p.150

The Mental Diverse is Composed of Many Minds

The Human brain is a Diverse of perceptions, it is one mind that is divided up into a number of sub-minds. Here are notes on a brief list of these separate compartments of behavior:

-The Creative Mind is the mind that imagines and innovates. It houses a vast range of skills and perceptions that in many ways are opposite to the behaviors of the so-called Rational Mind. The Creative Mind not only works with the Logical Mind, it also works in concert with a number of other minds housed in our brain.

-The Logical or Rational Mind is, of course, a well known sub-mind in our psyche. It is the one stressed by education systems, job and career, and culture in general. This mind dominates because its perceptions lend themselves to institutions of power and control. And there is great tendency for this mind to think it is the only true mind.

-The subconscious or ‘Cryptego’, this is the mind of dreams, voices, intuitions and signs, it sends you messages from deep within you about needs and emotions. The Cryptego offers direction and commentary to other minds.

-The Mind of Memory is highly important, a creative person must have a good memory to house a huge inventory of ideas, techniques and information to draw upon. The school system trains us in objective memory, the memory of facts and ideas. This kind of memory is free of emotion, sensation, morality. It serves more science and logic than that of creativity, a creative person’s use of memory would be a distinct specialized skill.

In addition, there is another kind of memory, Subjective Memory. This is a memory that has emotion within it, it has sensation; it has morality and principles manifested within it. Subjective Memory stresses relationship, also it tends to be more complex and whole, as it may address a number of themes. A Subjective Memory comes from an experience, but it does not objectively reflect that experience. It deals with your interior perceptions not the external of the empirical or logical. Further, you put things into that memory -- interpretations you add during the experience or later when recalling the experience.

The problem with objective memory is that it cannot give us any grounding; subjective memory gives you an emotional foundation. When you experience a subjective memory, you are perceiving a cluster of senses, emotions, symbols, meanings, Human connections, ethics and so on. A subjective memory gives you something to build upon; it gives you emotional strength, confidence, identity and much more.

-The emotions themselves are highly important to you. Emotions are your drivers. They give us value, tone, attachment, detachment, direction, energy, drive and response. Emotions provide energy to all of our activities, without emotions we would be flaccid and static. The realm of Human emotions is vast, it is an entire universe. They are very complex and in a state of constant flux. Learning one’s “laws of emotions” is a central task for any Human being, and may take many years to master, if mastery is actually possible.

Note that emotions work with all other minds. The Creative Mind needs its emotional drivers to work. The Logical Mind uses a narrower range of emotions for its work; it generally is suspicious of emotions. Subjective memory as said above has emotions as a central component. The Mind of Doing evokes emotions as needed to get its job done. Wisdom disconnects from emotions but it is aware of emotions and transforms them into principles and goals and attitudes.

-The Mind of Doing or the ‘Abrupt Mind’ is used during many types of activity; this is the mind that does not watch itself; it is non-conscious, this mind acts without introspection. It creates and thinks but it does so for the purpose of immediate action.

-The Mind of Wisdom in our pre-frontal cortex disconnects and rises above the activities and drives of the other minds. It sees the whole picture in a disconnected manner. It makes decisions about the orchestrating of the various minds together. The Wisdom Mind is a mind of perception. This mind understands all the other minds; it understands logic, creativity, the subconscious, emotions, memory, doing and so on. It transforms these comprehensions into principles and rules and goals and attitudes.

Something to understand about all of our minds is this. They are all temporary and partial perceptions. We travel through them all in the course of a day or weeks or months (depending on the individual and conditions). Each mind is a “Moment”.

The Wisdom Mind is a moment like all the other minds, so for a short period we may be wise and see things, then the moment passes and we are back into particular behaviors of logic, imagination, the subconscious etc. Unfortunately, no mind can predominate and be in control in any long term or permanent sense. This is the nature of the cosmos and Mother Nature, and the nature of our own physiology.

So the skill is to develop the Wisdom Mind enough so that it is ever present in the background commenting and trying to guide you while you are immersed in another behavior. This can be difficult but the method can be developed with work. This creates a little tension, but without this tension, one will live in one-sided worlds and not be able to finish a creative product or intellectual project.

