We have two minds

We have two minds.

When we think about thinking most of us think about our brains. The human brain is an incredible organ which has developed over the last 40 million years to help us survive. 

We are clearly weaker, slower, smaller, less agile than so many potential competitors in the natural world – but our evolving brain gave us the ability to learn from our mistakes and plan ahead in a way that more than compensated for our weaknesses. The ability to re-examine our mistakes and learn from them – and then share that information with others – is a crucial survival skill.

But so is our ability to think ahead and plan responses to what may lurk around the corner. These days we rarely expect a lion or rival tribe to be lying in wait – but our brain uses the same planning to look for and defeat business rivals, sporting rivals, rivals on the road, and rivals in love.

So what does that look like? When we have any conflict about just about anything we rerun the movie of that event hundreds of times. What should I have done? What should I have said?

Then we create scenarios for next time. What will I do? What will I say? How will I come out on top?

Many of us call this survival skill “worry”.

One thing we must keep in mind is that what happened in the past does not exist. It is past. Gone. Our plans for the future do not exist either. They will never come to pass as we see them in our minds. They are fantasies we create to prepare us to avoid or control some future threat.

Our brains are entirely obsessed with our survival. When we lived in caves, that was a determining factor in our survival. After 40 million years there is not much we can do about that. It is hard-wired into us.

We talk about “disciplined” minds, but they are minds that are able to tune out the movie of the past and future for brief periods to use our minds in a more abstract way (although still, I think, in the past or future). But the most disciplined minds on the planet are still human, and are still conditioned by successful survival over 40 million years.

Every mind is made up of cells building memories by passing tiny electrical or chemical signals to another cell through structures called synapses, and these impulses are constantly flitting into our personal past to play little survival videos – or projecting into our personal futures to plan the most effective ways to avoid attack (or to counter-attack). That is who we are – or what we have evolved into.

At the beginning of this post I suggested that we have two minds. Our brain-based evolutionary mind is obsessed with the past and the future. There is another mind that does not care about that – a mind that sees only now.

Where does this mind live? I have no idea. Throughout history people have felt this mind somewhere deep inside us. Our heart is deep inside us – so we often find it linked (presumably metaphorically) with our hearts. The ancient Egyptians for instance mummified the bodies of their important dead so they could live again. As part of the process they sucked out their brains as unnecessary.

When we say “I am …” we are often referring to this mind. I am happy. I am connected. I am creative. This mind deals with who we are and what we are. It deals with the most important things in our lives: our identity, our loves, our passions, our very being. This is the mind that prays. This is where faith, hope, and love live.

It is my belief that this is the immortal part of us. 5000 years ago the Egyptians knew the survival mind in our brains is not immortal.

Where our “survival mind” is frantic and obsessed and out of control – this deeper mind is quiet, sure and at peace. It does not clamour for our attention. It does not compete with our survival mind. The survival mind knows nothing except competition: it evolved winning, defeating threats, eliminating rivals.

For many of us, it is so dominating that we rarely even have the chance to glimpse our deeper minds. And because our survivor mind is so obsessed with destroying rivals, it is possible to think of it deliberately distracting us from knowledge of our deeper mind, maybe because our hearts are not focused on survival.

So, again, what does all this look like? If you would like to observe the two minds in action, try this.

Sit quietly in a comfortable position at a time and place you are unlikely to be distracted – the exercise is about internal distractions so we don’t want external distractions.

For two minutes focus on your breathing. Try to breathe through your nose but that is not essential. For just two minutes concentrate on the moment by moment awareness of cool air going in, warm air going out. When other thoughts intrude, note them, but gently push them away and focus on your breathing. Just for two minutes – shouldn't be hard. Should it?

Try it now.

What you experienced was your deep/heart mind living in the moment-by-moment now of each breath. 

And that mind observed the survival/electric/brain mind, out of your control, trying to run scenarios of the past and future. 

How many times did your survival mind interrupt in two minutes? You were able to push it away for a few moments to return to breathing, but you could not control it, because it returned.

I don’t think you will ever be able to control it – but if you are aware of it and get better at pushing it away, you will at least get some control of your mind and some sanity and peace and hope. 

Some people do that exercise every day. Some people do it for ten minutes, others for thirty. There are deeply spiritual people who spend much longer. 

I think it is important for all of us if we want any control in our lives, if we really want a better world (imagine a world with more peace!) – and even more important if we want personal spiritual growth.