Pathways #7: The Dual Mind Path
**(Smartphone users: Rotate phone to view as intended)**
The Dual Mind Path
Text-based: Reading, Thinking/Postulating/Explicating, Positing
↓↑
(Concept/Idea/Feeling)
/ \
Correlate <- (Activity/Process/Cognition) -> Judgment
\ /
(Concept/Idea/Feeling)
↑↓
Sense-based: Sensing, Speaking/Listening/Evoking, Invoking
The Sensitized Pathway
Subject: Law — Wisdom
(Correlative): (Society) (Nature/“God”)
Correlates: People, Institutions, Self, Ego, Soul,
Cultures, Histories, Mind, Psyche,
Codes Health/Wellness,
Living beings, Family
\ /
Life
(Humanhood)
Experience
People
Literature/Philosophy
Art/Music/Theatre
Science
Cosmology
Spirituality
Concentrations in Zen
(God)
Etc.
I know I’ve said this before, but this, The Dual Mind Path, is actually, very truly, the final pathway. I can tell you that because we deal here, in this pathway, directly with mind, with mind itself, and in a way that finds us back where we started, so that we can complete the circle and everything within it that we began just over eight months ago with The Sensitized Pathway. Furthermore, this final pathway is one shared with us by the originator of the pathways project, the creator of that first pathway. He is back with us to discuss how this new pathway concludes everything developed, crystallized, and shared within the six other pathways, especially in that very first pathway, which we can now consider the “content” or “master” pathway. In this final pathway, we are provided with a formal instruction in and a model of mind. Influenced by all that came after the first pathway, this pathway is linked to all of the content presented in that first pathway so that everything in that, and everything subsequent to it, can be directed toward any individual’s practice of sensing and reading, of thinking and feeling, and of thinking and being no matter which path one sets out upon within the seven.
F.L.: Can you start by telling us all a little bit about your process this time in contrast to that first time eight or so months ago. Last time, you said that coming up with the pathway itself, not to mention discovering the very idea of a pathway as the proper form for what you wanted to develop and share, had gestated and percolated for many years, if not several decades. And this time? Well, we know that you started at the very earliest following the publication of the second pathway, which was submitted by one of our readers about six or seven months ago. That’s quite a difference. Could you describe your process for this final pathway? And feel free to talk about how what was most significant became significant for being something true and valuable about mind that should really not only stand the test of time in and of itself with respect to mind, life, and spiritual evolution, but for bringing together everything here to be of the greatest value possible for as long as the desire or need for something like it exists.
P.T.: First, the original pathway was content-based, which is to say it was meant to realize, develop, and crystallize wisdom from twenty to thirty years of real life. Twenty years searching for what mattered, not always of course but certainly with much time having been spent in search of meaning over twenty years, and discoveries made, insights gained, and distinctions drawn between things that were not all valuable in and of themselves but whose value could then be distilled into a form that allowed value to be discovered in a real content so that this greater value in what was to be realized, understood, and known could be better apprehended and appreciated by anyone and at any time. Twenty to thirty years plus a life itself, memories of childhood, adolescence, trying experiences in adulthood, some relationships that were beneficial or helpful, family tragedies and discoveries of love, trust, and friendship in others, and the reality of some relationships and experiences that were parasitic or toxic, so yes, a life, a real life. That’s the first pathway, content-based wisdom with an emphasis on the subjects, areas, and places in life where one is most likely to find meaning in oneself, to see oneself meaningfully through God and to encounter God through oneself. Others matter too of course, but you yourself is where you always must start and where you always must end up. And it makes sense that it actually took me twenty to thirty years to realize this.
This final pathway of course came after reading, experiencing, and becoming enlightened about a solution to the problem of mind from what others had to share. The problem of mind is that no one can know any one person’s mind better than they themselves can know it, even if they themselves do not yet know it. That’s the paradox. Because they do not yet know it, someone else who teaches it to them teaches them a mind they are learning other than their own. Their mind becomes a mind they’ve acquired, not one they’ve developed in themselves, from themselves, for themselves. I think that is a great harm in our hegemonic and overly “standardizing” culture. Through the other pathways, I began seeing that the problem of text versus experience as based entirely in sense came up a fair bit and it was being resolved in ingenious and laudable ways. So I saw that this was something everyone would be eventually faced with. Your question is, what was significant about the difference between taking decades versus taking months. Well, the material that I had to work with in those seven months was adequate for me to approach mind with the problem I was facing from the perspective of a solution that, without these new strategies I was seeing, and without the way that I was seeing them, I wouldn’t have been able to encounter for myself the problem of mind I had been needing to encounter, much less come up with the solution required, to begin to think toward a pathway of mind at all. And then I came up with, not only the answer, but the problem with such a pathway itself based on what I learned from other pathways, so that the mind presented or taught here could be a mind as natural for others as what the other pathways allowed me to make of my own apprehension and appreciation of my own mind. We all approach mind from these two approaches to mental practice, from reading, interpreting, or “viewing” different realities as text (usually shared with us by others) from which we must then form our own perception, knowledges, and understanding, and from sense experience, which is the greater part of life. These practices implicitly, not explicitly, but implicitly, shape reality, perception, and judgment as these unfold the very paths that make up our everyday lives and our lived realities. However, the problem for me when looking at the issue of developing a pathway of mind for another’s mind was that the text-based approach to practice of mind can involve imperiously imposing a false standard over another’s mind, whether this person has endeavoured to begin developing their mind for themselves or not. I discovered that the advantage of the pathway approach was that it allowed the makers of the other paths to use forms that circumvented this or avoided this altogether. To answer the question more directly, I learned enough from what followed my own beginning pathway, which took twenty to thirty years to form and crystallize, to be able to understand the problem, and to develop a solution to offer an instruction of mind suitable for that initial pathway. And that only took, as you know, five other pathways and seven months.
