The Non-Rational Mind/"Self"
Our consciousness' awareness is complex and has many components or aspects that it can use and be aware through. We do not have to concern ourselves with a few of them as they are not ones we can access at our current stage of evolution. Nonetheless, each of us use a number of them typically without our conscious attention or even awareness that we are doing so. The reasons are ones that are explored in various essays on this site and aren't relevant at this point.
You are using a number of them as you read these words though you may not realize it Through sensory perceptions you are consciously aware of your body and its extremities and what you hear, see and so on. Also present in your conscious awareness are the emotions you are experiencing part of which are part feelings and part physiological responses. You are also using thoughts in your mind to process and reaction to the perceptions I mentioned to think, make choices and potentially act if you choose. Beyond these you are also the thinker that is using aspects of our core consciousness or higher self that is using these aspects or vehicles to experience or do them. Our consciousness or higher self, is the thinker and what our "non-rational self".
I use the term non-rational self to signify that the aspects of higher self do not do thinking the way our mind does. It does not engage in logical reasoning or use symbolic constructs. Its inherent knowing transcend mundane thinking enabling it to do what we might refer to as processing information without the need for processing. We see this in intuitions and Knowings that we have from time to time.
Rational thinking as we know it is only relevant due to our having to act and interact with phenomenal reality. The term non-rational self can be used interchangeably with our higher self. Creators and their creations are intrinsically linked hence when our consciousness creates thoughts as it reacts to experiences it becomes present in them. Figuratively, the relationship between our non-rational self and our mind is the former works through the later rather than with.
All the various aspects of our whole self are highly interconnected and interrelated. They significantly affect each other though the degree varies depending on how "far apart" they are in terms of sub-planes (refer to Basic Concepts). Our consciousness is present in each of them as it works through them all simultaneously. For example, our intent leads us to choose to read something and is present in the thoughts involved in both the decision and the act of reading.
Intent comes from within though how it is used or directed depends on the thoughts we hold. When we read what ever it is we chose to, which is an experience, our consciousness reacts to the content and either manifests new thoughts or modifies existing ones. Our mind's reactions will continue until what was perceived has been integrated. Note it may not complete this and we can continue to try to do so consciously and/or it will occur at the non-conscious level. The result of this process is our perception of it. As this occurs our thoughts/perceptions can manifest new emotions or activate existing ones that can lead to or manifest physiological responses in the body. These secondary reactions can and usually do affect our perception.
The chain mentioned is unbroken with each experience. At each stage there is an element of the superior/subtler sub-plane present in the lower one. The flow is from our higher aspects down through lower ones. You may have noticed that as you go down the chain there is the potential for creation of something, be it a thought, emotion or physiological change. The take away here is that manifestation happens on the downward arc Looking at this flow in the opposition direction, the upward arc, we see that our physical body can react to something and activate existing emotions that in term can activate thoughts.
The opposite direction is one of activation. By this I mean that our bodies reactions can activate emotions but not create them. It takes a thought to do so. For the same reason our emotions can activate thoughts but not create them and our thoughts can activate intent but not create it either. Activation occurs due to inherent resonance between matter of sub-planes. . is something our consciousness and the mind can self do when they react to an experience. Further, our thoughts can activate our intent (coming down from the lowest sub-planes of higher aspects). The direction matters because to manifest something requires impaction (refer to Basic Concepts) and this can only occur on the downward arc. Activation occurs on the downward arc when there is already matter in the lower sub-plane that resonates with that of the higher one.
I have mentioned that our consciousness, in its totality has many aspects; however, for simplicity sake we can view it as having two components. These two components are commonly referred to as our lower and higher selves with the former being impermanent and the latter permanent. The permanent aspect includes what people refer to as their soul and the impermanent aspects are our bodies, etheric web, emotions and mind. The lower aspects are the house of personality in a given lifetime whereas our higher self is the house of individuality. The relationship between personality and individuality can be understood by the phrase "Today's personality is tomorrows individuality." We will get into this more in later essays.