-We can say that the Wisdom Mind has a component -- a Mind of Management or steering. We may actually make the Wisdom Manager a separate entity, as it seems to have more in common with the Mind of Doing above. The Wisdom Mind of Doing is focused on steering or guiding all other minds, while the Abrupt Mind is focused on immediate action and using all the other mental departments to serve this flow of activity. One mind is concerned with internal issues, the other with external issues.

-Another mind might be called the “Moral Mind” or Conscience; this is your ethical center. This mind evaluates your behavior and your works according to moral content and social impact. This mind is turned off in many people.

-The mind that sees connections, commonality, unity and combinations is your Subsume Mind. We have a mind within us that perceives wholes. This mind is not the Logical Mind; this mind has been suppressed and unhappy. This unhappy mind merges and submerges, confuses and fuses, links and locks. This is its nature. It subsumes all things.

This Subsume Mind fights with the everyday mind of the discrete, distinct, separate and divergent. This type of rational perception breaks up the outer and inner world. It separates things and analyzes things independently, and gains knowledge about an entity. The problem is that this personality only knows phenomena as parts and elements but not as combinations or systems.

On the other hand, the Subsume Mind rushes to put all together. Its personality is the opposite of the discrete mind. The Subsume Mind stresses the connections, the oneness, the whole, the unity. All tends to merge in its perceptions, actions and emotions.

Logic opposes this mind because it finds that these behaviors are somewhat mystical or supernatural or intuitive. Logic says that this mind sees ghosts in machines, sees supernatural spirits here and there, sees a whole when there is really only a collection and so on. But this rational discrete mind perceives only one half of existence. While the Subsume Mind sees the other half of it. This is its job. The Subsume Mind has been suppressed in our time.

-We may postulate an “Identity Mind”. This sub-mind seeks your self identity, it knows who you are. It objects to any actions that undermine self identity. In the current age, this mind would protect you from manipulation by consumerism, politics and entertainment.

-Lastly, your Spiritual Mind is highly important. It helps you transcend yourself; it pushes you to develop along new lines. When we feel a vacuum or need, the spiritual mind says fill it. When we solve our problem, we feel joy and satisfaction, we feel grounded, we feel connected. We enter a transcendent state of emotion and knowledge.

So far we have at least 12 minds here, or sub-minds in our mental Diverse. There are more. And note this not necessarily a neurological framework on the brain, it is more of a user’s point of view from experience. All of these minds we have access to. Some of these are certainly neurological places, other minds represent combinations of functions.

A normal usage of these persona would allow us to flow from state to state, from moment to moment. When people get stuck in one mind, a sort of fixation develops – for example, being at the mercy of emotions and not being able to manage them. The Mind of Wisdom can even become a static conduct, and this state will produce its own misbehaviors of alienation, disconnection, lack of drive and apathy. So we can even say surprisingly enough that wisdom itself has a downside.

Psychological health is in the motion between the various perceptions. Naturally, individuals will have biases but health would demand traveling to differing personalities. These minds are moments just like moods and emotions.

A Complex Consciousness

The contradiction between all of the various viewpoints and behaviors leads us to take up a dual or even a more complex consciousness, that is, we may be in a general state of creativity, but in the background we will need a secondary person who is commenting, warning, suggesting and critiquing from the logical or scientific direction. This would also apply to emotions, for example, when grief must dominate for a period, still we have access to the analysis of reason or the mind of doing so that we can get through issues thrown at us by the funeral of a loved one. So each mind acts as a kind of “conscience” to the others.

But we do want to immerse as deeply as we can in each mind when we are there, otherwise we do not get the full benefits of their powers in reason or creativity or wisdom. The trick is to come back, to not get lost, addicted and extreme in the dynamics of one single mind. It can be done through experience, we develop a limiter or watcher or lifeguard that lets us swim out so far, then it calls us back. The problem is then either too much self consciousness or not enough, life teaches us the balance point.

When we decide or perhaps we are compelled to travel out of one psyche into another, we will pass through a brief period where the two psyches might be equal in sway. In this transitory moment you might get very confused as to which perspective is primary, this is natural. Time will tell the direction of your development; patience and a resignation to the temporary confusion will help.

