Big Mind and Small Mind

#22
Thanks Karen Anne Kramer ~ CNN Women Leaders 2015 - the backdrop to the event that inspired this is my way of channeling frustration into creative energy. This is the third event of this type that has been organized at the college in over a year. None of them where we ready for and all of them I had suggested we not proceed. I am using Trello to help me organize it https://trello.com/b/8U4Hn7Np/area-contest - once I factor in a general indifference to this event from the student body, and that the time I will be spending on it means I cannot be on beBee for the next week (at least until Saturday) and being this morning I waved goodbye to my spouse, my kids and my grandkids who off to a vacation in Jamaica, and on top of this I am receiving officious rules that I must abide with. So now I await pictures that will begin rolling in this week of my family having fun in Jamaica. It is in this backdrop that the nature of your intuition response that makes this buzz so satisfying to me and that is where the mind compass (the eventual thing that emerged from this buzz) is also so helpful to me, because it will keep me focus on the enlightened mind compass and not upon the shadow mind compass. https://www.bebee.com/producer/@cityvp/mind-compass I will be back at beBee next Saturday, time for me to do my bit for my college and officialdom, but now I am truly in the right frame of mind to remain creative rather than sob out the pettiness of a easy to engage pity party :-) Reply

#18
Dear Karen Anne Kramer ~ CNN Women Leaders 2015 Perspective for others, reflection for self one can choose either. Now if I reflect upon six hours of zen music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO-VDXpUNls now that can lead to things really deep, but six minutes of social media, not so much. Reply

#17
Dear Ali Anani I am have taken the mind compass that I have surfaced here to my Paradox Wisdom Hive, and called this reflection "Mind Compass" https://www.bebee.com/producer/@cityvp/mind-compass Reply

#14
Dear Ali Anani let us think about technology. Both you and I are using it right now. This conversation does not unfold or grow without it, so we are using OUR big mind and OUR small mind (rather than "stretching and folding" here I use the a term that I love "THE POWER OF AND"). So there is no difference in the way we flow. What the observations that people have so far made has shown me that in stead of addressing two states of mind, I think it makes more sense to expand my thinking to FOUR states of mind and a FIFTH state that centers that compass. The two states that I will add are OPEN MIND CLOSED MIND If I began this buzz simply talking about open mind and closed mind, the river of thought will begin to flow towards classification and categorization, instead of contemplation and consciousness. The FIFTH state is NO MIND Technology is simply a catalyst for those states, and this is why we need to be patient for change, because change happens at the individual level. The duality of good and bad is the lens that people view change. TECHNOLOGY ACCELERATES DUALITY. So now I have (we ALL have) BIG MIND - SMALL MIND - NO MIND - CLOSED MIND - OPEN MIND - all of them being what we really are, but we brand and project what we identify with, not with that we are. I am all those minds, technology does not change that. Reply

#7
Dear Harvey, there are affinities that we have in the way each come to this world, and largely there are more similarities in our visceral human responses than there are differences, yet everything is subject to context. In your last paragraph, if this was a movie the end credits of "everything will be OK" is how we all want the story to be, but in our life the director of the movie is us. In my case the end credits do want to explore a different story, one where their is no end, and where there is no ending to the story, there is uncertainty. Most people do not want to live with a story that has uncertainty as an end credit. Yet uncertainty is a fascinating reality, because uncertainty equates with the Big Mind. That is why I have inserted the video of the famous quote by Marianne Williamson. As Savvy Raj says in her observation below - this process of reflection which she called "the spirit of reflectivity". I see Savvy in her observation an openness to uncertainty - which means what? The pull of her exploration shifts her from small mind to big mind. A small mind is what is most natural to us. Such vulnerability can add a wave of extra discomfort. We generally don't want to touch uncertainty because psychologically we have an adult defense against it - which we learned as we grew. I am in full harmony with the idea of OK, but I also embrace the paradox of uncertainty. That is why I am not here to disparage the small mind because it is us and then I disparage myself. Marianne Williamson urges us to explore. This is what I am personally meditating upon, this is not a call for others to do the same. Reply

