Mandy Kahn's Peace Class: AN OPEN MIND IS A MIND OF PEACE
AN OPEN MIND IS A MIND OF PEACE
By Mandy Kahn
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When one says, “I'm not experiencing any peace,” what they are really saying is, “There is no openness in my mind.”
Openness is peace. Empty space is peace. Silence is peace. Availability is peace.
Openness in the mind is experienced as peace.
True openness always fills with that-which-is, which is the unconditional love that built all things, and which never ceases to flow.
Peace is the open space that naturally fills with love-without-end.
And the experience of being an open space that is filled with love-without-end is what we call the feeling of peace.
You are loved without condition. All that is required to feel that love is openness, or availability, or empty space.
And that empty space is peace.
Why do so many say they don't feel any peace?
Because the society we live in fills the mind.
We are taught that it is safer to have a mind that is full—full of preconceived notions, full of assumptions, full of approved information about how-things-are.
We are praised and rewarded for possessing this information, which we call “knowledge.”
But we are not here to develop set ideas about how-things-are. This is an evolving planet. We are an evolving collective. Our bodies are evolving; our abilities are evolving. We are not meant to memorize how-things-are, and focus solely on how-things-are—that simply traps us in a future in which how-things-are becomes stuck, or becomes permanent.
We are not meant to live in a stuck how-things-are. We are meant to step easily from one how-things-are to another how-things-are, like crossing a pond by stepping rock to rock. We are not meant to linger in a single how-things-are-ness. Every how-things-are-ness is simply a step along our paths.
We change, and then how-things-are changes.
How-things-are evolves right along with us. And it evolves towards what is loving, just as we evolve towards what is loving.
How-things-are is a reflection of what we are—or, more accurately, a reflection of what we most recently were. What we just were is what created this version of how-things-are. If we focus on how-things-are, memorizing it and cataloguing it, without keeping much of our minds open, then we are trapped in a repeating loop of how-things-are.
We are here to evolve towards a fuller and fuller expression of our inherent peaceful and loving natures.
All that is required for this natural evolution is a degree of openness.
That which is open fills with what-truly-is. And what-truly-is is our lovingness.
What-truly-is is our ease. What-truly-is is our peacefulness. What-truly-is is a world that acknowledges our peacefulness and our lovingness, and matches it with loving structures and institutions that give us the freedom to pursue our interests and embody our peacefulness simultaneously. That's what truly is.
Openness is far more valuable than information.
Information is a record of what was believed yesterday.
Openness is a direct opportunity to connect with the loving thing that knows, and sees, and comprehends all.
True genius can only be accessed by way of openness. Too much information blocks genius.
Now, a combination of some information and some openness can birth insights of great value.
But our current “information age” can create a situation in which the mind is always full.
A full mind has no space for peace.
Peace is easy to acquire. Peace is empty space. Where peace is desired, one can simply clear space.
It's easy to make the space that is peace within yourself, and within your experience.
All that is required is a conscious choosing.
Openness is yours to choose.
Peace is yours to choose. And it's free.
Information, even if it is acquired for free, has a cost. That cost is that, if there is too much of it, and not enough empty space, one's evolution becomes very, very slow. One can have the experience of being caught in the loop of a single how-things-are-ness for years and years upon end.
Openness aids evolution. And we are here to evolve.
Why are we taught to fill our minds with information?
Because it is believed—and we are taught—that some ideas are “dangerous.” We are taught to fill our minds with approved ideas so that there is no room for “dangerous” ideas.
Only the lower mind could believe that some ideas are dangerous.
The Peace Mind understands that every idea, whether loving or unloving, is simply a reflection of its maker at the moment of its creation.
An unloving idea can exist, and we can be aware of it, and we can simply not choose it.
As we flow through the landscape of ideas, we may pass unloving ideas; when we do, we can choose to send love to the people who birthed those unloving ideas, and we can simultaneously not choose those ideas; we can simply flow past them, gracefully and unscathed.
The belief that an idea could be dangerous steps us out of our power. It forgets that no idea has power without our choosing of it. And we are always free to choose, or not choose, any idea.
When we fear ideas, we trap ourselves in an evolution that is so slow that it feels like being stuck.
When we free ourselves to flow lightly through the world of ideas, then we can most easily and quickly have the experiences that show us who we really are.
And we are beings of love and peace.
That's who we really are.
Openness is the space required for the discovery of who we really are.
