Intertwined Minds

The state of my mind and my search for love. If I were to die today, what mind am I moving on with? Is it lighter than that with which I arrived, heavier, or has it remained the same?

Perhaps I did let go of the old and then refilled the suitcase—aka my mind—with new thoughts, patterns, emotions, and habits. My feeling is that the load is lighter for my mind and the mind of my ancestors. We are intertwined. It’s how we stay connected and communicate with each other.

The more I clear, the lighter my lineage becomes, and the clearer the lines of communication will be.

This visual of minds being intertwined has never presented itself with such clarity. A clear mind is strong and holds the ability to connect with ease to the minds of the seen and unseen. The act has been more unconscious than conscious, but now I have more clarity around the workings of the mind.

This is the next evolution: to connect with the minds of the unseen, those wiser than I, and be open to their teachings that are needed in this moment in time.

When you watch the news, it is static for you, and it’s not only impacting your mind but all the minds you are intertwined with, blocking the wisdom of your ancestors, the sages, and other beings yearning to communicate through you.

You are to simply learn how to be a vessel for your Higher Self and beyond.

In the past, your meditation was for clearing and strengthening your own mind over the years, but it became a comfort, an escape.

Now that you have been away from it for some time, return to sitting.

Open yourself to receive from those wiser than you, who can show you, teach through you. Be a conscious vessel. You are not your own.

Always watched over.

Keep your channel clean, your mind pure, and your heart open.

Love.

What is love’s role?

Jigsaw

Is there another way?

At some point, at some number, we need to pause and ask: Is this it? Is this the way?

The gauge is fear and stress. The higher the fear and stress, the more likely it’s not the way.

Or maybe it’s the other way? That’s for each of us to decipher.

A calculation I’m still calculating.

Left or right? Flip a coin and walk in the direction it tells you. Heads—left. Tails—right.

Upside down. Inside out.

It’s all a zigzag, back and forth. It’s the illusion of a straight line that brings pain to our hearts and minds.

Nothing about you is fucking straight, and in this jigsaw of a world, you want to walk a tightrope.

There is a guaranteed fall—and nothing below to catch you.

Embrace the upside down, and only then can you know what is right side up.

Blessings, Infinite Blessings.

“Encircled by splendor in the center of the sphere. Meditate where the body thrills to currents of infinite communion. Follow your senses to the end and beyond into the heart of space.” — The Radiant Sutras

Into the heart of space.

Be present today. Notice the spaces in which you play, the blessings waiting to be seen. How are others fitting into the space? How are you moving through space?

I often underestimate space, its existence and its importance and how it shifts depending on who or what occupies it in any given moment. Space is not static. We change it with our presence, our awareness, our gaze, our words, even our breath.

In a moment, you will leave this space, your new home, and dance in spaces with others. How does your space adapt to you? Observe how you adapt to the space and those within it.

How do I want to move through space? What about the space inside of me? The space inside of others?

Why is it important to cultivate spaciousness in our minds and hearts? How can we hold and flow with ease if we are full, if our minds and hearts are stuffed with what we consume, transmuting us into a dense and weighty object?

How am I breathing?

The Void

This void that lives inside all of us — it can't be filled. Or can it?

The void itself is an imbalance; we inherit a dominant energy. When we are born, we are split. This split causes a fracture, leaving a void.

A relationship with the feminine fills this fracture — and vice versa. It empowers when it comes together. The energy ebbs and flows.

Leave the desire to attach, to keep it permanently in the void. It’s not ours to keep.

It’s essential for it to move freely, like a bird in a cage with the doors open. We have a tendency to want to trap the energy, thinking it's the safe way. But energy is only energetic when it can flow freely.

An addiction to the illusory idea of certainty and stability. Even if it stays there forever, it needs to know it can dance and fly if it so desires. That keeps the energy healthy.

It’s a dance between the masculine and the feminine.

Being caught up with material labels at the physical layer takes us away from the source of what’s important — the energetics within the layers that make us whole.

The energetics of mind, body, heart, and soul.

This is where we need to shine our attention, from the moment we awaken to the moment we lay down to sleep.

The Entity Feeds on Ignorance

There is an intersection between the physical body and the spirit. In this place between them, there’s an entity—a force we don’t fully understand. It’s from this space that chaos and destruction arise, feeding on what’s unseen and misunderstood. We need to bring the unseen into the light.

"Why is nobody doing anything?"—a question asked during the tragedies of Bosnia and Rwanda, and sadly, it's just as relevant today. Why isn't anyone doing anything? Why does history continue to repeat itself?

Religions have grown from thousands to millions, even billions of followers. In the material world, we’ve uncovered more knowledge than we know what to do with. More discoveries. More growth. More understanding. And yet, here we are. While the evolution of technology is undeniable, the evolution of humanity? That remains questionable. It feels incomplete, as though we are missing half of the equation.