Most of the activities of the lower self are directed by the mind, which I have referred to as the rational mind. Our consciousness, our higher self, works or acts through the lower self and is also the source of awareness' that transcend thoughts. It is our consciousness, and all its aspects that I refer to as non-rational self or higher self (rather than psychic self). The latter term is also a commonly used term for it.
The non-rational self is somewhat of an "umbrella" term representing all aspects of us that are permanent and not part our lower self. The rational mind is the home of our personality and the non-rational aspects of our individuality. Non-rational awareness would include Knowings of various kinds such as our will, intent, intuition, precognition, clairvoyance and so on. Do note that the mind is also involved in all of these as it must be able to allow these awareness' to flow through it so that it can, subject to its mental constructs, interpret and express them in language.
A common schema for the lower non-physical aspects of the self is that it includes astral/emotional and mental bodies, the higher ones being our causal, unity and spiritual bodies and so on. We all possess these aspects though most of us are not conscious of any but the lower or lowest of them at this stage of our evolution. It is the rational mind we build and continue to do so moment by moment that exerts almost total control over what we are consciously aware of. Access to the non-rational aspects of our awareness requires a direct channel through our rational mind (such as the gift of sight etc.) or the presence of thought forms that allow their expression. Without them it is unlikely we are using but a tiny fraction of the potentials of our non-rational awareness.
While we have these other "higher aspects" beyond the physical, emotional and mental aspects for most the focus is on the lower aspects of the self: body, emotions and thoughts. A rare few are born with access to some of their higher awareness, for everyone else it requires years of training and dedication. In this essay we will take our first look at this broad topic from a few angles including how our high awareness develops or is limited as we go through life (we will get into it more in Section 3: Spiritual Development). Having said this, working on personal growth such as clearing life issues and gaining control over our rational mind is a core part of spiritual growth and developing our higher awareness.
The influence of Past Lives
We will start our look at our non-rational aspects by looking at what the awareness we have at the start of a given life. Our true self incarnates due to its desire to become fully self aware of itself and all its aspects, notably of its lowest aspects (physical, emotional and mental) does so many times. With each life it gradually acquires more awareness of these aspects/vehicles. We refer to the point at which it attains full awareness of them as reaching Enlightenment. There is a lot for it to learn. It cannot learn it all in one life as one person for this limits its experiences to that of one particular subjective view.
What our true self "puts down" in a given incarnation is limited to what it needs in a given life in order to learn what it seeks to learn from it. Doing this facilitates its evolution. From our perspective each life appears distinct from any others until our true self nears Enlightenment and we begin to incarnate with some awareness of other lives. This allows our true self to focus on the experiences it has in each of them and what it can learn from them. However, this does not mean each life is independent of all others.
The lessons our true self needs to learn are worked on in more than one life as they are rarely completely learned within a given one. Further, the lessons are rarely independent from one another and tend to become highly entwined and interconnected. We also do not learn them on our own, other people play a role. As a result we often continue to learn a particular lesson or lessons with the same people.
In one life we may be the parent, in another a sibling, child, relative or close friend of those we are working with. In another we may be a different role because to fully learn a lesson we have to experience it from a variety of perspectives. In each our temperament can be quite different. The same thing applies to our abilities to build a good mind or access to the awareness' of our higher self.
In a given life we can have access to higher awareness for a variety of reasons. We many need it for the lessons we are working on, to aid us on our journey or even in part to test ourselves to see whether we have or can develop the qualities needed to use the awareness and do so properly. By properly I am referring to using it for the highest good and benefit of all and NOT for personal reasons such as fame, profit or power.
There are two things I need to make clear. One is that I cannot prove to you we reincarnate, though my experiences fully support this view. You can accept that we do or do not or any variation in between. Second, the influence of past lives on our non-rational awareness and its nature are not easily determinable, certainly not to the layman. Nonetheless, they play a role in determining what lessons we are focusing on in a given life life, what experiences we encounter, the "souls"/people with interact, work and travel with in our lives and the awareness' we inherit.