F.L.: I want to talk about the new and final pathway now. I suppose it’s appropriate that you were the one to conceive of it because you are the one who started us on this journey through these “pathways,” which has been more like a labyrinth than a pilgrimage. And here we are perhaps at something of a centre, at a destination-point. You’ve just spoken about the decision to make it “dual mind.” Can you talk some more about that and then also go over the two approaches to mental practice? Some readers will be familiar with this dichotomous approach to conceiving of mental practice. Others will not. But it is not new. Please explain as you can.
P.T.: Sure thing. As you said, some people are familiar with this idea that the mind can perform well in one of two concentrations or distinct domains of practice, although there are likely more. We see differences in people all the time because of people’s occupations or maybe simply from them having to be especially good at one or several things over all other things. I’ll give the example that’s needed here, the best one for the text-based practice. Professors spend time in the maths and sciences or in the humanities. So they spend a lot of time in a realm of theory and applied methodology, in formal procedure and in dealing with modes of representation of the content of their discipline, and even when they are not in these specialized areas, they must be skilled at and knowledgeable in something like heuristics. So they are always thinking and applying what someone else has learned before them and taught them through what can only be apprehended as “a text,” a second-order representation of what needs to be known and applied in the present instance. This is having a text-based cognitive orientation as a natural fact of one’s daily practice in one’s life. But as for mental activity with respect to the pathways as they are presented, including what you call the “master pathway,” not only is there much content that would require reading and thinking in theory, and simply reading and thinking in terms of what others have read, thought, and written, but there is also a great emphasis on developing one’s own perception, perspective, and one’s very own sense and senses as the basis for developing keener awareness, self-knowledge, and the faculty of judgment as to one’s own experiences, beliefs, and critical insights into everything one encounters simply as an individual. Sense as the basis of knowing is highly important, for it is the basis of intuition. Feeling is also important but feeling is, rather than being something refined, mere “raw emotion” without the mind and self’s development of sense for intuition. Empathy is raw stuff, but through the development of sense, through the development of intuition and feeling, it becomes something more refined like “compassion.” So I didn’t want to neglect the faculty of sense for one’s own refined natural judgment. I’ll just add that these two orientations to mental practice, which can become “approaches” when one is comfortable with either or both (meaning one can develop them to a point where one becomes able to switch between them at will), are universal, meaning anyone can learn them and anyone can learn to apply them. To say they are universal means they can actually become natural to anyone, at any level. And they’ll always be natural to the person practicing. So that is also a benefit to building a model of mental practice from these two approaches to mental practice in particular, that, as I’ve always insisted on in any instruction, a person can start from wherever they are and will require little if any prior experience or knowledge.
F.L.: Thank you very much. I know just from looking at it next to a couple of the other pathways that this pathway is meant to be intuitive in and of itself, to make the practice of mind something people can feel their way through as well as apply themselves to. You use verbs to describe the actions in practice that people are meant to be involved in. For instance, for the text-based approach, people “Read, Think/Postulate/Explicate, and Posit.” How literal are we to take these instructions on the actions or activities as something we actually might or should apply ourselves to doing? Is this merely a suggestive guide or is it meant to be something we follow verbatim? I guess the request I have now is, can you talk in a little more detail about the two sets of instructions at the beginning, about the model’s first staging of the practice of mind on both sides, text-based and sense-based?
