The Mind in Four Components

We talked a bit about the energetic system of the Chakras last week and discovered the importance of opening up internally so that the energy of this unseen system can flow free of obstruction. The difficulty of learning to find a relationship with the Chakra System is that we cannot see it as it has a “non-physical” form. The same holds true with the Mind, which cannot be seen in physical form but is very much a living entity.

The Mind is complex and very very difficult to understand. It has, as I see it, four components that have very distinct functions. The ability to rationalize, perceive, resist and observe.

The Four Components of Mind

The ability to rationalize serves a very important function that allows us to think about the myriad of stimuli that enter our senses. This function allows us to consider the value of the things that happen to us everyday. Are our romantic relationships fulfilling, is my job worth keeping, am I making the best choices for myself, do I like this or that person, what is my opinion of my physical body, etc., etc. Opinions are formed from the things that we rationally think about and it is very difficult to change them once they are formed. Our opinions are hard-wired into the neuro-pathways of our brain and become “cemented” into our brains. In essence, our “rationalizing” creates the physical make-up of our brains and if we think and rationalize too much we stuff the mind with an overflow of matter that results in stress and delusions. Just like if someone eats too much bad food, they will create too many fat cells that will ultimately put stress on the physical body as can be seen in things like obesity, clogged arteries, stressed joints, and the like. It is not necessary to try to figure everything out rationally and when we do this it is because we are running from our feelings. Feelings bring us to the second component of Mind, which is our ability to perceive.

Perception takes information that is “up” in our heads and allows it to flow down “into” us for a deeper understanding. When I say a deeper understanding, I mean what we feel about that information for one thing. There is also a deeper “knowing” that occurs from our ability to perceive the information and opinions that we make. Some information makes us feel positive feelings and others makes us feel negative feelings. If we have formed a negative or overly critical opinion of something, it results in negative feelings. The deeper we allow ourselves to connect to those negative feelings, the deeper our “knowing” or understanding of that feeling becomes. This is important because the more we know and perceive about our negative feelings the more likely we will choose the more comfortable positive opinions. When we create more positive opinions, the result is more positive feelings. The only way to wake up to our negative opinions is to connect to how we feel about those opinions. The catch and difficulty in this process is that we do not always want to FEEL our negative feelings. And when we don’t feel our negative feelings we remain asleep and allow our negative opinions to drive us in negative directions in an endless cycle of darkness. We now come to our third component of Mind, which is the ability to resist.

Ah, the infamous resistance, which is the part of us that prevents us from becoming free, enlightened, ultimately happy and reaching our highest potential. I am not saying that our resistance is not important because it most defiantly is important and valuable. Without our faculty to resist opinions, feelings, and choices we would not have freedom of choice. The glory of this Universe is that we ALWAYS have a choice to do something new or stay the same. Of course, if we always want to stay the same, then we don’t grow and are not able to experience the glory of all that makes up our lives. It would seem like the obvious choice would be to feel as deeply as we could so that we continue to grow and expand the essence of who we are as a “self.” Yet, one does not go without the other. Without our “negative” feelings and thoughts, we could not understand the beauty of our “positive” thoughts and feelings. The bad aspects of a romantic relationship for example allow us to appreciate the positive aspects. It is a huge mistake and the essence of delusional thinking to only want positive and happy things to occur. On the deepest spiritual level, we came to this physical realm to experience the opposite of our divinity so that we could have something to compare it too and so understand that divinity more deeply. That being said, if you ever wonder why something is not working in your favor, just remember the infamous saying, “what we resist persists.” If you resist arguing with your lover, then those arguments will continue. If you accept them as natural and necessary, they will decrease. Oh the irony of it aye. The final component is our ability to observe.

I won’t say much about observance other than that it is what defines being awake. When we observe our opinions without attaching to them, we are able to truly see them. If we want to know what our opinions are, then we need to observe our thoughts without judgment or attachment. We need to be able to read the content of our Mind just as we would read the content of a book. When we do this, we are able to then truly decide if it is something that we wish to continue. Finally, when you do observe your mind correctly you will have a corresponding feeling that is associated with that thought. When observance is done this way, you can move through the fear within your heart. Remember, enlightenment is an open mind and heart. Many will observe the mind without allowing their feelings about those thoughts to surface and so prevent themselves from being impacted by what they see. When this happens then they simply stay out of the realm of humanity and in the realm of escapism and avoidance.

