Too Many Mind

I love that scene in the movie, The Last Samurai, where they begin to teach about no-mind. Excuse the grammar of the title, but I had to use that statement for this article. 🙂

With writing so much on the topic of Knowing, I feel its crucial to follow-up with an article regarding the Mind. In my book, Expansion Mastery: The Practical Guide to Living a Fully Engaged Life, I include insights into the understanding of various states of mind. From the “ordinary mind,” to the “beginner’s mind,” to the “mind of awareness,” to “no-mind,” there is quite a variety of healthy, and not-so-healthy mental conditions afforded to the human being. My goal is to help you become aware of them and then to establish effective practices that will help you achieve them. They are not simply something you have, they usually require training the mind in order to experience them. People often wonder why they cannot fully relate to what I share, the reason is that they have not attained this state of trained mind and therefore cannot truly understand what I am talking about, let alone Know it for themselves yet.

Practices are required. Action is required. One must go beyond reading or hearing about something and actually practice it for themselves. To believe we Know something because we read a book or internet article, heard someone tell us something or watched a video on YouTube is evidence that the mind is dominated by the ego. It is the person who does all these things and then sets them into practices that have proven results that develop the ability to Know.

I would like to place my focus on the state of the Dualistic Mind and the Trinity Mind for this article. Everyone is familiar with the dualistic mind to some degree, and the reason is because that’s the typical frame of mind that the majority of people are stuck in. It is accepted as normal. The reason it has become so easily accepted is because very few successfully escape its hold. I developed the term “Trinity Mind” in an attempt to explain a frame of mind that cannot be adequately described through the limitation of words. This trinity mind is one that has expanded (opened) enough to have the capability to grasp the world of the spirit, of nature, and of being within the same thought or feeling. This mind embraces the three-dimensional existence of the completely actualized human being.

Many people remain trapped their entire lives in the mindset of duality. This is a world of contrast which is very useful when we are young and just beginning to learn about the world around us. This contrast helps us to know what we like through knowing what we don’t like. It helps us to understand what is “bad” through understanding what is “good.” While it is very helpful it doesn’t take much reflection to see the simplicity of the dualistic mind. I feel this state of mind serves us while we are young and immature. The problem with this is that many people become stuck in this frame of mind, leaving them mentally immature. The reason is that the ego clings to the simplistic nature of this mind. It is far easier for the ego to dominate and rule from this perspective.

Viewing the world through the eyes of duality is incredibly limiting. It is a way of judging the world around you through opposing forces, seeing things as opposites and living in a world of extremes. Judgment is inevitable from this mindset. Your level of understanding is based upon judgment, yet we know that judgment is the tool of the ego. This mindset leaves us looking at the world through the limitations of everything being an extreme, it’s either black and white, forgetting about all those shades of grey in between. It’s similar to a horse walking through the street with blinders on. They can only see the things that are straight ahead through the forced tunnel vision of the blinders, but they are not capable of using their peripheral vision to see the world all around them. Remember that they’re called “blinders” for a reason.

Through the eyes of duality, things are seen as either good or bad. You are either a democrat or a republican, something is right or it’s wrong, you are rich or poor, you go to heaven or hell, you live on the good side of the tracks or the bad side, there is good and there is evil, you either have or have not, there is only one right way and all others are wrong, you are dead or you are alive, and the list goes on. At some point we must mature and move beyond the dualistic mind, allowing ourselves the ability to expand and mature. This is critical if we intend to experience spiritual growth. Holding a child-like quality of inquisitiveness is NOT the same as being mentally immature or deciding to remain ignorant. These should not be confused. It is through this inquisitiveness that one seeks the practices to grow beyond the mind of duality. The dualistic mind tends to pacify the ego as it places everything in a nice little, simple, box so it feels in control of the world around it. Where there is ego, there is the absence of essence. Where the ego dwells, the mind is closed, although the ego is more than happy to convince you otherwise.

The dualistic mind revolves around a life of extremes. When someone has such a severe sense of greed for money that they do anything to get it, they make attaining it the central focus in their life, they worship it, and they hoard it, not possessing the ability to fathom a life without it – this is one extreme and it is commonly referred to as indulgence. When you have another person who refers to money as evil, denounces it, viewing others who have it as bad or beneath them in some way as they form the misbelief that they are happier without it – this is the other extreme known as renunciation. These are both examples of the dualistic mind that sees opposites and bounces between extremes. The person overly focused on money will miss out on the non-materialistic aspects of life that are so important. The person who believes money is the root of all evil will generally never have enough to enjoy things in life because they are vibrationally pushing it away, thereby missing out on many of life’s finer things and experiences.

