What is The Mind?


The following is excerpted from the Introduction to:  A Course Of Love

“What is learned by the mind only rearranges reality.  The mind then holds to the new reality as a new set of rules without change.  It sees reality through these new mental constructs and calls this way of seeing new.  In order to support its new reality it must insist that others follow these new rules.  Truth, it says, has been found, and it is “here” in these new rules and not in those of old.  The mind will then tell you how to feel according to its rules and will resist all ways of feeling, all ways of being, that appear to run counter to these rules, as if it knows, because of these rules, how things are.

The mind will speak of love and yet hold the heart prisoner to its new rules, new laws, and still say  “this is right” and “this is wrong.”  It will speak of love and not see its intolerance or judgement.  It will speak of love to be helpful and with all sincerity, and yet the very logic that it uses, though new, wounds the heart of the most tender, of those most called to love and its sweetness.  “I am wrong to feel the way I do”  the tender-hearted says to herself and, convinced that another knows what she does not, covers-over her tenderness with protection.

You think that in order to share you must be able to speak the same language and so you regress to language of the mind with its precision.  The mind so hates to be confused, to be open, to remain open and to not know.  It desires anchors to hold it in one spot and held there suffers the pounding of the sea of change, resists the current, fortifies itself against the storm.  The mind will return always to where it feels safe and sure of itself and so it goes nowhere and sees not transformation, or creation, or the new horizon that would defy its reality.

The mind cannot hold open the doors of the heart and yet we turn within, turn to the mind, and show it where its openness lies, where sweetness abides, where love’s knowing is found.  All the mind can do is rearrange reality and hold it still and captive and rule bound.  The laws of love are not laws such as these.  The laws of love  are not rules, facts, or right answers.  The laws of love bring spiritual freedom, the freedom that lies beyond belief, beyond thought, beyond adherence to any authority other than one’s own heart.”


Copyright © 2014 by The Center for A Course of Love, a non-profit corporation.

Published by:

Take Heart Publications

12402 Bitney Springs Road

Nevada City, California 95959

First Printing, July 2014

 

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