#8
Dear Gerald Hecht we are ALL conditioned by something or another and we ALL from time to time get focused in our tiny part of existence, that is life. There will be times when I participate in groupthink and there are times when my mind is elevated and far more free. Where I encounter others who are governed by objectives I do slide into groupthink, because the objective becomes all encompassing. My chameleon like characteristics are a part of who I am and that does not represent ALL. So when I meet an open minded response I am more than likely to be open minded with it and if a conversation becomes compressed and very tightly bound, I feel that tightness tightening me. In this regard here is a fingerprint or a footprint which is not ALL, it is who we individually are. At college sometimes I get stuck in the mud of groupthink because the conversation tighten into particular forms of hardness, but online here conversations can open up and flower. So while my experiences are not an ALL - the flow of human beings to move from small mind to big mind is a choice that ALL can make. Whether everyone makes it is an individual right. So I don't think that "you should be" because you should be is your life and not mine. I would drop a caveat that we should ALL be wary about using the words "ALL" or "NEVER". In that context ALL is sound, but not all is ALL. We both know that. Reply

#5
Dear Ali Anani the way I was looking at this is that we can get so super-concentrated as compressors of knowledge as we cram so much into our own minds - and how much of that is often a trading of information. Isn't it interesting that the moment we see the words "big" and "small" we cease to this as fundamental to our own being and instead view it as "them and us". There is beauty in the small as their are in molecules and wonder in the big as their is in the universe. A compressed mind is small, an expansive mind is big - it is OUR mind. In a technology driven of bits and bytes, we have generally become more atom than universe or at least. Information comes us at real fast, our focus shifts to the short-term and we begin living day to day. Then people like Marianne Williamson (see video above) and yourself come to this world and asks the question, does living small serve you? That is where I am today, still in the small, wondering if being bigger is truly the way. There are great securities and comforts and feeling of being in control in serving the small. In my first paragraph I said from the outset that I do not think of big and small the way most people do. Yet today it is a sign of our times and age that these simple words "big" and "small" are front loaded with meaning and in seeing an expression such as big mind and small mind, our reflex action takes us to big headedness and small mindedness. Going there does not serve me, it does not open my life to both realities, it merely creates a division where there should not be one, but because these words now exercise an emotional response or trigger within us - we cannot get back to the simple words "big" and "small" - when in this context that are our being, and what it is we personally choose to be. Reply

#5
Dear Ali Anani the way I was looking at this is that we can get so superconcentrated on things that we become compressors of knowledge, cramming so much into our minds - and how much of that is often a trading of information. Isn't it interesting that the moment we see the words "big" and "small" we cease to this as ourselves but "them and us". There is beauty in the small as their are in molecules and wonder in the big as their is in the universe. In a technology driven of bits and bytes, we have generally become more atom than universe or at least. Information comes us at real fast, our focus shifts to the short-term and we begin living day to day. Then people like Marianne Williamson (see video above) and yourself come to this world and asks the question, does living small serve you? That is where I am today, still in the small, wondering if being bigger is truly the way. There are great securities and comforts and feeling of being in control in serving the small. In my first paragraph I said from the outset that I do not think of big and small the way most people do. Yet today it is a sign of our times and age that these simple words "big" and "small" are front loaded with meaning and in seeing an expression such as big mind and small mind, our reflex action takes us to big headedness and small mindedness. Going there does not serve me, it does not open my life to both realities, it merely creates a division where there should not be one, but because these words now exercise an emotional response or trigger within us - we cannot get back to the simple words "big" and "small" - when in this context that are our being, and what it is we personally choose to be. Reply

#2
I am not considering the small-minded here because what I am comparing here is a mind that encompasses a planet. This is not a judgement on small-mindedness but a contrast in the individual (which actually means WHOLE) and groupthink which may seem large but is much smaller in contrast. The Marianne Williams quote speaks in volumes how we dismiss what should be big. We often do not possess the humility to see that we are bigger than we think we are, but we can possess the narcissism to want to show others how small they are. We can be brilliant as a humble person and we can be brilliant as a narcissist, this is the contrast I am drawing upon - or at least that which is reflecting on the size of my own imagination. This not a finger pointiing about others, this is a self-reflection. Reply

#1
Lets qualify that in the context of this buzz, the big mind is the one that is as big as the world and the small mind is as big as a popular brain. The greatest people I know usually have an associated humility. Reply