Credit: www.lifehack.org
Krishnamurti said that liberation comes through understanding the ways of the self. Let me look at that self, ego, or mind.
The mind is a complex spiritual computer which:
(1) Stores memories from the past of things and events significantly related to its owner’s perceived interests and survival;
(2) Watches out for those interests and survival in the present; and
(3) Takes purposive action designed to enhance and protect them in the present and the future.
Considered from the standpoint of the soul, which is who we are (the big-S “Self”), the mind is the epitome of highly-advanced artificial intelligence. Truth be told, every one of our bodies is artificial intelligence. Everything about us is, except the Self (and some would argue that even that is).
The mind is capable of making an object of awareness of anything, including itself. It can think and even talk about things that are distant, invisible, and non-existent.
It can conceptualize and talk about things that, for most of us, have only a theoretical existence, like subatomic particles and numbers. Have you ever seen a number right there in front of you? I haven’t. Does it bother you to talk about something that has no form? Probably not. Thank the mind for those extensions of consciousness.
The most significant thing the mind is lacking is that it lacks a heart. I’ve been unable to find a mind with a heart, save one that has been placed in the service of the heart. It simply lacks it and everything that goes with it – compassion, generosity, mercy. An individual who has those has activated their heart and gained some mastery in conditioning the mind to its direction.
I’m not seeking to turn the mind into a little, grey, squishy thing that we chase around the room. I’m just saying that I consider its usefulness to have limits. I see the need to bring the mind under the heart’s direction. And I have the motivation to do it.
Mine is not yet under the heart’s direction. I’m walking through that process as we speak. And it has to be done because the new call to leadership from Archangel Michael raises the bar again.
I used to ask myself how I could cross the line that separated me from not caring to caring about others. I couldn’t see how it could be done. Not really.
I now see that I couldn’t because my heart was closed and I was only looking from the mind.
The passage from a mind-centered to a heart-centered consciousness is the very thing I was looking for, the very thing that would help with that transition.
(Concluded in Part 2.)