We have a past life history with many of the people we encounter, especially among our immediate family members, close friends, and those that have helped us along the way even if only for a brief period of time. We share ties or connections with them, and may even be working with them on shared issues from past lives (the results of our and their karma). As a result people we have known in the past play roles in our current life. However, we are here to live this life as the person we are now and should not look back save as a reference when it is relevant. To this end we should begin our growth by focusing on the here and now, and not on following paths from past lives.
Influences from past lives are brought into our current life by several means. The two primary ways are through the circumstances of our birth such as the body we are born into and its genetics along with the place, family, community and so on we are born into and through the energies "put down" by our higher self. We see the manifestation of the latter in the temperament we come into our lives with and various capabilities including the kind of mental house we can construct (mind/ego) and what we are able to perceive.
We do not need to start our growth work by looking back into the past for possible influences. We can start and frankly ought to start it by examining the present, our now. If it so happens that we find past lives influences relevant to our now we can explore them. While most cannot do this on their own there are a number of people skilled in past life regressions that can help, and plenty of literature on the topic is available online. Those that feel the they need such help should keep an open mind and use their developing intuition and awareness to decide if they ought to be looking into a past life or lives as well as in their choice of person to do such important work with. The wrong person can lead to poor or even potentially limiting harmful results such as steering us down the wrong path for us at the time.
So, I will reiterate, our focus needs to be on "the now" as whatever influence a past life or lives is having on us is present in the present. There is an old phrase that I try to keep in mind, one I remember from my early readings though the source escapes me at the moment, and it is as follows “All that was, is or ever will be is here, in the now.”
The early years
When we are born we have the ability to perceive beyond our lower self (mind, emotions and body, but only a very rudimentary rational mind with few mostly unconnected thoughts. As a result, at the infant stage, our consciousness has no vehicle to use. The consequence of this being it has little to no conscious awareness save perhaps those consciousness are close to reaching fully self awareness (Enlightenment).
Our awareness of these aspects does not fade, it tends to be gradually blocked or occluded as our mind develops and we become focused on physicality and thoughts and feelings about our experiences. It is the growth and strengthening of the egos we create that is responsible for our broader awareness fading away. The glare of life does come to occupy virtually all of our attention; however, there are steps that we can take to change this (ex. practicing mindfulness and meditation starting in childhood). It is the development and strengthening of the egos leads to the mental construct we refer to as "our self", the "me" or "I". We come to believe the mental constructs in our minds are "us" and forget we are not our mind.
When our conscious attention becomes focused on the phenomenal world we are mostly living through our mental constructs. This inhibits conscious awareness of what lies beyond its limited to perceive as it is not able to perceive anything beyond phenomenal reality or our emotions and thoughts. The consequence of this is that we become trapped in and limited by our constructs. We touched on this when looked at the limiting aspects of our rational mind.
In the process we come to think we are our minds when it is just a construct our consciousness creates to function here and become separated from ourselves, our consciousness or true self. Our home environments contributes significantly to this. If our home is a happy one where our minds are not filled with a great deal of junk and there is an abundance of caring and compassionate interactions we are more likely build more pristine and clearer emotional and mental bodies. The analogy for this is that it is very difficult to see through dirty windows.
The less strain we experience as we grow up, along with better training of our developing minds, the likelier it is that we will build more balanced minds. Such minds accumulate less mental and emotional baggage. Conversely a great deal of strife, conflicts and negativity leads to lower thoughts and emotions leads to our building a rational mind full of barriers and blocks that keep us from being balanced. These restrictions do not go away when we become adults, they tend to get even stronger as our ego does unless we do something about it.
A significant reason for this is that the egos we build within our rational minds are protective. They come to not like risk or danger, even danger to their own beliefs. The threats perceived do not have to be real either. It could be that new ideas challenge old ones the rational mind has long held and comes to cherish. A poorly constructed mind will cling to and not easily let them go. Again, what our minds believe do not have to be real or true.
