by Robert Wilkinson
Over the years, I’ve offered that we have a Higher Mind and a lower mind. Each of these has a strong pole and a weak pole. Knowing our way around these four qualities can help us master any situation we confront.
I last gave this to you about 4 years ago. Of course I’ve added to the original content. So why is it important to know the differences between the Higher and lower mind?
By knowing the qualities of the mind, we can determine what part of our mind is dominant in any given situation. That can help us to view the dynamics of what’s happening with a relative degree of objectivity. Then we can be more dispassionate in consciously choosing how to respond when confronted with attitudes arising from our lower self, or the lower self of another.
As dispassion is the antidote to the mind generating suffering through what it wants to avoid, cultivating objectivity and dispassion helps us negate ten thousand potential problems. As we learn how to observe which parts of the mind are in play in any given situation, whether our own or another’s, we can see how to deal with situations with mindful responses.
The Lower Mind’s Polarity
The lower mind's weak pole is reason and its strong pole is desire. That's why any desire can be reasoned out. The lower mind tends to be led by our desires, and justify those desires before, during, and after the fact. We can always find a reason for doing or not doing anything governed by our desire mind.
As you can easily see, when the lower self has a desire it has reasoned it should pursue, it can lead to all kinds of mischief. Two obvious examples are people who desire to hurt another (or self) through destructive behavior, and those whose desire leads them to refuse to grow despite all signals that it's time to give up abusive behaviors and attitudes. When the lower mind has reasoned some desire is good, it will pursue that desire regardless of consequences.
The Higher Mind’s Polarity
The Higher mind's weak pole is intellect. That's why intellect alone is not strong enough to give up a desire that's been reasoned out and justified, including the desire to stay willfully ignorant. That's different than simple ignorance. When it's time to choose a different way of living, and yet a being desires the same patterns, that's willful ignorance. Willful ignorance is always consciously or unconsciously chosen by ego-mind.
The Higher mind's strong pole is the only solution to the lower mind's malfunctioning. The strong pole is Will, in the sense of Spiritual Will. When we apply our Spiritual Will in any moment, old ways are transcended immediately, and the desire mind and its rationalizations have no hold on our awareness and the choices we must make.
Though rationalizations may arise in the lower mind to justify its view, as we learn to apply our Spiritual Will to further our Higher Self, eventually the lower mind's hold on its view gives way. Then our Spiritual Will can focus our intellect to use the power of our Higher Self's ability to choose how to respond to any given thing. When this is at work, we know how to use our Will in applying our Love, Wisdom, and/or Intelligence in Action in ways that benefit us and all we are connected to. When the Higher Will is at work, it serves the greatest good for the Higher Self, the greatest good for one’s community, and the greater good for humanity.
What Good Does Your Action Serve?
All Beings want command over their lives and affairs. Those are the things we all apply our will to serve and make manifest. Whether ego-will or Spiritual Will, we all learn to apply our will power to serve our ends. That leads us to ask what those ends will serve?
This is where we hit the rub of evolution itself, since energy being energy, it can be used for good or ill even when a being is working from their Higher mind as they see it. An evil magician and good magician use the same tools and energies, but the former uses it for ego gratification while the latter uses it to serve the greatest good possible in that particular experimental setting. Even a misguided magician can believe they are serving their greater good because they can rationalize why it’s good and needs to be done. This is why objectivity and dispassion are crucial tools in examining rationalizations of the lower mind.
Even when we have mastered our lower mind’s tendencies to rationalize what it wants and why it wants it through applying our Spiritual Will to keep our lives aimed at fulfilling our higher purpose, we still have to deal with others along the path of Life whose lower minds are much stronger than their Higher minds. This helps us sharpen our understanding of how the mind rationalizes and justifies any given act, feeling, or thought.
Because none of us started out perfect, it took a while for our lower self to learn that its ego-will had to give way to “the Will to Good.” This usually happened through experiences which put our ego through enough heat that we saw the need to change our thinking. And in dealing with others who also have rationalizations, we learned to see it both in others and in ourselves.
In learning how to surf the tides of Life, we must examine our desires and the desires of others to see why they exist and how they have been rationalized, if we are to understand which desires are selfish and separative and which desires serve the greatest good. And of course, every realization must be practiced in life so our understanding is based in direct experience rather than the mind with its imaginings.
Spiritual Will and intellect are great tools at our disposal when we have to deal with coercive people and situations, since they transcend the reasoning and rationalizations present in coercion. Once these are countered, then it is easy to get to the raw desire lurking underneath the rationalizations. Then, by applying our Spiritual Will on behalf of our highest good and the highest good attainable in the situation, we further the greater good, even when it means withdrawing from that situation.
Transcending Polarity and Dualism
All dualism arises in the mind. The Higher Mind and the lower mind are where the Higher Triad of Atma-Buddhi-Manas meets the lower triad of body, feelings, and rational mind. It is the frequency zone where Spirit meets matter.
The Higher Mind is an emanation from Spirit/Soul, while the lower mind is the least dense and freest part of the lower triad. They overlap in the frequencies of mind, where dense thought meets inspired imagination, and where logic and order compete with ideals and abstractions. In knowing the battleground of the mind, with its eternal compare and contrast, sequence and selection function within ever-changing perceptions, we can know when Higher or lower elements are at work.
As we learn to spot when the elements of the lower mind are at work, we learn how to apply our intellect and Spiritual Will appropriate to the situations we confront. That eventually makes us masters of any situation we find ourselves in, since then we can act or not act with infinite detachment, dispassion, discrimination, and generate the positive intention appropriate to our understanding.
Though this process initially requires consistent self-discipline of our lower minds by our Higher Self, we find over time that the rewards are endless. By striving to practice our Spiritual Will focused through the lens of intellect, we can move through life's dualities without becoming confused or disoriented by any internal or external dilemma, desire, or rationalization.
As we come out of the rationalized desires of the lower self into enlightened (Higher) Self-interest, we can shine the light of awareness in any situation we confront. Over time that creates patterns of referencing the Love, Wisdom, and Intelligence of our Higher Self, and eventually that puts us at a level of consciousness that is beyond the pushes and pulls of the denser planes of existence. The more we live that, the less suffering we'll experience, and the more shadows we'll dispel as we walk our Eternal Walk.
Copyright © 2019 Robert Wilkinson
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