Sunday Contemplation # 28 Our Mind Is Like Our Big Toe

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Photo by Mieke Campbell on Unsplash

• This Week’s Quote

• This Sunday’s Contemplation

• A Guided Meditation

• Grateful For

• This Week’s Community Chat

• Upcoming Activities

This Week’s Quote

It is not a person that has the experience of being aware; it is awareness that has the experience of being a person.

Rupert Spira

This Sunday’s Contemplation

Our Mind Is Like Our Big Toe

Dear Wisdom Path Walkers.

I hope that your week has been a good one. I know for some or many of you the week may have been difficult, challenging or painful. Wherever your week has landed I wish you peace, and I wish you the inner strength to find the best way.

On The Matter Of Big Toes

In what ways is our mind like our big toe?

Our big toes are there. They operate and exist, without conscious instruction from us. Like the billions of functions that happen in our bodies every second, our conscious input is not required. So too our minds. Thoughts happen, they happen frequently. Thousands every day. We have no real control over exactly what thoughts will arise and when. Like toes, hearts, brains, fingers and face muscles, the mind does what it does, it is part of the design of being human.

I think the Buddhist view that includes the mind as one of our senses is a logical and helpful perspective. Most of us have the capacity to see, to hear, to smell, to touch, to taste. Similarly we have the capacity to think.

My Buddhist friends will let us know that this is an oversimplification of the understanding. Of course they are right, but bear with me. I mean this in the sense that like our other senses, our minds are gifted to us as an existence navigation tool. Like our other senses, it is not our value maker.

We know that our capacity to see does not define who we are. It is a wonderful and powerful sense, but we are not tempted to say, “I see therefore I am”. The sense of sight is a tool of great import, but it is not who we are. It does not define our value. Think of blind people that you have known, or those famous ones you may know of. Helen Keller or Ray Charles are hardly diminished because their sense of sight did not work.

Our mind, like our other senses can be refined and developed. Just as a chef trains hard to refine their senses of taste and smell, or a musician their sense of hearing, so too we can work with our mind to hone its function. But…our mind is a tool of our awareness, not the master of it.

Materialism - The Ego Problem

Fortunately Descartes was incorrect when he postulated…”I think, therefore I am”. The truth is, I am, therefore I think. Our finite mind is the mechanism we need, along with our other senses, to experience, perceive and navigate this time and space world. It is not that which creates our awareness, it is a gift of our awareness.

The five senses are not aware of themselves, they are a data source and feedback mechanism. The brain is clearly central to the trillions of feedback loops that operate moment by moment. But the body, including the brain, is not aware, our finite mind is that which is aware of the body.

In the materialist view, the awareness ends there. It is Rene Descartes’ mistake and the pervading mistake of most cultures of our day.

It is the “I am”, that part of us that is aware of our existence, that is aware of our mind. Our body, and our mind, exist within our awareness. Our awareness is not a creation of the body and mind.

Our minds are incredible. Witness the profound creativity in music, poetry and science. Witness the brilliance of space flight and wifi. Witness the pain and destruction of intelligence and minds devoid of values.

There is great wisdom in loving the power of our minds, yet holding it humble to the One who gifted it to us. The immeasurable suffering of humankind has at its roots the ignorance of our essential nature beyond the reach of the mind.

The spiritual traditions, ancient and new, understand that we have allowed our mind to be used to define our sense of self, separate from the source of our essential awareness. Some call this misidentification the ego.

If we can see the ego as simply the navigator of the time space world so that we might survive as an individual and a species, then we can understand it and value it. Our mistake is to have let the tool run the show and be deceived by its brilliance at its work, to imagine we are defined by the tool. The unfounded conclusion of the ego mind is that we are a self separate from Awareness.

To use a more vivid analogy; for those of you have visited the monkey temples in India…or can imagine them…we have let the monkey run the temple. If you have been there, you cannot but notice that a commanding feature of such temples, is that they are full of shit. Literally. The monkeys may be holy, but it is not because of their wisdom or kindness. Sometimes my mind resembles that remark.

Refining And Honing The Focus Of Our Minds

On a topic far too big to reach here, let me just offer some thoughts for your contemplation -

• Look Past Your Mind

  Rupert Spira is correct I think when he says…”It is not a person that has the experience of being aware; it is awareness that has the experience of being a person”. Our mind is the tool of time-space experiencing. Don’t use is as the Source finder. We need to look past, underneath, beyond, through…pick a word…the mind, to discover the awareness we are.

  This sometimes happens spontaneously in suffering or in nature. An insight, experience within, opens us beyond our mind’s capacity to understand or define. It is “wordless” because it is not a mind function, it is awareness revealing itself.

  The other pathway well signposted is meditation. But perhaps think of it as described by Ando in her beautiful posts, “Whether we sit zazen, or in contemplation, silent worship, or the prayer of quiet, is of no matter. It is that we cease going outwards, and pausing to stop and sit a while, we turn within, to rest at the source”.

• Pay Attention To The Vibration

  A trained musician can hardly bear to listen to discordant sound. They have honed their gift to be aware of the subtlety of pitch and sound. The vibration of sound.

  If we imagine the Field Of Awareness from which we arise as an infinite field of energy and vibration, then it might help us access a method of honing our minds to the vibration of consciousness. This is often most easily seen in the emotions that appear.

  I characterise it like this - get better at choosing which part of the field you want to play in. Do you want to play in the part of the field that seems to be full of hopelessness, accusation, or resentment? Do you want to play in the field of hope, kindness and compassion? You get to choose.

  I see it in myself when I sometimes disappear down a YouTube black hole. What starts as an interest in a current news event ends in a field of anger and resentment that causes me to want to take a shower! I get dragged into, by algorithms that look a lot like monkeys, playing in a field that leads only to despair.

  The best thing is to pick it early. Stop. Change the field.

  Extend this lesson to everything you do. Notice the emotion or view of the world appearing in your mind early. You decide, you the awareness, how best to deal with that emotion or perspective. Don’t let the tool, the mind, decide what field you play in. Direct your mind to play in the field of your choosing and capacity.* It takes pausing, being still, becoming aware, then deciding where you want to play based on what you are aware of. Your mind will, with practice, follow the path of your decision.

  This is a practice of awareness and mind honing that can help your life immeasurably. Remember it is a practice. The best musicians never cease practicing. So too we who seek to practice what field of consciousness we play in. Keep practicing.

Thank you for reading this. See you next week I hope.

I wish you peace.

*See The Map Of Consciousness Explained by Dr David R. Hawkins, for more on this.

A Guided Meditation

I have received quite a bit of feedback that a guided meditation connected to the topic of these contemplations has been appreciated. When appropriate I will provide one each week. This week’s guided meditation is called A Surrender - Choosing The Field Where We Play

Grateful For

I include this section because I found that when I read or hear about what others are grateful for, I tend to think more about what I am grateful for. Feel free to share what you are grateful for in the comments. I think it is a beautiful service to others.

I am grateful for our neighbour who texted me saying…”It’s beer o’clock, can you help me fix the clutch of my van?” Some neighbours are easy to love.

This Week’s Community Chat

The theme in the chat this week is:

Choosing the field of consciousness we play on. What methods of doing this work best for you?

Or…anything else that you would like to share.

Thank you.

Upcoming Activities

My friend Sally Avison and I have been hosting Wise Hearts Circle zoom meetings. We have taken a break and are working on a new format. We will be in touch as soon as we have the plan in place.

Should you want to message me directly, please feel free to do so.