The Original Mind
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Regardless of the narrowing of imagination and loss of the immediate sense of spirit that characterize modern life, we still have an old knowing mind within us. Not the “old brain” that contemporary science studies but the ancient mind, untouched by the passage of time—the intuitive and instinctive mind that knows both basic survival and greater awareness. It is the deep mind, with its narrative intelligence and mother wit, the creative force sewn inside each person born that makes life and beauty and love possible. It is the old story-mind that knows how things can turn around in the last minute and how the last can become first in the back and forth between time and eternity.
Whatever survives the ravages of time and the threats of extinction involves the old mind within and the ancient inheritance of humankind. The old and original mind has a primordial sense of survival that permeates all of history without believing in any of it. The old mind is the poetic core that is naturally abundant with ideas and images, that which remains eternally threaded to the animistic, altruistic, ever-abundant source of life. Each person feels weary of life and more tired of the world when distant from the vital wellspring and fecund mud of the old mind within us. It is the original mind that returns things to their origins and keeps finding original ways to survive the disasters of life and learn anew. Any originality we might manifest arises from the roots of this original self and old soul that was seeded within us to begin with.
The old mind carries messages between the brain and the heart, allowing thought and feeling to meet. It is the ancient lord and inner sage hidden in the deeper self, trying to awaken and release the inner dream of one’s life. Mind comes from old roots meaning “loving memory;” it is related to the Sanskrit root munih, which also gives us sage and seer, and the Greek mantis, which indicates “one who divines.” The unfettered mind is naturally in touch with ancient memories and deep roots of imagination that touch the divine in us and in the world around us. The old mind can divine things that are necessary for the world to survive and for nature to revive.
With the old mind we perceive the world around us in ways that are pre-systematic thus more immediate and revealing. Being both ancient and immediate at the same time, the old mind is the “inner indigenous self ” that instinctively connects us to the elemental forces of the earth and to the organic energies of our bodies. It is what connects each person to the dream of life as well as the pulse of nature. The old philosophers knew it when they carved “Know thyself ” at the entrance of caves and places of oracle. The point of all oracles and most attempts to divine the secrets of life is to come to a deeper knowledge of one’s true self, and that self is already an old and knowing soul. The deeper, instinctive, and intuitive self is wise about who we already are at the core of our lives and knowing about the purpose and aim of our soul.