The evolving mind is a work-in-progress. But who is actually doing the work? The intelligence behind the mind is consciousness itself; it is the sentient observer expressing itself through human form. This article takes a quick look at the organic mind and in particular, the fictitious thought-form known as the ego.
Consciousness is our true identity and it is the manifesting expression of what religious and spiritual traditions have described as our soul or indwelling spirit. It is love assuming physical form through us as it creates and recreates our experience of reality.
The evolving mind is a work-in-progress. But who is doing the work? The working intelligence behind the mind is consciousness itself, the sentient observer recreating itself through form. Consciousness is our true identity and it is the manifesting expression of what we call spirit and soul. It is love taking physical form.
Despite what many creationists believe, we did not wake up suddenly from the primordial soup with a fully evolved mind at our disposal. The mind has been a work in progress. Over the course of millions of years, the mind has evolved in both function and complexity as it has become less primitive and more modern.
The Primitive Mind: The Reptilian Limbic Software
The primitive mind doesn’t really think; it responds. The main purpose of the primitive mind is to keep the being surviving and reproducing. In support of this directive, it tends to interpret every new event or situation as a potential threat.
The primitive mind is like a basic computer operating system. It is programmed for three possible outcomes: attack, retreat, or surrender. The overriding goal is to keep the being moving. Like the Energizer Bunny, it just keeps going and going…
The Modern Mind: The Neocortex Update
The new mind takes the Energizer Bunny to a whole new level. The modern mind has advanced functions such as logic and abstract reasoning. It is also equipped with imagination, artistic expression, and emotion. Perhaps most important, it has its own rewrite function, which means the new mind can override (overwrite) the old mind’s programming.
The exciting news is that the updated software—call it Human Mind Version 3.0—elevates the being to a whole new level, but as you probably suspect, some of the bugs still need to be worked out.
The mind still has some problems. Chief among them is its inability to update the old instructions. When this happens, the old program just keeps looping back to the old directive: survival and reproduction of the being. What you experience inside your head is the internal chatter: thoughts repeating themselves over and over again.
“Wait a second,” you might say. “This is ridiculous; you’re oversimplifying the workings of the human mind by comparing it to a computer! The mind is not a machine! It is a neural network of unknowable complexity!”
No one will deny that the human mind has evolved into a marvelous instrument of neural circuitry, but it is still wired like a machine. The average adult mind contains roughly a trillion neurons. To give you an idea of just how densely wired we are, if the neurons contained in just one adult mind were linked side by side, they would stretch from Los Angeles to New York. That’s a lot of noodles!
Perhaps even more amazing is that while the mind contains nearly a trillion individual neurons, no neuron is ever more than a few steps away from communication with any other neuron. The mind is still in the process of pulling itself together, so to speak—continuously integrating into a more complete and unified whole.
While some within the scientific community believe the mind has reached its maximum capacity, the concept of neural integration seems to strongly suggest otherwise.
In the early days of neuroscience, it was believed that the right and left hemispheres of the brain functioned relatively independently. Neuroscientists now know that both hemispheres self integrate, rewire, and share both information and function.
You could say the mind seems to mimic the distributive processing found in today’s most advanced computers—or, on the other hand, it is possible that the computers of today are being designed to mimic the human mind. Either way, the advanced technology of today’s computers seems to have an uncanny similarity to the mind.
The Trouble With Ego
It is always easy to tell when our consciousness is identifying with the ego. It is the part of us that is always comparing itself to others. It needs to be more than others, do more than others, and have more than others. It implements this need by looking for new ways to dominate situations and people. The ego takes the old program of survival and reproduction very seriously.
The ego is threatened by new situations. While the ego knows it needs others, it also fears others. This presents quite a dilemma. To need what you also fear is to view all relationships as potentially hostile. Therefore, the ego is always on high alert. It begins to argue with the mind. The mind says to the ego, “What’s the problem now?” The ego responds, “What’s the problem? Are you kidding? What’s not the problem? It’s dangerous out there!”
The internal chaos can make it feel as if we are hosting a miniature debate team between our ears. For too many of us, this happens for most of the waking day. The problem is that when spirit consciousness inadvertently places its attention on the ego, it becomes a prisoner of the same thoughts and fears. Spirit experiences itself as the ego—the “other” within the self. The illusion of being divided from itself is born.
The Ultimate Troublemaker
The ego becomes obsessed with survival and does everything it can to avoid looking weak or foolish, since it knows from a dark, long ago past that the weak and foolish are easy prey. The ego will not let go of the old operating system or its primary directive. It remains stuck in an old paradigm and threatened by the outside world, so it compensates through domination and cunning. It knows it must appear confident and powerful in order to survive.
When the ego starts to dominate the being, it grows arrogant, narcissistic, and self important. Yet deep inside, the mind knows the truth behind the ego.
The mind has not forgotten that the ego is just a temporary player waiting to be relieved of its authority. While the ego may be the ultimate troublemaker, we must never forget its original purpose for existence: to keep the being going until the mind can find its true identity: the true giver of its instructions.
When we argue with ourselves, we are engaging in a mad interplay between the mind and its ego. Spirit is neither the mind nor the ego; spirit is the sentient witness. Yet when spirit places its attention on the mind and ego, it experiences the conflict as if it were its own. Spirit therefore falls into the illusion-of-separation and experiences reality as hopelessly dualistic.
Unfortunately, the demands of the ego often shape the mind’s abilities to process information and to reason. If something does not please, enhance, or satisfy the ego, it is often discarded as unnecessary, even if it offers something of value to other people. Other people are always considered to be in competition with the ego. Consequently, logic and reason are dedicated not to what is true or right, but to whether or not the interests and motives of the ego are served.
The pursuit of truth and justice is a priority of the spirit, not the ego. The spirit understands the utility and purpose of serving the totality of the human family, rather than serving only itself. When the spirit begins to take charge, the being is less inclined to separate his or her needs from the needs of others.
The mind, dominated by the ego, is like a rat running on a wheel; it always seems to be going somewhere, but it never quite arrives. Thankfully, the more the mind evolves, the weaker the ego becomes and the less influence the ego has over the being.
As spirit consciousness emerges through the physicality of mind, it confronts the chaos between mind and ego. Spirit is still learning how to work within the conflicted being. Among the lessons for spirit to learn is willpower. This is where many of us are right now in the evolution of our consciousness.
Many of us still believe we are our ego, and it often feels as if a war were going on both outside and inside of us. This is because there is a war going on. The mind, with the spirit’s help, is trying to take back from the ego what the mind has given it: a temporary identity as the being.
This requires us to awaken to spirit as the essential being of the triad. Awakening is the spirit’s ascension over mind and body. Spirit is the true captain of the ship.
When spirit reaches its rightful position within the triad, it can finally be left to do what spirit does best—give the being wisdom and virtue and, most important, give the human a chance to dance with the stars.
From the book Henry’s Puzzle – Awakening to Infinity (2011) All Rights Reserved.
