What is the Difference between Mind and Brain?
I was curious for a long time about the difference between the mind and the brain. I asked around, but nobody had an answer. So I continued on with life, occasionally pondering the question. Without answers, it became more of a fleeting thought.
Over the last few years, though, I’ve been diving deeper into myself. My experiences have taught me to differentiate between the mind and the brain. The mind is like a river. It needs to flow. If you block it by building a dam, it overflows and drowns the nature surrounding it.
In our case, the brain is that nature, and it’s being drowned by the power and overflow of the mind.
We’ve built a dam around our necks, trapping the mind in our heads. I wonder if this was necessary for the brain's evolution. If the mind hadn't been parked in the head, would the human brain have evolved to where it is today? Would technology and science have reached these heights, and at such speed, without the mind's focused development of the brain?
I don’t have answers to these questions—just perspectives from my experiences. But I see another part of human evolution unfolding right now, and I’m not sure enough people are noticing. We’ve been driving our brains in fifth gear for so long that we’re wearing out the engine. Just look at the rise in mental illnesses. Is it a coincidence that yoga, meditation, and group activities like CrossFit and marathons are gaining popularity? These activities help us reconnect our minds and bodies.
To me, this is our body saying: it’s time to break the dam. The next stage of human evolution is to bring the rest of the body on board—the heart, the gut, everything from the neck down.
How? By sharpening the mind through meditation.
Display in the basement of Rooms Cafe on Ossington Street in Toronto
Many people say, “Meditation isn’t for me—I can’t stop thinking.” But meditation is exactly for those who can’t stop thinking (myself included).
Yoga, CrossFit, and running are amazing for connecting with the body, but they aren’t enough. Meditation sharpens the mind. Once learned and embraced, it takes us to the next level—full mind-body connection.
Parking the mind in the head was necessary for a time, but the systems we’ve built (corporate workplaces, for example) are outdated. We’ve lacked the courage and awareness to collectively change the systems we still play in. The importance of bringing the entire body on board is that, at a mass scale, we can start building systems from the heart and soul, not just the head.
Even religion is being run from the head—not the heart, not the soul. For most of us today, religion serves little purpose because it was designed as a system to access the soul, the spirit, our true being. But we’ve boxed it in the brain, trying to make it logical. Prayers aren’t logical. They’re mysterious and magical.
There’s no access to the soul, to the source, unless our minds and bodies are synced.
My grandmother was my guru. I see clearly now what she was doing. She was a simple woman—no hijab, no fluff, none of the nonsense that surrounds religion today—just simple prayer, five times a day. She used a tasbeeh (prayer beads), which, by definition, involves repetitive utterance of short sentences (thank you, Google). The tasbeeh was essentially a counter. My grandmother repeated mantras.
I only developed this awareness after training in transcendental meditation last year and experiencing the power of mantras. Through meditation and prayer, she opened the doors to the soul and dropped her prayers into the fountain of the Universe.
If we want to reach the level of the spirit—and that’s where we’re headed, whether we like it or not—we need to hit the tipping point of collective awareness. It’s happening, and the seeds are being heavily planted. Those already there are making it rain.
The brain (actually, it’s our ego) tells us meditation isn’t for us. The ego’s sole purpose is to keep the self suppressed. But sooner or later, it will be time for your ego to let your true self play, to break the dam and let the river of energy flow freely.
Parking the mind in our head leaves the rest of the body like a neglected garden, overgrown with weeds. I see meditation as the body’s Weedwacker. It sharpens the mind, resets the being, and clears away the weeds that no longer serve you.