The Great Mystery
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
"Cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words, and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate yourself. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest."
—Dogen
Literally hundreds and probably thousands of books have been written, and endless discussions had, attempting to answer the question “What is the mind?” The truth is that most likely no human has ever fully understood the answer and perhaps no one ever will because it is a web full of mysteries that humankind has only begun to unravel. The mind interfaces with the Great Mystery, that which is beyond what our brains are currently capable of grasping. When we are flowing freely, without energetic blocks, we are expressing pure mind, which might be described as the creative mechanism of the Divine. Pure mind expresses truth, or the absolute reality (sometimes called God). Yet it seems that humans have the unique capacity to have a mind of our own, and to use the mind to create patterns of disharmony. It is our greatest gift and our greatest curse. We have been given the choice to realize heaven or hell, peace or conflict, health or illness. The Great Mystery contains the seeds of all thoughts, ideas, and imaginings, and we have the free-will to create our own experience. The mind is the mechanism by which we experience the multiplicity of life, by allowing us to perceive ourselves as separate forms, instead of part of a fluid energy system. While this allows all the joys and sweetness of life, it is also the seed of all duality and polarization.
When looking at the manifestations around us in the world, we see a great variety of beliefs and ideas being played out. We can also see the manifestation of extreme polarities becoming more solid. Most of us have been creating our reality from thoughts which do not reflect pure mind. Now, as we explore the ideas in this course, we begin to shift stuck energy within ourselves, ideas that don’t resonate and never really did, beliefs that were formed from misunderstandings, from seeing reality through a veil, a veil which cleverly disguised our true nature. Now, we lift the veil. We shift our thinking, understanding that every thought we think, every sound we make, has power, that we are not separate from our environment, but part of a fluid energetic expression of pure mind.
Within our own being, we are noticing that we can achieve balance. We become still and empty, releasing energy forms that are blocking the flow of our deepest truth. We are effortlessly being our natural selves, in sync with all other energies, in conflict with nothing. From this place, we can channel pure-mind creativity, and blossom into self-realization! This is the heart of why and how affirmations work.
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."
—Goethe