11-Natural Mind

Earlier in the blog I wrote: “There is a sense of self or existence underlying the ego that we were born with or formed as an infant shortly after birth before identity began to form. It is more of a feeling than a thought or belief. It is a sense. Maybe it's our sixth sense. It is a presence. A pre sense. It isn't identity – ego. A baby has will and volition just not to the extent that an older child has or an adult has that is controlled with thoughts. A baby's will is controlled by intent without the concept of I. A baby is naturally curious and uses its will to explore the world. Just the act of reaching for an object is an act of will. A baby's curiosity requires some sense of self and will. But that sense of self isn't in the form of I. It isn't in the form of identity. It is more in the form of a feeling or sense of being or existing with curiosity and volition of its own that is a natural inherent understanding. We still have that being or existing feeling and understanding that still has will and volition but it has been covered up with the ego.  We actually use it everyday and it is responsible for most of our semi-conscious daily actions. I call it our Natural Mind."

This other part of your mind is difficult to distinguish from identity. As soon as it is identified as “I,” the ego/identity has taken it over. The ego perceives and believes it as part of itself, but it has will and volition all on its own separate from identity. It is an underlying aspect of yourself that is distinct from identity and isn't necessarily controlled by identity, but it has been obscured by identity. All of the definitions, beliefs and perspectives of identity have been piled on top of it and have obscured it from the ego itself, but it hasn't really been obscured. Your awareness has just lost awareness of it. This is your natural mind that you were born with or developed shortly after birth. It is your will and volition without identity. It is your natural state of mind without identity that you've had since before identity developed. It is not your conscious awareness, but it is in line with it. Its focus is through conscious awareness without the added unnatural aspects and perceptions of the ego/identity. It is much more in tune with your true self. Natural mind can by pass the ego and does so many times all day long. In fact, it controls most of your actions with you barely being aware of it.  Natural mind is so natural and subtle we are hardly aware of it. Ego mind continuously keeps the focus of attention on itself at nearly every moment the natural mind is idle. We can take that focus of attention away from the self/identity by intentionally using our Natural Mind.

Ego mind is the actively thinking mind of the self/identity and is distinct from Natural Mind. It approaches thinking from the perspective of self.  All too often ego mind controls the rational reasoning mind and usually directs and controls it irrationally according to its own self serving interests. Natural mind can intentionally think with logic and practical reasoning and work to ignore the emotions, biased beliefs and skewed perspective of the ego.  Natural mind can control attention and direct it away from the self-serving perspective of the ego to the perspective of the present moment of awareness of what simply is and use the rational thinking mind from a logical and practical perspective.

Natural Mind is explained better with an everyday scenario. Here is an example of your natural mind in your daily activities: At work, natural mind might have you get up from your desk and chair and go get a drink of water because you realize you're thirsty. You may not even consciously think you are thirsty. You get up, walk to the water cooler, grab a cup, fill the cup and return to your desk without a thought about it. The whole time you're doing this, your ego mind might be thinking about how rude your boss is to you and how he doesn't appreciate you and your work – all thoughts about yourself. You got the cup of water in automatic mode. I call this auto mode because it is automatic without full conscious thought. Your identity wasn't engaged in your actions. You accomplished the task of walking to the water cooler and getting a cup of water without your ego/identity all the while your identity was tied up in thinking about itself. This happens all throughout your day and is so common you usually aren't even aware of it happening. Becoming aware of it and staying aware of it can be a very useful tool as you'll see later. It is called Mindfulness or being mindful.

After you got back to your desk, let's say you resumed composing an important letter that needed your full attention and concentration and you naturally stopped thinking about yourself and your boss. Now you're in what I call intentional mode or intent mode. You are purposely acting intentionally to write the letter and using your rational mind to do it. So what happened to the thoughts about you and your boss? They're gone! You aren't composing the letter with a sense of identity unless it is in some way personal. In this scenario it isn't. Then you hear your boss yell your name and all of a sudden you're flooded with thoughts like “what did I do wrong” or “what now.” You go talk to your boss and he's in a bad mood and takes it out on you. After he chides and belittles you, you go back to your desk and resume composing the letter but you can't concentrate on it. Your ego mind can't stop thinking about what a jerk your boss just was to you. You're emotionally upset, but you really need to get that letter out pronto. Your ego/identity is in control of your rational thinking mind at that point. That natural part of your mind that has will and volition of its own apart from your identity needs to take your focus off yourself and your boss and direct it back to the letter. This can be very hard because the ego has a lot of control especially when it comes to emotional thinking, but you're able to do it out of necessity and you finish the letter. That other part of your mind wrestled your attention away from your self and towards the letter. Your natural mind accomplished the task that needed to be done by over riding the ego mind. 
 

