Ego Mind vs Infinite Mind

The ego mind has its uses. It helps us navigate through and manage and transact with the three dimensional material world. This ego mind is examined at length in traditional psychology. This mind is at times denigrated in some spiritual or new age quarters because when left to its own devices it can be very limiting and at times self sabotaging. The ego  mind is designed to assist the individual in functioning in the material world using what are considered executive functions like telling time, consequential thinking, comparing and contrasting, etc. It is also designed to protect the organism. I am an organism. You are an organism. We are all organisms. The ego mind is constantly on the look out for the threat of danger to the organism both externally and internally.  A car accident is an example of an external threat.  Procrastinating is an example of an internal threat.  These threats lead to a tendency for the ego mind to be vigilant and in many instances negative and self limiting.  Even though this mind has been studied at great length, still we haven’t fully come to understand it. For instance, we still can’t explain fully  how creativity works, or how intuition works. Our challenge, if we choose to accept it, is to explore things like creativity and intuition through direct experience. Ideas like, “Thoughts are energy.”, and “We create our own reality.” are perspectives that we can explore for ourselves. These ideas are invitations to ask questions about what is real and what is not real. A challenge within this challenge is to find a way to explore these ideas without being hurtful to ourselves or others. The idea that we create our own reality is very appealing, and why wouldn’t it be? It implies that we are in control of everything. But if we actually check to see what our actual experience is we can see with our ego mind, our rational and logical mind  that this simply isn’t true. Babies don’t choose to have diseases or to go hungry for example. In an attempt to explain why tragedies like babies having deadly diseases we look to concepts like karma. Many of us like the concept of karma because it offers us an explanation for the difficulties and tragedies that we all encounter in our lives. While there  are practitioners who specialize is past life regression, we still don’t have a way to avoid unwanted experiences. So, where does the idea of the infinite mind come in? How does this idea help us?  If we open to the observable fact  that the ego mind has its role in our lives but it doesn’t always serve us in every situation.  We know that we simply don’t have all the answers to all of our questions or solutions for all of our problems. The ego mind doesn’t know, can’t know everything. The ego mind  is too logical and too linear and in this way it is limited. But it is a *”happy learner.” Effects like intuition and creativity are products of the infinite mind. The infinite mind is the source of vision, creativity, understanding, insight and revelation, that lead to new patterns of thinking and behaving. Things that didn’t make any sense before suddenly do. Solutions to problems suddenly appear either internally or externally. Miracles occur. The big question then becomes how do we access the infinite mind?  One way is to simply ask ourselves if we could let go of wanting to figure things out? This little question alone is obviously counter-intuitive and because it is, it opens us initially to confusion. “Why would I let go of wanting to figure something out if I’m looking for an answer or a solution?”, we ask.  If we think about wanting to figure things out like an attempt to squeeze our brain like we squeeze a lemon when we want lemonade, it makes sense. However if we think of the brain being like a computer where we have stored all sorts of information in files that we have organised ourselves we might consider the possibility that the way the information is organised, and categorized is a reflection of our own limited thinking. Letting go of wanting to figure things out frees us from habitually referring to our files that we have organised at various times in the past. We don’t really need to know what we were thinking when we were three or twenty three all the time. It can be highly effective to let go of all of those memories, feelings, images, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, conclusions, assumptions, and fantasies.   When we stop clinging to the old we open up  inside and make room for the new.  Old information can and often does become part of the new  but it may fit in differently. Old information is then seen and understood in new ways. We see how they connect differently to old and new pieces of the puzzle.  Letting go of wanting to figure things out is an internal process. It doesn’t result in forgetting the old experiences, feelings and thoughts. Instead it opens us up so that we can access whatever it is relevant from the past while also opening us up to new ways of seeing and experiencing things.