A Second Opinion

The specific aspects of mind are; 1) “unrest” which means going out to receive sense objects coming to sense doors as fish, cast on earth, strive to go into water, 2) “moving” means non-calm, sometimes it may be calm, but when it is attacked by sense objects, it is distracted by those, 3) “hard observation” means it is very hard to keep it calm (purified), 4) “hard protection” means it is very hard to protect it from forming an opinion, especially a bad (or selfish) opinion, 5) “hard compulsion” means it is very hard to force it not to fall under the five hindrances (it is likened to a drug addict, it is very hard for him to stop taking drugs) because it always falls under the five hindrances, it is hard to realize it, it is very smooth, and it arises and vanishes very rapidly.

This shows that the mind of human beings is restless, always falling down into the valley of unwholesome deeds. This leads human beings into big trouble. In the Buddha’s time, there was a monk named Talaputa. After he had become a monk, he practiced meditation in the forest. He spent a long time doing meditation, but he could not attain enlightenment, as he wished. Then he searched for the cause and he found that it was because of his own mind. He complained to his mind, saying, “Citta (mind), you begged me for many years to leave lay life, now I am a monk as you wish, why now are you lazy and want me to abandon meditation? You always say to me, the forest is beautiful and peaceful and it is a proper place for meditation, then I leave lay life and all my relatives and have lived here for some time, I have tried to please you for ages but now you still hurt me, and want me to go back to where you used to tell me off. From now on I am going to train you, taking you into the cave, observing you like an elephant or horse trainer, I’m going to chain you with meditation (mindfulness), I know that if anyone is influenced by you, he or she will suffer.”

All the complaints of the monk above show that the human mind is made distraught by distractions or attachments, all of which we have derived from mind, and the cycle of life, also, is from mind. As a result the Buddha said, “The world is led by mind, all things are controlled by mind.”

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Being Engaged and Detached

In order to achieve high levels of success in your professional endeavors, one must muster up enough passion, courage, and energy to follow through the difficulties that naturally occur during such a quest. Yet, without a healthy level of detachment, our passionate drive can over take us and cause us to suffer.

How To Develop Detachment

First: Establish emotional boundaries between you and the person, place, or thing with whom you have become overly enmeshed or dependent on.

Second: Take back power over your feelings from persons, places, or things which in the past you have given power to affect your emotional well-being.

Third: “Hand over” to your Higher Power the persons, places, and things which you would like to see changed but which you cannot change on your own.

Fourth: Make a commitment to your personal recovery and self-health by admitting to yourself and your Higher Power that there is only one person you can change and that is yourself and that for your serenity you need to let go of the “need” to fix, change, rescue, or heal other persons, places, and things.

Fifth: Recognize that it is “sick” and “unhealthy” to believe that you have the power or control enough to fix, correct, change, heal, or rescue another person, place, or thing if they do not want to get better nor see a need to change.

Sixth: Recognize that you need to be healthy yourself and be “squeaky clean” and a “role model” of health in order for another to recognize that there is something “wrong” with them that needs changing.

Seventh: Continue to own your feelings as your responsibility and not blame others for the way you feel.

Eighth: Accept personal responsibility for your own unhealthy actions, feelings, and thinking and cease looking for the persons, places, or things you can blame for your unhealthiness.

Ninth: Accept that addicted fixing, rescuing, enabling are “sick” behaviors and strive to extinguish these behaviors in your relationship to persons, places, and things.

Tenth: Accept that many people, places, and things in your past and current life are “irrational,” “unhealthy,” and “toxic” influences in your life, label them honestly for what they truly are, and stop minimizing their negative impact in your life.

Eleventh: Reduce the impact of guilt and other irrational beliefs which impede your ability to develop detachment in your life.

Twelfth: Practice “letting go” of the need to correct, fix, or make better the persons, places and things in life over which you have no control or power to change.

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MindFul vs. MindLess Thinking

Last month we discussed the most common thinking habit, which we defined as defensive routines or defensiveness. By understanding the various types of Defensive Routines that we discussed, individuals are able to get a better grasp on how they create division with those (and things!) that they interact with daily. Consequentially, they are able to generate more harmonious experiences from moment to moment. I would like to again stress that gaining an intellectual understanding of the defensive routines does not equal eliminating them within ones total behavior. It is through trial and error over an extended period of time with the help of a professional within the field of behavioral management that they are put in check.

By learning to develop new ways of thinking that match the challenges of the 21st century, we can begin to make wiser choices that create value for both ourselves and others. I have taken 10 thinking habits as identified by Capella University’s new Bachelor of Science degree program and professional certificate programs in information technology that are necessary for optimal development within our personal and professional lives and discussed them from my point of view.

