Fifty-two Minds

How quickly I return to this place. Place of living a life where mind and brain have challenges being apart. I can’t seem to balance between being completely inward and extremely connected. There is a piece in the middle missing. Something that connects together both the internal and external. It’s like a seesaw. How do I get in balance or is this balanced?

No, I don’t believe this is a balanced mind at all. The mind was more balanced in the four days spent in silence and meditation. In the external world, the brain, the physical body, can really get a hold of the mind.

In the Sacred Readings from the Gathas, Hazrat Inayat Khan writes:

The body is the instrument of the mind
The mind is the instrument of the soul

For me, the returning back from a deep meditative state, it feels after a couple of days the mind has become the instrument of the body once again (i.e. the brain).

When I was in my four days in silence, tech free, I was able to switch, the body (for a brief time) became the instrument of my mind.

Why is it so easy to fall back into the other way? Is it the pattern, the lines carved within the mind are so deep that it will take longer for the primary mind to gain full control or perhaps there are multiple minds, some minds are stronger then others and actually its important to nurture the different minds? In the Vipassana talks the teacher Goenka mentioned as a side, there are fifty-two minds.

I actually think each cell has its own mind, a thought that arisen from my own meditations, which would mean that we have potentially trillions of minds. So lets just say humans have fifty-two minds (departments) and each mind has billions of cells (tiny minds/workers) under it.

Maybe the mind thats in silence and stillness is different then the active mind that is of the world, that allows us to function and work and play in the external. But this brain-mind, lets call it, is the dominant mind of the current ecosystem (political, social, economic etc…) we live in so the pull back to brain-mind from the collective is much greater, which is why its so easy to be pulled out of the blissful state of a still unified mind, body and spirit connection upon our return to the ‘real world’.

Side note: the deeply rooted habit patterns, if not changed, any socio, economic and political change at the physical (i.e. surface) level, is no change at all. It is merely a change of wardrobe.

Now, the centring part may come with having a deeper connection to ones spirit, where the mind becomes the instrument of the soul but this is for another day and like the fifty-two minds, we are not yet ready to tackle that. Why? Because collectively we are still moving through this world with a closed heart. Behind the heart resides our soul. For the soul to once again make the mind its instrument we have to first open up the heart. In order to open up the heart we need to move the brain-mind into our whole body, activating change and awakening at a cellular level.

So lets narrow this down to three minds to contemplate and explore:

Brain-mind (aka thinking mind)
Heart-mind (aka feeling mind)
Gut-mind (aka intuitive mind)

If we just begin with these three it will be easier then tackling even the potential idea of fifty-two minds.

Here is the catch. Because the brain-mind is so dominant we spend very little conscious time in our heart and gut and the rest of our body. However, in order to strengthen the heart and gut mind, we need to nurture it with the brain-mind. The brain-mind is whats fucking us up but it’s also what is going to save us and shift humanity into a higher vibrational playground.

This is why body scans are so important, practices such as Vipassana gets the brain-mind focused (using the Anapana, the meditation that precedes Vipassana), to slow, to pause, to move from neck down and develop a deeper awareness of our own patterns and inevitably remove the roots of patterns and behaviours allowing us to create space to plant seeds for a new way of being.

When we take the brain-mind and begin to move it through our body we are using the same mind that created all these patterns that are a result of our present behaviours, to now flip it and rid ourselves of these patterns. So the tool which created this ecosystem is the same tool that can undo and reset it.

The reality is that this alone (Vipassana/Body Scans) is not sustainable for the average human which is the majority of us. Why? Because we can go on a ten day retreat or even my recent at home four day self led retreat and lets say I rid my self of all my patterns and shitty habits, all the lines called Sankaras that are carved in my mind, but unless I am staying in solitude this is not sustainable (on its own) because I’m going to enter back into the world of the householder and my brain-mind is going to adapt and begin creating new lines, new habit patterns and soon will likely be back where it began. Or will it?

The answer is a grey one. A combination of yes and no. We will certainly have shifted and have an expanded awareness of self, but if we don’t consciously change our environment and how we live, if we come back to the same job, relationships, eating the same food, surrounding ourselves with the same energy etc..., then we will begin to re-plant the same seeds we worked so hard to rid during the time of retreat.

So whats the answer? We should all just intake some mushrooms and call it a day. Kidding, although I know some of you are nodding your head yes Talib, thats a wonderful idea. The answer is actually incorporating different meditations, including movement and prayer practices into your tool bag. If anyone today informs you that here is the one way, the best way or the only way then my suggestion for you is to walk the other way.

Most days my mind naturally syncs with breath, but some days I need other tools.

So the question arises, how do we live in this world, this world of the brain-mind and simultaneously strengthen the heart and gut mind (probably a good idea before we jump in the other potential 49 minds right?).

Let me give you an example. This morning meditation was a struggle for me. My brain-mind was too active because yesterday it’s where I spent most of my time and I couldn’t successfully move through a full body scan, so I reach into my tool bag and I pull out a heart meditation called Vishoka Meditation which I learned about during a short trip to the Himalayan Institute in Pennsylvania. There are couple of meditations that precede Vishoka, one of them being Samikarana Pranayam which is ascending and descending breath and mind from the crown to the perineum, touching 8 points in between. When my mind is super busy, I need to recruit breath into the game to help settle and sync the mind. Samikarana simultaneously calms the mind, syncing it with breath but also incorporates a different type of body scan. Once my mind has come into rhythm with breath then I can move on with my day or even transition to my usual body scan. 

(If you want to learn more about Vishoka meditation, Pandit Rajmani Tignaught has beautifully written book on Vishoka Meditation.)

Sooooo where did we end up. Kind of where we started. The Brain-Mind, the current star of the human show. If you have made it this far and take one thing away from all this rambling, its this:

That which makes us sick is also our cure. Now that’s a hell of a mind fuck.

P.S. More on the feeling mind and intuitive mind to come but for now I’ll say that all minds are intricately woven and the ideal (so says my thinking mind) is to interweave, balance and equally nurture each mind, to bridge body and spirit and move on to the next stage of humanity where we all morph into unicorns! See, easy peazy!