try various methods of bringing about what one wants always keeping in mind the first intention and comparing what actually happened with what was expected to happen. My blind thought, however, having set out full of intentions, would, with the first unexpected incident, become distracted and set off in another direction, like a child who goes to fetch something but forgets its plan because it finds something more interesting to do on the way. Apparently it could not hold the unexpected happening in mind side by side with the intention and so revise its method in order to fit the new facts. So it was that I set out boldly saying, 'I will experiment with life and so make for myself rules about how to live,' and I had plunged into experiences only to find when I came out that I could conclude nothing from them, and could find no rule for future guidance, because I could not put my knowledge of the experience side-by-side with my intention and see where I had been wrong. All I could do was drift blindly from one experience to another, vaguely hoping that if enough things happened to me I would eventually learn wisdom. I never realised that I was making the same mistake again and again, simply because I did not know how to emerge from blind thinking into that state of seeing in which reflexion and the drawing of conclusions were possible.

Marion Milner - A Life of One's Own
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