Addressing The Conditioned Duality Of Heart And Mind

Do we all possess the qualities of a schizophrenic mind?

While Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder, my question does not imply that we definitely have this condition. However, my emphasis here is on the way we think and feel in the various situations of our lives.

Schizophrenia divides the heart and mind and maintains them in a conflicted state.

In a similar manner, for years, people have been conditioned to believe that one can either follow the heart or the mind. Today, I ask you whether you can fuse them or confuse them to be separate forces.

Duality of the Mind and Heart

Most often, the heart conflicts with the mind on several occasions. For instance, a specific job role might offer a very high pay but it is also a highly stressful job. So, an individual may, over time, consider a job role that is less stressful or more peaceful despite a lower pay. At the same time, they will always reconsider their decision, to go left or right! In this case, they cannot remain stagnant at a lower pay due to reasons like continued inflation and added family planning responsibilities.

So, they get conflicted. So, how does one find a solution?

Well, there can be no solution unless one’s spiritual issues are addressed.

The mind says, to work to earn a living despite the odds of a difficult work culture. On the other hand, the heart says, there is no happiness so leave the job. It’s a conflicted state that creates an inner battle. And so, the hardest battle is our internal struggle that occurs when the heart and the mind do not agree with each other.

But why this divorce between the mind and heart?

Here are some instances that prove how we allow this separate to create conflict in almost every area of our lives:

● Career Choices: Your heart might yearn for a creative career as an artist, but your mind might worry about financial stability and pressure you towards a more “practical” job.

● Relationships: Your heart might be deeply in love with someone, but your mind might raise concerns about their compatibility, past behavior, or potential future challenges.

● Major Life Decisions: Moving to a new city, starting a family, or changing careers can involve a conflict between the excitement and passion of the heart and the anxieties and doubts of the mind.

● Ethical Dilemmas: You might face a situation where your heart wants to help someone in need, but your mind raises concerns about potential consequences or the feasibility of your actions.

● Personal Growth: Your heart might desire to try something new, like learning a language or pursuing a new hobby, but your mind might resist due to fear of failure, lack of time, or perceived limitations.

When one experiences these conflicting thoughts and feelings, they’re deeply rooted in the layers one develops over time. These layers are the source of our fears, doubts, anger, resentment, and so on. These layers are what divide the heart and mind while also conditioning a person to behave a certain way in society. But the heart must heal and the mind to let go of the pain from these experiences. This is so that the lesson learned can help fuse the mind and heart to create a better tomorrow. It is also interesting to note how unpleasant experiences can both teach and wound at the same time.

“Our minds and hearts are more divided because of the false barrier we believe exists between them.” ~Krescon Coaches

Learning to decondition the divide

So, why do we have a divide between the mind and the heart? It is mainly due to the way we are conditioned while we are growing up. From childhood to adulthood, the experiences we had with our peers, friends, teachers, and parents, the lessons we were taught at school, and the teachings imparted to us by our parents. All of these and more collectively conditioned us to become individuals with different belief systems.

However, these belief systems are what change our natural impressions of the world into conditioned impressions. Our inner judge talks not from the point of innocent awareness but conditioned ignorance.

A 40-year-old adult may say that he or she still fears talking to people because their school teacher once humiliated them in front of the whole class for reading a text incorrectly. Or, they prefer spending more of their time in solitude because they’ve often been finding it challenging to make friends.

A younger adult may say they don’t want to get married because they are afraid that their married life might not work out. Their parents didn’t have a successful marriage so neither will they so why bother trying?

Yet another might reveal their hesitation to try anything new in life because of the time they were punished for exploring things.

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” ~Buddha

Therefore, we must decondition ourselves so that we can learn to live in the moment rather than carry the baggage of conditioning. Imagine passing your conditioned mind through an X-ray baggage scanner. What baggage and past conditioning would show up? The extent of our deconditioned minds would show up and we would identify the level of deconditioning that’s required.

● So, our first step is to identify that we have layers.

● These conditions compel us to think and feel a certain way.

● This form of conditioning percolates through all the aspects of our lives.

● We act according to it and let our inner judge get influenced by it.

● Our inner judge forms conditioned impressions, neglecting the natural impressions.

Once we take the first step of realization, we have to minimize the impact of our expectations, assumptions, and desires. It’s all about the inner work we do in trying to either heal ourselves or unlearn the lessons that were so rigidly fixed within us. You must know that even though this might be one of the hardest lessons, they are certainly the most rewarding.

Only when we learn to decondition ourselves, we can fuse the heart and mind rather than confuse their roles. Furthermore, we can open ourselves to unconditional love. In this process, we recognize the heart and mind as one where they no longer appear conflicted. The layers are removed, we are de-conditioned from the limiting beliefs we once held, and are open to new experiences with childlike innocence fortified with awareness rather than ignorance mixed with innocence.

Brooklyn Job accurately describes the consequence of a conditioned mind in this poem: