May 11 2010
Highway to Hell, Fun Ride to La-la-land, and Walking Path to Balance. When my negative, positive, and neutral minds are working properly, the world around me seems a little bit at ease- I am centered, enjoying, and confident. But somehow when I go out of balance, some time of my life afterwards becomes down fall in many aspects, and I need to recollect my life and re-correct my acts accordingly. In many cases when my life go out of balance, my negative, positive, and neutral minds seem not working together properly. This article revolves around my experience with the idea of negative, positive, and neutral minds applied to everyday life, and I do not claim that these are the only elements that maintain the balance in everyday life. However, I find the idea of negative, positive, and neutral minds to be helpful organizing my fast falling state of mind.
Negative mind, a.k.a. protective mind, first of all, is not negative at all to have. We need a healthy negative mind to detect danger in actions and situations that we engage in. Negative mind works as analytical system so during or after an action is taken, we are not over loaded with unnecessary process of recoveries or recompenses. Another proper attribute of negative mind is to make us obedient to our own inner guidance. Our answers to improve life sometimes are in unexpected place-within ourselves. Our resistance to inner guidance causes a great deal, in contrast, healthy negative mind can lead us to take an action to realize what we really want to do and who we really want to be.
Positive mind, a.k.a. expansive mind, affirms the situations. It sees the benefits of the situation and tells us to go for it. With healthy positive mind, you are open to opportunities and you know when to take it. Your projection of presence is strong but you can remain humble at the same time. You have conscious and effective communications with others. With healthy positive mind, you also become optimistic.
Neutral mind, a.k.a. meditative mind, processes both negative and positive minds' input. It sees the bigger picture of all situations and allows us to be intuitive. Neutral mind connects us to deep in our soul, and let us operate with compassion.
All minds on strike. In this situation, almost nothing works and it blows. Time to time, I experience this and be reminded to keep up with what my inner guidance tells me. To tell you a conclusion, in my case, practicing kundalini yoga and meditation is a big part of what my inner guidance says. In the situation all my minds do not work properly, unhealthy side of those three minds become dominant.
Highway to hell and fun ride to la-la-land. When my balance in life is tipped, the first thing it goes is my discipline, namely my daily practice of yoga, meditation, and so on. This is a sign of unhealthy negative mind that detracts me from containment. Then, my focus is lost and I do things I should not do- I will not divulge my occasional (but less frequently occurring) and embarrassing eating and sleeping disorders. It is clearly a case of dysfunctional negative mind- not seeing danger in a situation. But it is also a case of malfunction of positive mind- my judgement is way off based in reality that I think it is a good idea to, for example, devour an entire pizza at 11pm and then somehow try to either do yoga or meditate until 5am!! As a result of overindulgence, I feel I have no more energy, guilty of no discipline, and hence, get trapped in the emotions that are all about myself. The danger to that is, obviously, while it is happening, it is fun but then I will have to pay the price. Paying that price is not fun at all. Moreover, while I am paying the price of my own silliness, it is also pretty hard for me to have compassion towards others.
Walking Path to Balance. But really, no one has to go there. In this fast pace and over stressed society, what we can truly count on is our own intuitions. That is why we need to relax, meditate, practice yoga, or do something that is beneficial to ourselves even just a little bit everyday. When we are steady with our own daily practice, we will develop meditative mind, a.k.a. neutral mind. With that mind, we will have intuition and honest relationship with our own bodies. In many cases, our bodies tell us or at least try to communicate with our minds what to do or not to do. However, our minds are so stubborn we override those subtle signals with our minds' uncooperative desires or resistance.
I believe that we are free in this world. More specifically, we have freedom over our own actions. When we have that freedom, it seems logical that we choose the most efficient way to get from point A to point B. But that does not seem like a very human way. Maybe that is why we repeat the similar mistakes again and again sometimes. If we are able to stay in the state of bliss no matter what we choose to do, that does not sound like a very human way either. For now, I try to go the middle way. Keeping up with what I think it works to maintain my neutral mind and take a step at a time.
(KRI suggests in order to balance negative mind, value your discipline, develop conscious relationships of integrity. To balance positive mind, strengthen the navel point, increase your self-esteem, and use positive affirmations. To balance neutral mind, meditate.)
