This is a series on a term that I’m calling “first mind,” which is, I think, a way better way to describe nonduality, enlightenment—all those concepts of awakening that we have—because first mind is who you are.
One of the ways that people like to describe enlightenment is: “Who were you before you were born?” That’s not really very helpful, is it? But who were you before you were conditioned by the society that we have? Imagine if you had been born in another country—Russia—and the only language you ever learned was Russian. Then, think: all of the thoughts that go through your mind would be Russian thoughts, and all of the values that you have would be from that culture. But you would still be exactly the same person.
A really good example of this is Jill Bolte Taylor, who is a brain scientist who had a massive stroke in her left brain. She lost the ability to language at all—to use language, to speak, to even think in language.
And she has a really good video about it that I recommend everyone watch. It’s—it’s My Stroke of Insight, I think it’s called. She’s so interesting because she’s a brain scientist, and so as a stroke happened to her, she knew what was happening, so she was able to be aware of it.
And so, her ability to think in English completely went away, and yet she was still her. So imagine yourself in that same situation. I really recommend that you read her books and—and watch her video because she explains it so well—how the words went away, and they actually just turned into “blah, blah, blah,” like barking sounds. She says it was like a dog barking, no meaning to the sounds of language, and yet she was still right there, 100% there, still her first mind—the mind that was there in her, that doesn’t need language to interpret things and is still full of life and awareness.
Actually, that’s the best part of us.
Again, listen to Jill’s videos, and she just talks about the bliss of it—and she’s literally describing enlightenment. The first mind. The you before any definitions and ideas got stuck in your head.
I also like the word “first mind” because you can know who you are in a context of deep, deep time. One of the problems we have in our current society—which is a society that’s destroying our environment as we live here—one of the problems is that we are stuck mentally in a moving and developing time frame.
Eckhart Tolle talks about The Power of Now, coming back to now. That’s nice, and it can really open up a lot of, self-awareness for people, but it doesn’t really put us solidly into the place where we are. When people try to—to move out of time that way, we kind of tend to want to hang out in kind of an ethereal state of now.
But if instead, we let the idea of first mind bring us way, way back—through our ancestors and our relationship to all things—and ground us here, on the Earth, where we belong. First Mind is you here. That is the you that completely belongs here. Our DNA belongs here. Our beingness belongs here, right on Earth, in this first mind. And settle back into that, because that is you when you step back into that as the awake you.
This is our moment of enlightenment. This is our belongingness in our place. This is where we all need to step into, here, in this lifetime, so that we can participate better in the job that we have before us—which is learning how to get along better with each other, learning how to get along with other humans, learning how to get along better with all of our relatives—all the animals, and the beings, and the bugs, and the plants, and the atmosphere, and the mountains, and the rocks, and everything that is here with us in this massive first mind of existence.
Know who you are.
This is who you are—this first mind that belongs here.