If you just think this is just a personal perspective of mine, read Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman which I highly recommend. After I became aware of these two modes in myself, Intent and Auto, I researched the concept and found this best selling book. Daniel Kahneman is considered by many to be the top psychologist in the world and is a nobel prize winner. Thinking Fast and Slow is all about auto mode and intent mode of thinking which he calls system 1 and system 2. Auto mode is the fast thinking and intent mode is slow thinking. Auto mode controls a lot of our actions and behavior throughout our day but isn't very reliable and deceives us and affects our behavior in ways that we are completely unaware of. It affects our decision making and how we solve problems. It's almost frightening to see how out of touch we are with ourselves and our behavior. Kahneman backs his conclusions with numerous experiments and studies. Couple auto mode with all the biased perceptions of the ego and it's a miracle we can function in modern society at all. Even though auto mode's purpose is to make functioning more efficient for the mind, it can lead to major mistakes in our modern day complex social and economic society.  Mindfulness can help us to prevent these mistakes.

Mindfulness of our actions in auto mode can reduce misperceptions and mistakes by being fully aware of the present moment and your actions in it. Using the cup of water example, mindfulness could prevent you from tripping over a cord while walking back to your desk and spilling your cup of water all over your boss that you so desperately want approval from. Being mindful requires you to consistently be in intent mode with the intent of your awareness being fully present in the current moment. This keeps you in your conscious awareness and allows your perception to be less influenced by the biases and beliefs of the ego that skew our perception of reality. It also brings awareness to the auto mode that also incorrectly influences your thinking and behavior. Intent mode is always in the present. It only uses the rational mind for an intentional purpose like solving a problem, critical thinking or to carry out actions in the present such as a sport activity. Mindfulness in intent mode is a by-pass around the ego and allows you to function with much greater awareness of what actually is and not what your ego thinks it is or believes it is. It is the closest you can get to having an open unbiased mind.

Your Natural mind can also instill a belief in the ego. That's how my ego can believe that it isn't what it identifies as. That's how to convince the ego to believe in something that doesn't serve it to believe and that is the primary solution to the ego conundrum. It is a way for you to get the ego to give up control and surrender. It is the way to stop identifying. But let me make something clear, natural mind doesn't do the believing. Natural mind is very practical. It's not capable of belief because it isn't an identity. A thought that is formed with your reasoning mind that is rational without all the ego biases can be turned into a belief of the ego. That belief can be based on logic and rationale without an emotional element or ego self biased perspective. It can be based on the good and well being of your entire self and others and not just on your identity. It does this with a detached perspective. The issue is that the ego identity needs to believe it.

We can use natural mind to direct our focus of attention away from ego self and stop all the incessant thinking and self-dialogue the ego does. Or it can simply observe the thoughts of the ego and its constant dialogue. This is a very good technique for taking the power away from the ego mind. It is a common meditation technique also.

You loose awareness of your ego self identity often throughout your day. Your Natural mind usually disregards your ego identity when your intent mode is engaged. When you are very focused on something or concentrating, your internal dialogue stops and you loose awareness of your self. You are no longer consciously aware of your ego/self/identity. This is essentially what happens during meditation and mindfulness. Intent mode bypasses the ego and does so frequently every day. When you watch a good engaging movie, you loose yourself in the movie. When you are concentrating to solve a math problem or puzzle, you lose awareness of yourself. When you play a musical instrument, you loose your identity. It's interesting that playing a musical instrument uses both your auto mode and intentional mode at the same time and it also engages creativity. This also happens while playing sports and is probably why playing them is so enjoyable to so many people. Play gets us out of ourselves and allows us to have fun and enjoyment. The ego is no fun but often takes credit for it. Laughing takes us out of ourselves as well. What's more fun and enjoyable than laughing? Any form of focused concentration makes you lose your awareness of your identity, but you still have will and volition. With these activities you generally don't use your beliefs or emotions – you use your experience, knowledge and awareness of the current situation and moment. It is imperative that your focus be in the present moment. You can't do any of these activities without first doing that. That is how we should approach all of life. We can't fully live without being in the moment. If we aren't in the present moment then we are somewhere else and that isn't life. That is keeping our awareness in the mind which isn't life.

I could go into a thousand ways to deal with the ego but why bother when all you have to do is turn control over to your natural mind. If you do that, all the solutions will come to you anyway because you'll have a greater awareness of what actually is and not what the ego believes and perceives due to its self-serving biases. From that perspective you'll see how limiting the beliefs of the ego are and how there are so many other possibilities.