What Is Mind?

Often misinterpreted and even more-so misunderstood, the mind is an activity which can be sub-categorized into four difference operating procedures:

Primitive Mind
Thinking Mind
Higher Mind
No-Mind

Primitive Mind. Our Primitive Mind is the lowest end of the operating spectrum and deals primarily with our body’s requirement for survival. It governs our intrinsic needs for sustaining and appropriately managing all things necessary for keeping the container of our consciousness alive.

Thinking Mind. Beyond Primitive Mind, Thinking Mind arises once our basic needs have been met and we can move onto higher processes of mind. One may even attribute this to our social evolution from hunter gatherers, in which our sole focus was set on obtaining food for the day, to more advanced agricultural societies, in which we "figured out" ways for both growing and storing food. Evolving past this through the passage of time, society naturally moved onto more industrial landscapes; becoming more well-managed and adept at technological advancement. However, though we'd like to think so, this is not quite the end spectrum of mind.

Higher Mind. What does one do when they are able to freely ponder more metaphysical properties and concepts? Think about the thing that is doing all the thinking. This is our Higher Mind at play. It is the mental process governing observation. Instead of attributing this observation to the likes of mere Thinking Mind, the Higher Mind serves as the overseer to the entire operation — to our entire lives. It is the mindfulness behind the Thinking Mind; the conduit of our control.

No-Mind. The highest mental process available to us, No-Mind is less-so an operating procedure and more-so an experience to be known. For, to know No-Mind is to know the true nature of reality. And what is that nature? That all is as it is and ever will be, before and after the “you” that was created by the very thing that first thought “I am”. It is a supernal knowing-state contrasted to a sentient feeling-state.

Though seemingly "esoteric" and convoluted, we run these different operating procedures throughout the myriad of our daily moments all the time — it is simply a matter of acknowledging and becoming aware of these procedures or not. Earnestly, it should be understood that no one procedure is any higher than the other, but that all procedures are equally required for this human experience to take place. Like a pyramid that is grandly erected, all parts are necessary. Denying a single component to the pyramid would negate it from being what it once was. 

So, rather than attributing to that which you believe to be good or bad, simply accept the fact that each of these components is a part of you; and that the only thing thinking that one is of greater or lesser importance is merely the thought that is there thinking it.

This is your mind — acknowledge it as you wish.