Types of Thinking Habits

Complementary Thinking: The ability to weave various points of view into an interconnected web of understanding. Individuals are able to understand how conflicting meanings can compliment each other and so exist simultaneously (Polar-Opposite Complementary), how to create multiple perspectives from concepts that do not conflict but are similar in content (Multi-Perspective Complimentary), and how to establish new meanings and discoveries by competently using such “complementaries” (Complementary meaning Making).

Connected Seeing: The ability to sea one’s reality as a whole, seamlessly connected, interactive and dynamic web or system. Each of us has a relationship with our environment, and when we can see this relationship as an interconnected whole our understanding of this experience will be a valuable one (Seeing Relationships). This understanding allows for individuals to make and find significant meaning within their lives (Seeing Significance), which by default results in high levels of motivation and joy. The final piece of this thinking habit is the ability to make connections and see relevance across and within various knowledge systems (Seeing Across Disciplines).

Collaborative Teamwork: The ability to work within a team setting to achieve a common purpose through the integration of personal initiative and group cohesiveness. Individuals with this type of thinking proactively search for acreative ways to attack various challenges (Creativity in Collaboration), find ways to communicate in a teamwork style that promotes trust and mutuality (Collaborative Dialogue), and are able to exercise responsibility regarding initiative and cooperation while fulfilling their individual and group commitments (Collaborative Responsibility).

Constructing Meaning: The ability to construct meaning by acquiring and streamlining diverse knowledge systems to deepen overall understanding. In this case, individuals actively obtain and analyze relevant and explicit knowledge (Acquiring Explicit Knowledge). Upon which they determine the relevancy of such knowledge through interviewing techniques, experiential analysis and introspection (Accessing Tacit Knowledge). Finally, they creatively integrate the body of knowledge by combining their explicit and implicit elements (Synthesis of Whole Knowledge).

Conceptual Clarity: The ability to think clearly regarding conceptual data and make sense of and distinguish among the known and unknown in order to establish fundamental clarity of concepts. Individuals are able to express the implications of relevant concepts clearly in writing (Clarity of Concept), uncover the rationale of concepts by incorporating relevant experiences to the existing principles (Clarity of Rationale), and balance the “reason” capabilities of mind, heart and imagination as the “go-through” for establishing wholeness of conceptual thinking (Clarity of Wholeness).

Communicating Effectively: The ability to create new understandings, new possibilities and new realities through effective communication within teams. This thinking habit allows individuals to recognize and use the influences of both descriptive and metaphorical language on their perception, thought and action (Language Awareness), which also enables them to generate leadership language that can be seen in the way they put their words together or by how they determine their word choice, metaphor, image and other language capabilities (Language Leadership). They can also use the unique power and quality of hypermedia (sound & video) to enhance and transform professional communications (Hypermedia Languaging).

Courageous Action: The ability to establish meaning in the face of ambiguous experience and take courageous action while in the midst of uncertainty. Many situations in our personal and professional lives require that we be able to recognize the relevance, occurrence and significance of ambiguity (Ambiguity Awareness), while simultaneously establishing meaning within those scenarios to create a reality through sense making, action and creating theories (Enactment of Reality). Emotional resilience and recognizing the courage needed to be committed, accept responsibility and continue to take action as essential to creating value in the face of uncertainty (Courage of Commitment).

Caring Empathy: The ability to care for, identify with, and honor others, while striving to understand differing points of view. All there is, in the physical realm, is difference, which requires the ability seek mutual understanding and the capacity to view the polar-opposites of “self-other” as complimentary (Self-Other Unity). This is enhanced by honoring the dignity and legitimacy of each individual’s stake in their proposed ideals by seeing and feeling IN their world views (Stakeholder Perspective). Of course, the integration of mind, heart, and imagination to inform empathy and ethics in relationships and actions is required for empathy to actually exist (Intellectual and Emotional Maturity).

Conversational Reflection: The ability to reflect on the experience of professional practice by engaging in learning conversations. An extremely valuable quality is the ability to always and INITIALLY be open to believing in potentiality and possibility by striving to learn from new ideas, experiences, developments and challenges (Believing). The next step (SECONDLY) is to be open to doubting new encounters only after one has EXHAUSTED all the possibilities learned from believing (Doubting). Finally, individuals can now write a new story of meaning once they have reflected on the previous two steps (believing and doubting).

Continuous Learning: The ability to view every experience as an opportunity for continuous learning. These individuals are able to learn from “failure” by courageously facing failure and understanding it as an unexpected gift to enhance learning (Learning in Failure). Conversely, these individuals are also able to learn from their successes and to see them with humility and as another unexpected learning experience (Learning in Success). Finally, individuals with this thinking habit are intentional in their drive to learn by planning formal and informal learning experiences with the awareness that such learning will only enhance them personally and professionally.