The Illuminated Mind
What if our Minds are not monkeys or viruses that we are supposed to control?
It is common in Mindfulness and Spiritual circles to hear that the ‘mind is a virus’ and that we have to tame our ‘monkey-mind’.
It is so normal and common to feel the scattered restlessness of minds making hyperspace jumps to different realms across time and space – yesterday’s argument, tomorrow’s plans, imagined conversations, trying to remember lyrics to a song.
The mind that never stops and never shuts up.
While we learn to love ourselves and our bodies and open our hearts, we tend to remain at odds with our minds.
I heard someone famous in the Spirituality world offer the analogy of a 2year old in the back seat of your card, as he explained what the mind is like and how one should control it. Give the kid something to play with and then you can drive peacefully. Otherwise, get ready for tantrums and extra stops on your journey. He explained the importance of keeping the mind engaged, so that the consciousness can stay in neutral.
Initially this really resonated with me, as I was so interested in receiving tips and tricks on how to still my mind and come to peace.
Today I find the same analogy dis-compassionate and wholly unhelpful.
I realized that I was at war with my mind.
I would be in a Yoga practice, and my mind would run about thinking about a movie from last night, and I couldn’t get it to calm down and come practice Yoga with me.
All my practices, visualizations and disciplines at the time were to cull the bouncing around and ground restlessness. The practices are great, but underneath there lay a current of frustration, even resentment with myself.
It occurred to me that I never considered my mind as a part of my body; it was always the thing that took me away from my present moment. As a result I was always doing the opposite of it to reign it back in.
There was also a damaged relationship with thoughts. I was so used to slamming down any ideas I had that were big, wild and out-there, that, quite like a child you constantly hold back, tantrums would ensue. It was a tug of war over the idea of peace of mind.
Our ideas of the world, perception of Self, belief systems are all born of the mind.
When we are young, we tend to learn by repetition and practice. There is a comfort in it. So, when we’re older and we hear or see things, there is a comfort in repeating the thoughts, ideas and beliefs of others when they resonate, even slightly. So, our minds become receptacles for a while, taking in all the information from our world, changing a few words and regurgitating it. For a while we believe this is intelligence, as least I did. I never thought to ask why something resonated or didn’t. At that time, I just took it as truth.
All of this and so much more make for restless bouncing thoughts, that cannot sit still and gives us the feeling that we are pulled and even controlled by our minds.
Stresses, trauma, haunting memories, grief and other deep emotions often cause even more scattering.
But this experience of our mind, is just that, an experience.
It is an outcome of past inputs - conscious and unconscious - as well as a response to our relationship with our minds, which isn’t great considering what we’ve been feeding it.
The Illuminated Mind can mean different things to different people.
It can mean a Mind the innocently quests for love and truth under every rock and beyond every star.
It can express creatively, pulling art, sculpture, scripture and poetry form the moonlight dancing in our hair.
It could be pure subject-matter genius that comes from intuition as much as intellect.
Maybe it is all of the above.
To me, it is experiencing the Mind with love, intention, purpose; balancing the inputs and outputs, as well as the left and right hemispheres with grace and discernment.
I’m coming to understand that when guided from an open, expansive heart and a connected Spirit, the mind is less of a virus and more of a possibility.
This Mind, works in congruence with the Soul, the Spirit and in absolute surrender to the Heart’s guidance with lots of input from the Gut seamlessly, without a power struggle. As if, it knows and trusts the Heart’s power.
I do not know the science behind it, but after a few recent experiences, I’m starting to appreciate how a Mind at Peace can actually impact the physicality of the brain, the nerves and the synapses.
I muse that perhaps we have never truly experienced our Minds.
Perhaps we have only experienced the energies of fear, traumas, grief, doubt or running from the collective consciousness.
And we believed that this was our mind and our intelligence.
From here we created our identity and our place in the world.
We experienced our minds as a virus, something to be solved or controlled.
Or, we weaponized it, against ourselves and others.
Some of us pour belief and attachment to this mind-self, giving it power and life force above all else.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain. - Frank Herbert, Dune
Only I will remain.
Perhaps that ‘I’, is our real true Mind.
Perhaps this is what awaits us, once we face our fears and challenges, and untether from the collective hive-mind and the personality interface we created to live in the world.
Maybe then, for the first time, we get to meet our beautiful illuminated powerful Mind and contemplate the utter brilliance that we already are.