Our challenge becomes one of counteracting the mental blockages that arise. We do this through personal growth and in a very real way becoming more childlike. By this I am referring to becoming more open minded by letting go of many of the mental constructs we have created and by using our imagination and curiosity to explore more without and within fearlessly. These traits are important ones to have if we want to develop and then use aspects of our higher awareness. Imagination and curiosity fuel the creation of new thought forms that expand the mind. Such minds create fewer mental blocks and increase our potential to access more aspects of our awareness.
We attract influences based on where we are, so it makes sense that poor mental and emotional development leads to attracting more of what we do not want. This sets up lifelong tasks that put us on a narrow and more restrictive path. We can also help by becoming more aware of the benefits of raising our children to foster the qualities I have mentioned. We all should, and parents in particular, take greater responsibility in how we interact with and what we teach children [(1), (2) (3)]. It is important that parents, indeed all of us act in a positive manner, treat all with the respect and caring and try to work through differences from a loving place.
Development
The non-rational mind, some call it the psychic mind, includes the aspects of our awareness beyond the five senses. Our non-physical self can be developed throughout our lives just as we can with our rational thinking mind. There are many reasons why this has not occurred among humanity as a whole for many reasons. The significant ones are our reliance on facts, being focused on thinking, emotions and physical reality and the fact that exploring non-rational awareness has been and still is considered fake or irrational, a waste of time, taboo or sacrilege in many cultures and religions. We will look at various factors that affect our non-rational awareness. It should give you ideas about which might be relevant for you and lead to insights into how you might change it.
Our external focus has come in part out of the need to take care of ourselves at the physical level. We need to be able to live and function in the everyday world. Our survival instincts have served us well; however, we no longer have the same survival issues we once did. Even though this need has diminished our primitive roots and the flight or fight mechanisms have remained strong. We still use them even where they are not needed. We do this by the thoughts we create when we react to and integrate our experiences due to threat perceived by our egos. Threats can be in the form of objects, people, events, situations, ideas, beliefs or even colours, smells and so forth.
Today, in the western world and much of the rest of the planet, quality of life should be the issue far more than survival. We still need to be able to ascertain threats quickly so that we can deal with them, we just do not need them to rule every aspect of our lives. Should we be considering the threat level of an idea as we would that of someone that appears to be a physical or material threat to us? Does it make sense to use this mechanism for threats to our beliefs rather than our person? The answer to this question should be “of course not” yet we do. One of the consequences of this is that few things hamper our non-rational awareness the way fear does.
Our background is that of millennia of humans. Our collective history and experiences have led parents to push us to grow up, to quit being childish and accept real world responsibilities. The focus is on learning to live in the real world where there are bills to be paid, responsibilities to accept and so on. For the most part adults, including parents, have given up on the fantasies and imagination of youth. They find it difficult to balance the demanding needs of living with the beauty and the wonder of it. We have passed on these types of thought constructs or ways of being for countless generations. Growing up in this context means discarding the illusions of youth. This leads to experiences that reinforce that belief and tends to result in the exclusion, blocking or filtering of non-rational awareness by the minds we create and we build within them.
Now, let us consider how the perspectives people hold about non-rational awareness can affect one’s ability to access them. To start, there are many reasons for society’s resistance to non-rational awareness, much based in distrust and fear of it. Society sets the boundaries on what we do physically through rules of law and conventions around social behaviours and boundaries around what ideas or thoughts are acceptable. This helps to keep the ideas and concepts out of the public domain, in the fringes and hidden from view.
One can argue whether this has been intentional or not though it is moot for the consequences are the same regardless. There is also a belief among many of the more aware that allowing too much knowledge can do more harm than good. While I agree some harm can come of misuse of power, the cumulative lack of awareness in humanity has more or less kept humanity mired in in ignorance. I believe the latter to be more limiting and harmful.