We have been filling our mind's space so there wasn't room for unapproved ideas.
But that filling of our mind's space has left no room for the discovery of who we really are.
We have feared new ideas because we were afraid they would not be loving.
Well, unloving ideas do exist, among a never-ending flow of ideas. But filling the mind to disallow certain ideas has disallowed the arrival of the great knowing that we were born to step into.
To evolve more quickly, we have the option of returning open space to the mind.
Silence meditation is a very good way to do that.
Another way to do that is to step away from the fear of ideas.
When we understand that we are here to evolve, and that all evolution is towards an expression of our true nature, and that our true nature is a loving nature, then we don't have to fear ideas.
When we are heart-led, we are not “vulnerable” to an idea. When we encounter an idea, we will be able to feel whether we resonate with it, or whether we do not. Subsequently, we can either choose that idea, or not choose it.
People of peace are empowered.
People of peace are connected to their highest knowing.
People of peace are heart-led. And the heart will never be “convinced” by an unloving idea.
The heart can be surrounded by unloving ideas, and the heart will never choose an unloving idea.
When we are heart-led, there is no more fear of ideas. There is no more walling-out of ideas. There is no more desperate filling of the mind with one kind of idea so another kind of idea cannot find a space there.
When we are heart-led, we simply flow through a landscape of ideas, resonating with loving ideas and flowing past all others.
Our attempt to protect ourselves and others from ideas has had an affect that is the opposite of what was desired.
Some among us have said, “I will fill my mind with information so that I will never have room for an unapproved idea, and so that all my ideas will represent an evolved worldview. To be evolved, I will close out the possibility of unapproved ideas. Only approved ideas can be evolved ideas.” This statement represents a common confusion.
It is empty space that welcomes in a true knowing of who we are, and therefore, a true sense of the direction of our own individual evolution, and the evolution of the species.
Closing out empty space is closing out oneself.
If you are clinging to a set of ideas, you are not at the forefront of your own potential for evolution.
Clinging indicates fear.
Flow indicates trust, connection and clear-sightedness.
This does not mean that, to be evolving, your ideas must be frequently changing.
Here's how openness in the mind works:
If you hold certain ideas as your own, but hold them lightly, and with openness, then, even as you encounter countless other ideas, you will always re-choose your ideas if they are truly those that represent your own forward evolution.
Meaning: you can continue to have your ideas without clinging. You can introduce openness, and you can release your fear, and if your current ideas are still those that most resonate with you, you will still choose them.
If you introduce openness, and if there are ideas out there that better represent the you that you are evolving into, you will continually update with more loving ideas, based upon how much openness is within you.
This is the effect of openness in the mind.
Now, the fun part is that the ideas that you resonate with will also reflect who you are specifically. They will be tailored to your talents and abilities. You will see through the lens of your uniqueness. And you are meant to do that.
When we choose openness, we will resonate with that which more and more fully reflects who we are.
The heart knows why you are here and who you really are specifically. You are a being of peace, yes, but you are not only a being of peace. You are a being of peace with a very particular skillset, and a very interesting history, who is here to use that interesting history and that unique skillset in this time and place. When we engage the heart, we can most easily become exactly who we are, in all our glory and uniqueness.
The heart never leads one into sameness. Only the lower mind does that.
The lower mind carries fear about seeming too different, to divergent.
The heart knows that we are here to be our exact selves.
An open mind is a mind of peace.
An open mind is a mind of tolerance, a mind of creativity, a mind of exploration, a mind of flow.
All that you are here to be is waiting to be chosen by you.
It is waiting in the openness.
We can most easily evolve when we offer our navigation of the landscape of ideas to the heart's leadership.
We are safe in the heart's care. The heart flows us to ideas that are loving, that are peaceful, that mark our own next chapter of evolution.
Fear of the open mind is the lower mind's own fear. The lower mind fears that which has not already been approved.
But the loving ideas that will evolve humanity have not yet been approved because they are brand new.
The lower mind would not accept these world-evolving ideas, as it would not recognize them, due to their newness.
Even if a loving idea is brand new, the heart can recognize it, and can highlight it for you, if you choose to navigate by way of the heart.
In short:
We will only recognize the radical, world-evolving ideas of pure peace for what they are if we are being led by the heart.
Learn more about Peace Class, and sign up to attend here:
- MandyKahn.com— Peace Class
- Eventbrite
- Zoom link to join class, Wednesdays at 6PM Pacific