The Awakened Mind

So what does an Awakened Mind look like?

There are some who think they may know.

It is a group of practitioners who have studied the brain wave patterns of many of our great saints and thinkers and have developed a brain profile of such thinkings.

The original discovery of the awakened mind brain wave pattern is attributed to the British psychobiologist and biophysicist C. Maxwell Cade in the early 1970s. Cade measured the brain wave patterns of many healers, spiritual teachers and advanced meditators as well as 300 of his own students. He found a pattern that he identified as a step beyond meditation that exhibits the "lucid awareness" of meditation "coexistent with thought processes". Cade presented his discovery in his book, The Awakened Mind: Biofeedback and the Development of Higher States of Awareness, which he co-authored with Nona Coxhead (Dell, 1979).

Here he stated that the awakened mind state "shows high amplitude alpha accompanied by two side bands of about 30 to 60 percent of the alpha amplitude, continuous and of steady frequency -- one at usually 16 to 18 hertz in the beta spectrum, the other usually at 4 to 6 hertz in the theta spectrum." Of the then current research in alpha he observed, "It seemed that most researchers in this area had failed to note the simultaneous presence of other relevant frequencies... namely theta, beta or even delta waves." 
 
Anna Wise, a friend and follower of Cade continues:

"I had the great good fortune to be very close to Max Cade for most of his early research period. I worked closely with him from 1973 to 1981, and had the opportunity to be part of his early research and discoveries. I developed a complete understanding of the awakened mind both as he saw it through his research and as I learned to experience it within myself.

In 1981, I returned to the United States with Max's blessings and a Mind Mirror, to develop my own work with the awakened mind. I began expanding the research into areas other than spirituality and healing. I measured artists, composers, dancers, inventors, mathematicians, and scientists. I measured CEOs in the boardroom and presidents of corporations. I found that the brain wave patterns of high performance, of creativity, the bursts of peak experience, were the same patterns that the yogis and swamis lived in. I measured the “ah-ha” or the “eureka” experience and found that the brain waves flared into an awakened mind at the exact moment of insight. 
 
The many varieties and forms of the awakened mind, depend on the individual’s own personal development, on his or her intention or need at the time, and on his or her normal signature pattern. Patterns that were mistaken for an awakened mind invariably had subtle forms of bottlenecks or blockages in the flow of information between the conscious, subconscious, and the unconscious mind. 
 
You can keep going here.

I also found music designed to awaken the mind, and brain wave generators, and of course, you need the brain monitors. It sounds a little like Scientology, but on steroids. Obviously, Buddhists chant and ring bells, and Christians sing, and Catholics recite, so the idea of using sound to enhance consciousness is pretty well established. This brain wave stimulation is a new thing though. Couple brain wave stimulation with cyberconnectivity and the superhuman is closer than the next Bruce Willis movie.

Now, I am all for awakening from the dream and for making your brain as good as it can be. That would probably include not leaving the several hundred thousand brain cells that fall on your pillow each night from that bottle of wine the night before. It seems like a good idea to get the best bio-computer communication architecture established that you can ,which could very likely be like this alpha, beta, theta, delta balance that Mr. Cade discovered.

But you also need to look at the contents of your thinking, once your brain is functioning at its peak. Even though it certainly can be argued that this content might be nudged on to greater heights if your brain is hitting on all cylinders, what and how you are thinking seems to be every bit as important as the brain wave signature of your thinking.

Often, before I write, I play the piano, and get my left side working with the right side. I sing and I create. I get attuned to the harmonies and I attune myself. Perhaps my brain wave patterns are close to what Cade found. Perhaps not. Maybe I should get one of those mind mirror things.
This may sound tautological, and perhaps it is.

I think the awakened mind comes from a mind that is no longer asleep.

It comes from a mind that sees the shaped story telling all around it,

And knows that even though it is a nice story,

It is not the truth.

You see through the Media's lies about the War.

You see through the fiction of exporting Democracy

with the killing end of a gun.

You see through those destructive scripts

That pull you down like diver's weights.

You see through the lies in your own life.

You see through the lies in your own love.

You see through the lies in your own story.

You see through the lies in your own thoughts.

You see the lies laying at the core of your being,

And then you become the stalker.

It isn't easy and it isn't pretty.

Then, it all changes.

And the dream falls away,

And the mind awakes.

And it is beautiful.