Cracks in the Lens: Investigating the Structure of the Lower Perspective

[Davino]

What is a low perspective or a lower Mind?

It's an immature, fractured, limited and self-serving lens through which the individual "I" sees the world and cognises it. The purpose of a lower Mind is not to realize truth or to understand reality, but to frame existence in a way that serves one's ego and agenda to avoid the cognitive dissonance that comes from its selfish behaviours for meeting its needs which give birth to individual and collective structural biases.

Another way to frame this distinction is that a low perspective is a limited circle of awareness with few interconnections. In contrast, a higher Mind is a Sphere of Awareness deeply interconnected and utterly whole.

 

A lower mind is incapable of recognising the workings and importance of not knowing. It has no conscious epistemology or philosophical skills, on the contrary it has been brainwashed by the status quo and is unaware of it. In this regard, a lower perspective is recognised by a lack of original independent thinking, as a matter of fact, it borrows its thoughts and cosmovision through familiar, social and cultural osmosis. The media, political biases and economic pressures shape the mind into a rigid structure which then the individual "I" finds hard to liberate itself from.

 

Lower perspectives are fuelled by basic primal emotions in a puppet-like fashion, the workings of their own minds are foggy or a black box to themselves and they resort to simplifications and assumptions to reduce cognitive complexity and the emotional turmoil that takes to grasp truly Reality at every level. Truth is less important than being right or feeling good emotions and there is a sense of going with the pleasure and avoiding pain at the cost of long term virtuousness.

 

In this regard, a lower mind is uncultivated and deficient, falling in traps like self-doubt, self-hatred and self-denial without growing out of them nor understanding their purpose. A lower mind tends to arrive to the wrong conclusions from the right facts, it has no derivative skills as the use of their mind is sloppy, imprecise and all over the place. Literally they are bombarded by loopy thoughts while unconscious patterns play like a broken record all day long in their mind space.

 

A lower perspective is one sided and filled with fantasies to maintain superficial consistency. It is unable to seriously contemplate other alternatives nor to do honest self-questioning and healthy skepticism. It has not the ability to take a step back and reflect on the whole of its mind, neither in content nor on the structure, because it finds itself profoundly entangled to the point that it is wrongly identified with the content of thought and is unable to understand the illusory, transient and cartographic nature of the human mind and mapping endeavour systems.

 

The lower mind projects and believes to be always right, it is not only governed by emotions but uses emotions to reinforce its unhealthy and destructive patterns; seriously believing that's the way life is for everyone. Blind spots are abundant and superficiality reigns, in the sense that there has never been an appreciation for the immense challenge that understanding or living takes. It oversimplifies and underestimates existence and fantasizes to backwardly rationalize its unconscious desires for reality to be a certain way; or blames and resents life when it is shown otherwise.

 

A lower perspective is irresponsible to its own favour and righteous when it receives the same treatment it gives. Morality is but an egoic tool. Love is partial and biased, its circle of concern is limited and the-outside-world is opaqued by prejudices and fears. It has an inability to be genuinely loving and selfless, it doesn't like to do favours unless it benefits him either directly or by praise or status. Philanthropy is not yet developed and spontaneous care for all creatures and human beings is not yet present. It is on the other hand, a desire for exploitation and self-gain, egoic agenda rules its mind. It has not yet realized the short-lived nature of such behaviours nor awoken to what higher living or the good life is. For it is unintegrated, both intrinsically and extrinsically, both in its own mind and its dealings with the world.

 

Lower perspective is rigid, it holds to a thousand-year-old book or a passed down cultural or familiar tradition. It can't look at the constructive endeavour of its mind nor has the mind flexibility to easily change it. Like and old man cannot touch its own feet, a static mind is fixed in its unconscious patterns and those will live through him/her every day. Overall, it won't care much as a lower perspective is the bare minimum you get just by clinging to life and as long as it is pragmatic and survival-oriented, reality won't force a change. Therefore, an intrinsic conscious click must happen in the depths of the individual for it to pursue higher development. What that trigger will be for each human is a mystery left to God. Although it usually comes through natural development, intense suffering, intense love or a change in the present state of consciousness.

 

The higher Mind is built on top of the lower mind, as a natural process of evolution. It is inclusive and understands how the lower mind arose from particular survival conditions and collective systemic problems and wishes for it to outgrown its own bullshit and delusions in a nurturing and non-imposing way.

 

Lastly, notice that inside your own mind there is an amalgamation of both low and high perspectives with a concentration in the mean or medium perspectives. This is your centre of gravity. So it is your task to uproot the lower ones and nurture the higher ones in a continuum process of evolution (mean upwards spiral), holism and consciousness. Building a bridge from the lower to higher mind requires awareness, intelligence, the cultivation of virtues, vision, empathy and sustained commitment through trials. There must be a first moment of admitting we are not the best we could be and therefore from a place of self-love and care, start walking towards higher living. Via the cultivation of epistemic and egoic humility, we expand our moral and cognitive horizons with an open and critical mind. It is vital to cultivate the virtues of patience and perseverance as those are friends of the mind, which will deliver us in the path we already know is for our Greater Good. Step by step, we replace the rigid unconscious patterns through awareness and self-examination, we frequently ask ourselves: what is really the Truth? What is the best action I can do now to be aligned with my higher inspiration and calling? By doing so, we honour not only our individual evolution but we enrich everyone around us.

Namaste