P.T.: It is a staging. You are correct. But it also will work. It can be suggestive—but, if followed, it will also aid people in developing a more fluid thought that will make them better thinkers and more intuitive in life. Be gentle with yourself though. Don’t force things. You will become better at anything if you are patient and kind and thoughtful to yourself for being in your own time. One day you’ll simply “have it.” That said, on both sides of the model, we have a staging consisting of three parts. First is “sensing” or, in the text-based approach, “reading.” I don’t simply mean “reading” a book, I mean “reading” something in the world—treating the “world as text.” So you start by “reading it.” But then now you are engaging in thinking or apprehending, or attempting to grasp. I use the verbs I use intentionally. The practice is meant to be a gentle approach but also a progressive or thorough-going approach. The words I’ve chosen I’ve chosen deliberately. They are important because the person’s “feeling” for these words is how they will yield or reap from them. So be aware that “Speaking/Listening/Evoking” means you are “articulating and involving yourself in your own thought by communing with and communicating through your own mind.” Your mind is your source for content, your medium for communication, and your genie for the fruits of what you are discovering. It is “like speaking” and “like listening” but you may not yet have command of your own voice. You may simply find articulated and for discovery what you can grasp to put to the practice of thinking. In other words, it depends on you, at your level of experience and your circumstances. I will say that there turns out to be a universe of what’s possible to put to mental practice to expand and enrich the content of one’s mind and to develop the mind as a ground and resource. This is “listening” not in the literal sense, but in the sense of getting to know what your mind has to provide you with for your purposes of engaging with what you are sensing. Remember that everyone starts at a stage when their mind is not yet fully developed for the technique that they will eventually discover works better for them for what they need. In either case, text-based or sense-based, these are the verbs that I think best describe both an ideal starting point and, if one must abandon the model, an ideal end-point as well. You can’t go wrong with simply sticking to what the model presents. I’ll just add that there is no “political interest” or “sense of justice” anywhere in the model—the verbs I’ve chosen are all politically neutral and they are meant to be “just for all.” For good reason. They are meant to provide the best possible approach to developing thinking, intuition, feeling, understanding and learning, and for highly fluid cognition that will be beneficial for the whole person, rather than toward any tendency to master, navigate, or elevate one set of signs or conditions over others.
F.L.: Let’s keep on the track we’re on, because I want people to understand how this pathway works from the outset. Can you explain to me the stage after that first stage? Why is there a stage for “Concept/Idea/Feeling” at that point. After all, we’ve already been thinking, so why is that there as an additional stage? I find that really unusual.
P.T.: It’s very important that the thinking process undergone so far, in that initial stage, arrive at a “head,” at a “definite point,” and that it crystallize in some way so that the next stage can be attended to by the wayfarer. The wayfarer chooses or discovers or selects a reference, a reference from which to continue on in thought, to go back to that initial stage, or to “cash out” and enter the next and final stage. This second stage is one that is both aided or assisted by the wayfarer and something the brain will be involved in or even “learn to do” naturally. I find thinking is easier and better when the brain does most of the work, but people will initially be hesitant to allow this for what will become obvious reasons. As they are learning, they will have to engage more as themselves in the thinking practice. But the wayfarer must or simply will form “something” at some point, something of reference, a concept, an idea, or a feeling, and that will or can be the matter of interest for them. Now, the arrows point in both directions from the first to the second stage, so this is something ongoing—this is the practice of thinking and feeling or thinking and being together.
F.L.: Perfect. Thank you. And now my final question, which involves the final stage. After you’ve formed the matter of interest, as you call it, there’s the thinking involved before the process arrives at a final destination, the judgment or the correlate. I know this is so important. Can you please explain?
P.T.: Yes. This is essentially where the first pathway meets this final pathway and where the final pathway can become integrated into that first pathway. After someone possesses a matter of reference or a matter of interest, they might engage in a process by which they are less connected to the text or to the initial concern or object of sense. They might choose to enter into an activity like drawing or writing or even going for a walk and observing everything around them. So by activity I mean either further mental activity, which I think should be freer and looser than the initial practice of mind or that it should simply be an activity that will stimulate them in a different way than strictly thinking and feeling or thinking and being. “Process” might mean that also, a broader mental process that refers to all of the brain being allowed or freed to work. So you are either thinking on it further while being away from the stimulus, subject, or object of concern or you are not thinking about it at all but you are open to what the hidden parts of your brain are now freer to develop for you as you attend to other matters or activities in your life. “Process” can also be other ways you are learning how to use your brain, other people’s instructions, other methods, etc. Those might be put to use at this stage also.
The outcome, the product, the realization or even just the expression of the practice of mind I’ve given the terms, “judgment” or “correlate.” You are correct. This is where all the pathways up to this point meet by virtue of this pathway through the practice of mind, but this is where this path most directly connects to the first pathway, The Sensitized Path. In that pathway, I call all the objects under the Subjects that are involved in or forming the aspects or parts of the Correlative, “Correlates.” By “correlate” here, in the Path of Dual Mind, I mean something that you have discovered or learned or created that one can add to one’s knowledge, experience, or understanding of the Correlates making up the Correlative under the Subjects in that content-based pathway. By judgment I mean an insight or even a discovery of something more substantial, of special weight, to which one might then apply one’s judgment that might then be applied to anything in that other pathway, Correlates, Correlative, or Subject. I call it “judgment” because one’s own judgment as to the significance or meaning or value of that insight or discovery will be of the most decisive importance, especially in relation to that first, content-based and -directed pathway, but certainly also in relation or reference to anything within the other pathways.
F.L.: Thank you very much, P.T. We all feel so very lucky to have had the chance to go on this wonderful journey together these past seven months that you began twenty or thirty years ago. I personally thank you for sticking with your path over all those years, a path that you followed through to a very special end indeed. It turns out to be an end not only worth sharing with others but that you yourself have shown can be shared beautifully, exquisitely. Truly our minds are a center, a destination-point, especially worth encountering in a possibly infinite universe.
P.T.: Thank you very much. This has been, and will always be, I’m sure, one of the highlights of my life.