We have advanced technically but still struggle with the same personal and interpersonal challenges we always have. Our natural intuition, empathy and general connectivity to the world around us suffers during the process of growing up, one that has been much the same for thousands of years. Adults still tend to make decisions based on facts alone, and typically trust only objectively verifiable intuition, these are notions supported by some form of formal evidence. The expectation becomes one where we end up having to reasons for anything and everything we do. Living this way replaces the adventures of life and and living with a predictable sanctuary from experiences.
Children explore life with what appears to adults to be carefree abandon. For them everything is new and exciting. Over time we tend to imbed our fears in our children and even each other. Doing so stifles the development of our psychic or non-rational capabilities. We can avoid this, to a certain extent, though as we grow up we rely heavily on our elders for guidance, instructions and examples of how to be, act and so on. Unless we make the choice to do something about it we end up taking on their fears and weaknesses.
It is very difficult to avoid this when we are growing up. We experience what the world presents to us, and unless we have a very strong inborn will or inner knowing (and too few do) we gradually acquiesce. We give up our childish thoughts and ways for those of supposedly rational thinking adults. It is not usually a smooth transition as children strive for their own identities. They push at boundaries, often in direct opposition to their upbringing and see the folly of adults. However, the relentless weight of societal views, the need to prepare for adult life and then get a job eventually wears them down. Experiences and influences tend to gradually turn their developing minds away from intuition, empathy and even compassion for others towards what is often termed the “cold hard reality of life”.
All the same, I do not want to say that our non-rational self does not grow, or that it necessarily regresses as we age. Just about everyone has some area in their life where they allow a little bit of the “unordinary” in. Moreover, life has ways of reawakening what has been silent, what sleeps within. For the most part such experiences are the consequence of becoming discontent with the "normal order of things" or a desire to learn and grow more as a person or from our inner self when it acts to change our life's path. Shifts away from the "norm" can also happen to those who do not seek if their world is jarred by experiences beyond what they previous believed was possible.
Life gives us opportunities to develop as people, to evolve from caring more about ourselves and our needs than those of others. We may learn to get along with others, to discard our youthful rebelliousness or obstinance and become more tolerant and accepting of others. We are at our core social animals and if we pay attention come to realize we need each other to survive and prosper and in the process learn to care more about the well-being of others. Such changes are the result of the gradual development of our character and with it the unfolding of some of our empathic abilities.
Such development is just a taste of what we are capable of. If we pursue a more humanistic lifestyle we start to realize or perhaps remember that we are not just bodies walking around, we are so much more. To expand our awareness, like developing any skill, it takes effort to expand and learn to use more of our non-rational awareness. Effort is one part and another is finding ways to nurture our growing abilities. We must be patient with ourselves as well, and this statement is relevant to how we go about it...
The key to any solution is in patience, not the idle kind that leads to complacency, rather the active kind that waits for opportunity and seizes it.
We all have the capability of developing our awareness whether we are naturally gifted or not. Having the gift does not mean one is necessarily very conscious of it or uses it well. Many with the gift choose to ignore it, let it atrophy or inhibit it. We all work on different things at different times in our lives. If you now choose to develop your higher awareness you can. Like any skill effort is required to become more proficient at it and how long it takes depends on our intent and desire and also, perhaps even more significantly, on the our state of mind.
Inhibitors
There are many inhibitors to psychic development. By inhibitors, I am referring to mental constructs, beliefs and thought patterns, or lack there within the rational mind that prevent, block or redirect our attention or awareness away from the non-physical. The thoughts we create in reaction to experiences created the blocks. They can take the form of fears, thoughts that act like walls or keep us distracted, our noise world that takes away our attention or the lack of thought forms that support it.
Without a means of understanding or at least accepting the non-rational aspects of ourselves and the world around us the rational mind tends to struggle. This leads it to dismiss, ignore, or reason away any threat to its stability. Venturing into any such areas is therefore a threat and to be avoided.