We can embrace both the material and the spiritual, but unless we explore the layers of our minds and hearts, the merry-go-round will continue. On the surface, things may seem different, but scratch just below, and it’s clear: the same script, different actors.

Our obsession with either the material or the spiritual blinds us to what lies between. And this obsession does nothing to foster a healthy, balanced humanity. The entity, the unseen force, will continue to wreak havoc until we learn to see what we currently cannot. To do that, we must first remove the blinds of ignorance.

To start, we can look at our relationship with our ego and our sexual energy. These are two areas demonized by one or more religions, creating a distorted relationship with both. Suppression of our sexual energy cuts off our creativity and our connection to this planet, as well as to the source. Similarly, demonizing the ego disconnects us from our power, which resides in the solar plexus. A healthy ego helps us deliver our work and maintain a balanced connection with both self and Self.

When sexual energy is suppressed, creativity—the core of our humanity—suffers. Creativity and self-expression live between the physical and spiritual realms, and when out of balance, they disrupt our relationship to both. This imbalance leaves us vulnerable, open to manipulation by the entity that thrives on separation and disconnection. The weakness within us feeds it. Separation on the outside begins within each of us.

Humanity has become—or perhaps has always been—ignorant. Ignorance is the antithesis to the evolution of love for all beings, regardless of race, religion, or culture. It’s this ignorance that contributes to the collective state of the world today.

What is the Difference between Mind and Brain?

I was curious for a long time about the difference between the mind and the brain. I asked around, but nobody had an answer. So I continued on with life, occasionally pondering the question. Without answers, it became more of a fleeting thought.

Over the last few years, though, I’ve been diving deeper into myself. My experiences have taught me to differentiate between the mind and the brain. The mind is like a river. It needs to flow. If you block it by building a dam, it overflows and drowns the nature surrounding it.

In our case, the brain is that nature, and it’s being drowned by the power and overflow of the mind.

We’ve built a dam around our necks, trapping the mind in our heads. I wonder if this was necessary for the brain's evolution. If the mind hadn't been parked in the head, would the human brain have evolved to where it is today? Would technology and science have reached these heights, and at such speed, without the mind's focused development of the brain?

I don’t have answers to these questions—just perspectives from my experiences. But I see another part of human evolution unfolding right now, and I’m not sure enough people are noticing. We’ve been driving our brains in fifth gear for so long that we’re wearing out the engine. Just look at the rise in mental illnesses. Is it a coincidence that yoga, meditation, and group activities like CrossFit and marathons are gaining popularity? These activities help us reconnect our minds and bodies.

To me, this is our body saying: it’s time to break the dam. The next stage of human evolution is to bring the rest of the body on board—the heart, the gut, everything from the neck down.

How? By sharpening the mind through meditation.

Display in the basement of Rooms Cafe on Ossington Street in Toronto

Many people say, “Meditation isn’t for me—I can’t stop thinking.” But meditation is exactly for those who can’t stop thinking (myself included).

Yoga, CrossFit, and running are amazing for connecting with the body, but they aren’t enough. Meditation sharpens the mind. Once learned and embraced, it takes us to the next level—full mind-body connection.

Parking the mind in the head was necessary for a time, but the systems we’ve built (corporate workplaces, for example) are outdated. We’ve lacked the courage and awareness to collectively change the systems we still play in. The importance of bringing the entire body on board is that, at a mass scale, we can start building systems from the heart and soul, not just the head.

Even religion is being run from the head—not the heart, not the soul. For most of us today, religion serves little purpose because it was designed as a system to access the soul, the spirit, our true being. But we’ve boxed it in the brain, trying to make it logical. Prayers aren’t logical. They’re mysterious and magical.

There’s no access to the soul, to the source, unless our minds and bodies are synced.

My grandmother was my guru. I see clearly now what she was doing. She was a simple woman—no hijab, no fluff, none of the nonsense that surrounds religion today—just simple prayer, five times a day. She used a tasbeeh (prayer beads), which, by definition, involves repetitive utterance of short sentences (thank you, Google). The tasbeeh was essentially a counter. My grandmother repeated mantras.

I only developed this awareness after training in transcendental meditation last year and experiencing the power of mantras. Through meditation and prayer, she opened the doors to the soul and dropped her prayers into the fountain of the Universe.

If we want to reach the level of the spirit—and that’s where we’re headed, whether we like it or not—we need to hit the tipping point of collective awareness. It’s happening, and the seeds are being heavily planted. Those already there are making it rain.

The brain (actually, it’s our ego) tells us meditation isn’t for us. The ego’s sole purpose is to keep the self suppressed. But sooner or later, it will be time for your ego to let your true self play, to break the dam and let the river of energy flow freely.

Parking the mind in our head leaves the rest of the body like a neglected garden, overgrown with weeds. I see meditation as the body’s Weedwacker. It sharpens the mind, resets the being, and clears away the weeds that no longer serve you.