The trinity mind is a more expansive mind. It is the ever changing flow of mind that leads to no-mind at all. The trinity mind becomes so expansive that it eventually ceases to exist as such and yet encompasses all. It moves into no-mind where there is no need for beliefs, it is an acceptance for what is. Nothing more is needed. It is when we live through this expansive mindset that we can live from our essence, free of ego. It is here that the mind is truly open and the ability to take the mind further exists. By further, I mean that you are able to control your own mind. You are able to embrace what it is to hold a beginners mind and you can activate it at will. You have the ability to quiet your mind and to bring it to stillness whenever you so desire. Your thoughts are truly your own and not the product of an ego dominated mind. It is from this space that you are able to activate the thinking mind when necessary, without triggering the ego, and then you have the ability to turn it off when you are finished with it. You are able to step outside of the limiting ideas and beliefs imposed upon you by others and really, truly think and feel for yourself and to move beyond the need to think through the attainment of no-mind. Only when you have the ability to have no mind are you truly in control of your mind.

The trinity mind sees with a multi-dimensional vision. The blinders are removed and the full vision is restored. Any real martial artist trains their eyes in particular ways and one important way is to rely on your peripheral vision instead of the straight-line vision that most people use. Martial artists (should) know that this limits the information that is brought in through the eyes to the brain. They also know that this limits their other senses including the ability to use intuition, to feel the space around them and to Know the intentions of their adversaries.

Those applying the trinity mind will see the world through a much broader perspective. They see that there are varying degrees of right and wrong and that there are a vast number of extenuating circumstances that determine how right or how wrong something is. Nothing is so cut-and-dry as the immature, judgmental mind would like you to believe. Later, you will move beyond this and see that there is no right and wrong at all, that it is simply an illusion of the mind to begin with. Only when there is no-mind, the world of illusion falls away and the truth is revealed.

The trinity mind doesn’t see the world as opposites, it sees it through harmony. Extremely different mindsets aren’t they? The person living in the dualistic mind can see the Tai Chi symbol, generally referred to as the Yin/Yang symbol, and see black and white, two opposites, two opposing forces. But the trinity mind looks at this symbol and sees the harmonious interaction of these forces. It sees complimenting forces at play, not opposites. The expansion of the trinity mind helps you get closer to attaining a mind that is so expansive that it is no-more.

Let’s use the topic of the last blog to bring this point to light. Some people may look at knowing something (through intellectual understanding) and Knowing (through feeling and personal experience that permeates your being) as opposite view points or opposite meanings of this word; but this is a dualistic mind. Those with a trinity mind see these two meanings, not as opposites or opposing meanings, but as different points in the process of Knowing. The dualistic mind needs everything to be a “static thing.” The trinity mind sees everything as a “process.” This is what it is to embrace the truth of change. The trinity mind goes beyond the mere words as the limited expression of mankind and sees Knowing as something much deeper, something that can only be felt and experienced. Indeed, it sees that most things are beyond description with words because they are a process and thereby ever changing, yet they do their best to describe what cannot be described.

“Knowledge is an object, Knowing is a process” – Osho

The dualistic mind hears something like knowing and understands it intellectually, but they still cannot feel it or see it yet. When I speak of Knowing, I talk from one state of mind, of trinity mind. One cannot speak while in a state of no-mind because thoughts are required to create words and this activates the thinking mind. If you are listening from the point of a dualistic mind then you cannot grasp what I am speaking of in the way that I do because I am speaking from the trinity mind. I have trained my mind through decades of practice to achieve this. If you have not, then how can you possibly grasp what I am saying? This is the point of the original article on Knowing. Intellectually understanding what I am speaking of can only result in a mis-understanding on your behalf. Seeking the meaning of words according to a particular language already imposes limitations upon that word and therefore your understanding of it. Your understanding will be lifeless. It is only when you have internalized knowing that it penetrates the core of your being and reveals a sense of Knowing. Then there will no longer be a need to search for definitions or to question, because it is then that you will truly Know.

The dualistic mind creates a limited experience. At its core there is an observer and the observed. In this you will always have a dualistic mind. When you step beyond the mind, into no-mind, then you become free of the confines of the dualistic mind and it is only from here that you can truly experience and Know. When we are in spirit formlessness, there is but one mind, it is the Divine Mind. When the dualistic mind expands, it becomes the trinity mind, and when the trinity mind expands it becomes no-mind. Some pretty famous guy once put it this way – From the One is born the Two, from the Two is born the Three, and from the Three is born the 10,000 things.