Beloved Students:

I greet you in the glory of the season that is now dawning. For many of you, it is Autumn; for others of you, it is Spring. May you enjoy fully the blessings the season offers you, and may you find your place within it an opportunity for continued growth, deep realization and a journey into unfathomable compassion.

What are you noticing in the events occurring in the world around you at this time? Are you able to observe the power of the illusions that decorate the halls of collective experiencing that open before you? If you could give a name to the “theme” of this particular time, what would it be? Does it seem to you as if something has gone awry in the natural system of balance in the world? How does your mind move with the events of the day?

For our lesson this month, I would like you to consider the nature of mind — your mind, to be specific. While each of you may feel attached to what you have designated “your mind,” it may be appropriate to reconsider the entire matter. Have you ever struggled in attempting to define “mind?” Try to explain the notion to a youngster who has not yet reached the sophistication of dealing with concepts that cannot be concretely defined and you will find yourself talking in circles, perhaps even tripping over your own words. As adults, most of you think you actually know what the word means, even if you cannot readily define it. What might such say about the very notion we are trying to define?

One of the things such might say is that mind, like many other highly significant aspects of being human, is a mystery. Some tend to confuse “mind” with “brain,” or perhaps think that the mind is in the brain. Yet in truth, this notion cannot be scientifically substantiated nor even observed. It is merely a notion, albeit a very popular one. Do you remember when you were a child, and first experienced a voice coming to you over the radio? Perhaps you even thought the voices came from tiny people in the radio. Or, as a child, did you ever try to step into the TV, thinking you could join the people in that little box with the window? As you grew in sophistication, you learned that the voices were not in the radio (or TV), but were being broadcast to you by energetic waves that, though unseen and unheard, were actually moving through the air to the receiver set in you home or car.

Your brain, through the senses, works in a similar fashion as that receiver set. It receives light signals, sound signals, smell and taste signals, as well as felt impressions through your skin. The brain's task is to receive signals and put them all together in the process you call perception. This process is what you use to make sense of the world around you, and it is this making sense process that you refer to as “mind.” Of course, there are other activities or events you know as “mind” which facilitate your creativity, your intuition, and your special skills and talents. Even so, none of these functions of mind really explains what mind is.

“Where,” you might ask yourself, “do my dreams occur?” Well, you could rightly answer yourself that they take place in your mind. But where is that? If you think it is in your brain, we must further inquire as to your direct experience of dreams. Surely, when you are having the dream, it does not appear (nor feel) you are merely “in your brain.” In fact, most dreams give you a sense of limitless time and space. You might find yourself in a galaxy far away in one dream, and you might find yourself experiencing simultaneously as child and adult in another dream.

What does your direct experience of the dream tell you about the “where” of the dream? Perhaps you dream of a place you have never seen, only to later visit that place and be amazed at the accuracy of your dream perception. How did that happen? Did you perhaps leave your body (and your brain) and go to visit this place? What is the part of you that is able to do this? While you may know (or think you know) where your body is, do you really know where your mind is?

If you think about it for a moment, you can readily observe that the mind moves. Thus, we must conclude that it is not residing at some fixed point (as in the brain), but is rather a fluid, energetic part of you that extends beyond your body space, possibly even extending backward and forward in time. Perhaps you can even postulate the likelihood that your mind is not even connected to your body, other than by your own designation.

If you follow these creative lines of discovery, you will likely come to recognize that mind is an energetic field that is aware. What is actually going on when you happen to think of a friend or a relative, and shortly thereafter, he or she calls you on the telephone? Simply stated, your field of awareness, in its movement about, intercepted her or his moving field of awareness. Likely, these two fields experienced a type of recognition for each other that in some way tweaked both your conscious mind and that of the other. From that perhaps unrecognized stimulus, one was moved to connect with the other in a more direct, conscious way. When you pray for someone, or for some reason concentrate strongly on another, what are you actually doing? You are extending the flow, or movement, of your mind toward them. Most people do this all the time, without even thinking about what is actually happening.

Within this marvelous field of aware energy you call “mind,” there are smaller pools of awareness that might be termed “expectational fields.” These smaller fields are myriad, and are creative in nature. They are “programmed” by your past experiences, and are highly significant in generating the notions, both cognitive and emotional, you experience (mostly without questioning) about yourself and the world around you. As you might be suspecting by now, these expectational fields are, in large part, the forces behind the movements of mind that you experience all the time, and are directly the result of your karma. In fact, they are responsible for the ample duplication of your karmic perceptions and experiences.

Please recall that we began this lesson with a number of questions that addressed the events in the world around you, as well as your perceptions of such. This lesson has not been just another delightful tangent arising from the initial questions. Hopefully, you are beginning to recognize that under all the chaos and confusion in the world lies the creative musings of mind in movement. This is significant to you if you are serious about stopping your internal tyranny and suffering. The first large step is in beginning to track the movements of your mind (or that which you call “your mind”) and become fully conscious of the energetic fields into which you extend your field of awareness. Indeed, the field of awareness you extend is part of you, and can be impressed, even warped, by the field into which you extend yourself.

For example, you might not take your body into a brothel, but do you extend your field of awareness into one? You may not take your body into the back alleys of human degradation, but do you take your mind there? Or, you might not let your body speak words of sharp criticism to another, but do you let your mind wander into such muck? You may not allow your body to steal from a friend or family member, but does your mind become a covetous thief of what is theirs? While you may not steal their physical possessions, does your mind try to steal their joy? Where is your mind, and what is that energetic field generating? Is it stirring up more repetitions of your old, bad karma, or is it generating freedom for yourself and all other sentient beings?

For a deeper look at the mind and its movements, please join me during the month of October in listening to a lecture I did in Denver on August 29th of this year, entitled A Dose of Karma. It is my desire that this lecture benefit you in understanding even more fully the often unrecognized power of the mind. I hope it will also give you added understanding into karma, and its workings in your current situation. Know that life is seeking to bless and sustain you. It is only the way in which your mind moves that prevents you from seeing the Pure Realm all around you.

May you find peace in these Teachings, and may your meditation practice continue to bless you as you discover through that practice your liberation.

Djwhal Khul