The key is to understand all is moments, all is a process. There is no fixed position, no mind that sees it all. You are moving, you have contradiction, you are a Diverse, there is no way out of it.

About Etheria

Etheria is the idea of the Logical Mind dominating all other minds; it is the focus on the ethereal and abstract realm of ideas. It is believed by the over-culture that clarity and power comes from the Rational Mind, that suppression of all other minds is necessary. The education system does its best to keep down the minds of creativity, doing, emotions, the subconscious, morality etc. It cultivates the lifelong habit of ignoring all other minds and perceptions.

The problem we know is that the Logical Mind without the help of other minds in the psyche house falls into many errors, and disasters occur on many levels – personal life and social life.

One needs a “quorum” in the psyche to hold a meeting and solve a problem. Unfortunately, some individuals cannot form a quorum to hold a discussion in their brains, but they continue anyway with their one-sided meeting of monologue. The result is catastrophe.

Breaking with etheria is very important. At this stage in our mental history we need a kind of “neurological united front against reason”. This frees creativity, emotion and much more. We are seeking a “federal republic of cognition”, and putting reason in its own separate province.

The Downside of Minds

We should now consider the Weaknesses of various minds. Each has a positive side and a negative side:

-The Creative Mind can certainly become negative, for example, randomness can expand to such a universal behavior that you may forget to pay your bills or keep appointments. So each individual has to find the right mix and balance of minds that works for herself or himself. Some may tolerate a certain amount of conflict caused by sphere mind behavior in certain areas, some may not.

-The weaknesses of the Logical-Rational Mind are well known so we do not have to discuss this.

-Emotions clearly can get the best of us if we do not manage them correctly. Emotions are a vast universe, so we must learn their laws.

-The Abrupt Mind or the Mind of Doing if overstressed can lead to ignorance, if we stay in this state perpetually we are not studying and analyzing, thus not increasing our knowledge base which can then be put at the service of our spontaneous mind. The same can be said about avoiding states of focused creativity and creative work.

-The Wisdom Mind is a powerful personality but its weaknesses are its strengths. Its very disconnection can lead to a kind of apathy and despair, the wisdom perspective has no emotion and thus has no drive or passion, it has a tendency to just sit, observe and then ignore. In its worst behaviors it may justify its inaction by saying nothing can be done, so leave things as they are. Another problem of the wisdom mind is that it sees the limitations of other minds and thus begins to go too far in limiting creativity or logic or emotion. It can become very critical and shut down the other minds. This then leads to an emptiness inside and stillness, but eventually this lack of activity causes severe anxiety and stress as the suppressed minds begin to suffer and demand work.

-The Manager Mind is the persona that tries to run the whole complex show, it is related to the wisdom perceiver but its task is organization, morale and will, orchestration, strategy and tactics. The problem with the Manager Mind is that it will begin to substitute its plan for the interests of all the other minds; it will become undemocratic and ignore the diverse inputs. Dissatisfaction and rebellion will result. The Manager that is not a democrat will be overthrown or at least get no cooperation. At the same time, the manager mind is like all the other minds in that it is only a momentary mind. Its reign comes and goes. So for example, the Manager will develop a plan to begin a creative project using the Logical and Creative Minds. Once you step into creative behavior and if you are serious and focused, then the manager mind has to retreat to the background. If it continues to dominate the foreground then no creativity will happen. This necessity of going into the background can be of two types. In one case, the Manager Mind is clearly present, you are aware of its presence. In the second case, this mind seems to absent but it is not really gone, for once you go too far out to sea, like a lifeguard, it reappears and calls you back. In this situation you have let go and are fully immersed in the creative process...at least as far as you can safely go...at least at that particular stage in your development.

About the weaknesses of other minds: The Subsume Mind can stubbornly prevent us from parsing and seeing details. The Identity Mind can hold up the show with its issues, as can Moral Mind. So each mind has an upside and a downside, there is no easy formula for mental management.

This article is just an initial set of notes on issues pertaining to managing a mental diverse. Future articles will discuss such topics as:

-Meditation and other Negation techniques which break us out of the trance of a specific sub-mind.

-Improvisation in art, in general behavior, and improvisation as a general technique of managing many sub-minds.

-Issues and principles in mental coordination

Cage Innoye

Axxiad News