The High Road or the Low Road?


The title for this article is taken from one of my favourite Scottish songs and seems like a fitting title for a web site called the the PATH.

In some of my writing it may seem that I am having a go at the mind or intellect and encouraging people to deny it or in some magical way dismiss it. There is no doubt that the mind is the essential tool to achieve our goals and purpose and I don't mean to dismiss it altogether. The reason I encourage people not to take their mental agendas for granted is because the mind is not the final arbiter of truth and really only knows how to swing between the many opposites that life offers it day to day. We can swing between elation and despair, expectation and disappointment, desire and satiation. And that seems like an acceptable lifestyle if we haven‘t had a glimpse of the eternal Self that lies behind the minds fluctuations or are yet to be convinced that desire is essentially a case of being driven by transient factors in our lives. 

In order to return home to our native state in the One Life there has to be a decision about how we use our minds. Do we use our mind to pursue the many desires that emerge like bubbles from the ocean floor, or do we direct it towards the Soul and the values of the Self, such as patience, forgiveness, rigour, gratitude and enthusiasm?

It can take a lot of gruelling experience and no small amount of suffering to become less enamoured of the materialistic focus,  because the pull of the non-self is very strong on this non-sacred planet of ours. The final choice as to which road we take is made by the ego. When the mind surrenders its belief that it has ultimate control and invokes the light of the Soul, then that light can enter into the mind and “enlighten” it. This enlightened mind is the higher mind, the high road.

However, when the lower mind clings to its individual existence and pursues separative and materialistic agendas, then it tends to absorb some of the darkening qualities of nature. Then like Br'er Rabbit grabbing the Tar Baby, the mind becomes more bound to the factors that are transient and unreal and this leads to crystallization, confusion and inertia.

As the mind becomes more enlightened it develops a transparency and its function gradually becomes that of a clear channel through which the qualities of divine will, intuitive love and creative intelligence can flow and enlighten the world. It allows us to become that light unto others that the great teachers of mankind have exemplified. Light is a powerful factor in life and attracts all life forms towards it.

It does not matter that we haven’t reached the full state of enlightenment yet for it is an experience of divine grace to have even felt the urge to do so. Its enough that we have started the journey by having chosen the high road.