A Drug for the Linear Mind

Are we really evolving or are we just changing?

Why do we place so much value on speed, movement, technology and skill? Yet we don’t seem to know how to have healthy relationships with each other. We are so advanced and still so primitive at the same time.

We are trained to believe that efficiency is human life improving itself. The word we use for it is evolution.

In the 90’s, we were sold the idea that computers would make our lives easier. A hundred-passwords-I-can’t-keep track-of later, we are now being sold artificial intelligence as a way to make our lives better. Sure, the technology is advanced but are we?

There are really two types of evolution. An external evolution that is the advancement of the plot of the story and an internal evolution which is about changing as growth. Only the second one improves our self awareness and helps fulfill our life’s purpose. 

There is no native Chinese word for evolution. Eventually, a scholar came up with the word yanwua 演化. The first character means to act out and the second character means to change. In other words evolution means to change. It doesn’t mean to grow. We adapt to change but that doesn’t mean we grow internally.

Later they came up with a second word for evolution, the one I use to describe the Linear Mind when it functions best. The word is jinhua 进化 which means to grow or develop or even to give birth. 

Complexity is the drug for the Linear Mind. Making things elaborate, fancy and complicated is one of the ways the mind tricks you away from living in your heart and following your spirit’s mandate.

While you can change, you can adapt, move around and stimulate yourself, that doesn’t mean “better.” Movement doesn’t automatically mean good. We as a modern culture have a lot of problems with being still. 

While you can change jobs, partners, practices and/or teachers, real growth means that your evolution is improving your self-awareness.

The Linear Mind organizes and creates a structure which is helpful and necessary to create stability and security. But if it’s not the servant of spirit and if you carry trauma,  then making it your master will make life very confusing and complicated.

Thinking with no heart or soul creates complicated explanations and processes for how to live. Usually it doesn’t work. You will know that because you will suffer from what you think.

To be happy, you must be connected to spirit and follow its mandate. It’s not complicated. The most powerful things aren’t. Only the linear mind believes otherwise.

Here are three things to remember:

• The Linear Mind is not your master. 

• More complicated doesn’t mean better 

• Adapting doesn’t automatically mean being healthy