Be these things as they may, everyone can learn to access his or her other types of awareness. People, typically use portions of it at times though it usually goes unnoticed as it comes in a form the rational mind can relate to and accept. We often mistake intuitions for just another thoughts and go with what thoughts surface not realizing their "source", Examples would be the salesperson that uses his skills at empathy with his customers, a very loving person, an artist (be it at painting, music or gardening) or someone who is thinking at a very abstract level.
Some of the main inhibitors to our non-rational awareness are (and we typically have more than one):
- Rigid conceptual beliefs related to our perception of physical reality
- Seeing or thinking of ourselves and others as discreate things.
- Strong ego
- Strong, persistent lower emotions
- Glamour, ego, materialism and self-centeredness
- Restrictive religious or philosophical beliefs
- Strong atheistic beliefs
- Heavy and/or prolonged substance abuse
- Lack of imagination
There is no limit to what is possible. Virtually all limitations lie within our rational mind and since we can modify our thoughts we have the potential to learn to use more of our non-rational awareness. No one can stop us from personal growth and spiritual development except ourselves. Others can certainly inspire or help us along the way but we must do the work and walk the path. It's also not a test and there is no way to copy the ways of others. How far we go is up to as we must enable your own awareness.
Anything is possible with the proper intent and desire. The key to our higher awareness, to our inner power, lies in our imagination. The path to it laid by desire and intent. We can envision what we would like to be, how we would like to be, where we would like to be. Imagination expands the bounds of our rational mind by creating new thought forms and focusing our attention away from the physical world and its limitations. Without imagination, we are simply going through the motions much like Shakespeare’s players on the stage. There is a fire in the human spirit, one that can be stifled if we don't allow it. Like the wild animals we share this world with, we too have the instinct to survive and express ourselves. So long as we do so there is always a chance to change and grow.
Commitment is the key to progression on the path of personal growth or spiritual development. Personal growth is required for spiritual development, though not the other way around. To progress spiritually requires a devotion, selflessness and love. By love, I mean the pure unconditional variety, the kind that enables clear inner vision and helps connect you to the conscious world around you. Being spiritual means learning to work and trying to become more aligned with the Cosmos... which requires dedication.
It is very challenging to live a spiritual life in our busy modern world, though it is wondrous way to live. The challenges come in many forms, you should consider them if this type of life is your intent and desire. There are the distractions that reduce focus and, in a manner of speaking, add temptations; there are the people who we interact with whose issues can pull us in and steer us off course; and changing can strain even the strongest friendships. One must also be prepared to change including, as we shall see, working on our honesty. We can lie to the people we meet, our friends and perhaps and even more problematically... to ourselves. However, there is no escaping the consequences of our choices. The energies we manifest by our actions, including our thoughts, stay with us whether we like it or not; and there are no “do over’s”. We also need to be aware that walking a spiritual path can lead to significant life changes.
There is nothing wrong with focusing on personal growth first first, but if the spiritual path is one you end up taking it is not likely you will be alone as there is always help along the way. Devotion and dedication to a cause manifests strong energies, and if unrestrained by ego and need, they will attract the assistance you need. Try to stay mindful as the form may be unfamiliar or unexpected. Consciousness evolves like everything else. By working in conjunction with our evolution, going with the current, we progress much further than by resisting, though resistance is also a natural part of our development. If we are focused we can break through it.
Do not fault yourself if you would like to do more but find you cannot. Do not see development as a race to the finish, it isn't. It is about you and no one else. So, do not beat up on yourself with condemnation or judgment, this creates blocks or barriers that are not beneficial. Try to forgive yourself for what you do not know or are unable to do at any given moment for “we can only get to places that our experiences arranged”.
Factors that Influence the Development of Non-Rational Awareness
Factors that Inhibit the Development of Non-Rational Awareness
Factors that Enhance the Development of Non-Rational Awareness
© 2009 Allan Beveridge
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Last updated March 12, 2021