If you get lost in the forest, you turn around and go back to the place where you were no longer lost. The same correction works for the mind.
Many cultures have a fall story describing an irreversible error that caused humans to leave paradise. The fallen characters find themselves lost and confused; life becomes very hard. Fall stories are rich with symbolism. They contain the key ingredients for perfecting our mind and our life.
Creation Demystified
Creation and fall stories speak of literal people with names and personalities; but to the ancient writers, the characters symbolized aspects of nature, mother earth, and the stars in the sky. These aspects of the earth and the universe were anthropomorphized, making them seem human and real. Eventually, these characters came to represent different aspects of the human mind called archetypes. As the archetypal stories gained in popularity, they generated matching earth experiences and eventually became what we now call reality. This long process took place over thousands of years and ultimately became the blueprint for creation.
In nearly all creation stories, there is first a division of the human mind into two opposing or complimentary aspects. One energetic aspect is symbolized by fire. It is masculine, positive, yang, or assertive. The complementary water aspect is feminine, negative, yin, or receptive energy. The characters may be a man and woman, or they may be twins of the same sex. Negative is simply the opposite of positive; it is not bad, evil, or wrong. These opposing energies have synergy when used as raw materials for creation. For example, you could not see these black letters without the white background. The ancient people called this first-cause creation.
High Self Creation
At the highest level of creation, the masculine aspect represents unconditional love and the feminine aspect is all knowing and wise. This archetypal couple is literally a match made in heaven. There is nothing they could not do. The couple resides in everyone’s mind as our higher or true Self. When people live from this state of being, they call it nirvana, miraculous, or a peak experience. In truth, this was normal in the Garden of Eden.
Low Self Creation
The mind also has a lower masculine and feminine aspect. The lower masculine or positive aspect is the intellect that holds our memories, knowledge, beliefs, and intentions; the lower feminine is associated with intuition, nurturing, and emotions. Notice that the higher mind masculine aspect of unconditional love changes to feminine nurturing or care giving in the lower self. The feminine all-knowing wisdom changes to masculine knowledge. The lower aspect is more physically oriented and more restricted, but it is not a lesser or wrong state of being.
There are no beliefs in the upper world. All beliefs are born and held in the lower mind. When the intellect accepts and holds beliefs (also called knowledge), the intuition must maneuver within the context of those beliefs in order to create. The feminine-intuitive side of our mind searches our intellectual knowledge base for possible beliefs that can manifest our desires. The options are limited to the contents of our intellect (even if the answer appears to come from another). If our intellect has very restrictive beliefs on a subject, we feel stuck. We search and search but find no answer.
The answer is to let go of the beliefs (or lies) that are restrictive so that more solutions are accessible. As the masculine mind completely drops all beliefs, the high Self, unconditional love returns and the all-knowing feminine reveals the perfect solution.
Letting go of beliefs is quite easy, and we do it often. You may remember this example from Lesson 1. I want to sell my car, and you want to buy it. We both create the appropriate beliefs to support the transaction. Then we let our beliefs go when the deal is done. We don’t keep selling and buying the car forever. The ancient ones called this a mind that remained immaculate or virgin; it stayed in the first-cause creation mode. All first-cause creations are win-win for everyone; and when we live from this mindset, we are peaceful, creative, wise, and unemotional.
The Good and Evil Game
Enter the fall story, and the lower-mind game changed dramatically. Humans began to accept and hold on to beliefs that were not win-win. The fall stories moved humans from first-cause creation to second-cause creation. Competition was born. Rules and laws became a fact of life. Judgment became acceptable; and most people lost their discrimination. Now people were holding on to beliefs in order to avoid punishment, to fit in, or to get even. Religions, schools, and governments created definitions of good and shoulds that overshadowed the unconditionally loving masculine within us. Feminine wisdom fell into emotional turmoil.
Let me offer an example. In first-cause creation, we invented the concept of eating. Eating was fun. We shared food with friends and cooked meals to expand our creativity. We ate what we wanted and enjoyed every meal. But eventually, we fell with regard to food. We started judging what we ate. We labeled foods good and bad. We sorted foods by calories, nutrients, and carbs. Food was no longer pure energy or unconditional love. It became right food or wrong food. Knowledge ruled food, and eating became a complex and confusing game of shoulds.
The good and evil game became a fact of life. People accepted the belief created by other humans that they had to fight their evil opponent to the death. When you come to understand the mind, you can see that this notion is ridiculous because good and evil are pairs that go together like Batman and Joker. If Joker dies, Batman can no longer be a hero. Win-lose is an imaginary outcome. In truth, there is only lose-lose or win-win.
Mind Mechanics
When the mind splits a thought into two opposites, both parts of the split remain in that individual mind. Let’s continue with the car example. We write a script for a car sale. Both parties have the entire script in their hands. Each person plays only one role; they play the role that they can play. Only one of them wants a car, and only one has a car. There is no judgment; and if it were appropriate, the two people would gladly switch places because there is no loser in this deal.
Now let’s see what happens when we add judgment, good and evil, to the script. The car doesn’t run; however, the buyer wants to charge $10,000 for it. He invents a story about the car to make it attractive to the buyer. Suddenly, we have moved out of buyer and seller into perpetrator and victim. The people would not willingly switch places. The transaction has moved from win-win to lose-lose. How did we get there?
During the course of our life, we accepted this situation as possible. We came to believe that people cheat others or people lie to get what they want. Over time, our beliefs gathered energy as we listened to others share their stories about cheating or watched the news. Eventually, what was once only a mental idea became reality. We play the character that we most identify with. Our mind has orchestrated the entire thing so easily that we don’t even see it coming. Sometimes our mind authored the script; at other times, our beliefs dragged us into another person’s drama. But either way, our lower, good and evil, mind got us on the stage.
Letting Go
The permanent answer is to remove the cause. The cause is the belief that got us on the stage, and it is right on the surface. If the incident comes into our mind, the cause is right there. If we feel the need to tell our story, the cause will be part of that story.
As we feel the anger toward the other or our self, our mind will say exactly what we believe. And it will sound like reality or truth. But it is not the truth; it is our belief that got us into this situation. At times, the person is shouting, “How did I get here?” That statement comes from a belief in chaos or lack of control. If we can recognize our beliefs (our lies) that got us into the situation and take full responsibility for the drama, we can let the causal belief go and gain freedom from the experience forever.
