by Yogi Bhajan: You have fashions and faculties in your mind. Your fashion is how you decide to look, act, and be; how you want to project your self into the world. You can be a person of spirit, a person of great mental intellect, a person of brute force, a healer, or a leader. Your faculties are the functions, aspects and projections that give you abilities. To excel and enjoy life you need to enrich your mind. You must blend and use different combinations of your mental facets to support you and your intentions. When your faculties support your mental fashion and your fashion supports you, you become effective and share a legacy that inspires others.

We have discussed three major faculties of your mind: Negative, Positive, and Neutral. Each has its own function and nature. They combine in different ways to support or to block various mental projections. The Negative Mind is your first and fastest. It interacts with your thoughts first. It is a protector developed to preserve your life. It can give you a powerful self-understanding and detailed critiques of your actions. It can tell you what is wrong, what might be harmful, and it can locate problems to be solved.

The Positive Mind seeks out what is useful and what can be of benefit. It is results oriented and proposes many solutions and possible avenues of action.

Then you have the Neutral Mind. It is a subtle mind that looks at all positive and negative Facets, assesses, and finds the depths and implications.
Three minds are very essential for excellence in your life: the Applied Mind, Creative Mind, and the Executive Mind. Each is unique in its particular combination of faculties and Facets. The Applied Mind seeks out the Positive Mind’s solutions, but limits them to what is directly applicable to your goal. In this way it is strong, extremely simple, and achieves results quickly. It also prevents overloading that can occur if the Positive Mind spins off on its own freely. A refined Applied Mind is a great asset to accomplish much in your life. If you have converted part of your Positive Mind to the Applied Mind, then the thoughts released by the Negative Mind go to the Positive Mind. The Negative Mind is substituted by a positive attitude, and the Applied Mind solves its problems. You cannot be depressed or blocked. Besides the Applied Mind you have a subtle and very powerful mind—the Creative Mind. It is a sweet little thing. Its source is so potent it gives you a direct intuition. It is original and unique.

With all these minds you have another—the Executive Mind. It is a Projective Mind. It moves actions and resources. A lot of people fail because they can’t or won’t decide things. They hesitate and lose the timing or become doubtful and lose the leadership. They will discuss things, shuffle papers, and plan. The Executive Mind decides in seconds. When you have difficult decisions, like a surgeon dealing with life and death, this mind is essential.
Your mind is designed as a preparatory system to guide and aid your life. It is a power to gather your resources and shape your behavior. You can refine the mind, its Facets, and all its combinations. Then you can act effectively in your Executive Mind, Creative Mind, Applied Mind, and hundreds of others. But you must train and refine the mind to give you those Functional Minds that serve you and your soul.

The greatest thing you can do is rise in the early morning and do a sadhana—a practice to energize the body and refine your mind. Most of us rebel and go crazy rather than get up early. There are two special time zones, when you have to enrich your mind: one in the morning, from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m., and one in the evening, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. These are natural moments that have a tide of energy within you and without. The sun and Earth have a special relationship and angle at those times that affect your mind and your energy.

Have you seen all these people who drink, who search for a partner, and who look for drugs? They start the search in earnest, or have the urge to do it, after 4 p.m. Why do they need drink? Why do people feel they need to take drugs? Do they drink to relax? No. So why do they drink? They do all that out of an instinct to seek stimulation. At those times their biorhythm has gone down, and they feel irritated. They cannot exist like that and have to have a change. Eating a lot of meat just adds to the body’s uric acid that acts as a very powerful stimulant, though it is a harmful force. And adding liquor damages the liver, but it still feels like a stimulant. Without stimulation at that time people are angry. They act lousy, lazy, and leery. Why? What is behind this phenomenon? The root cause is that your basic biorhythm of energy, your mental projection and strategy are not reflected in a unisonness of character. Those zones are natural times that shift your energy level, your mental projection, and your performance. That is the time you must direct the mind, refine it, and create a consolidated unisonness of character and projection.

Why won’t you use that time? Why not rise in the twilight of early morning and prepare yourself? You sense the change in energy, why not elevate yourself and refine your mind and its faculties? You don’t even get up just to face a problem that bothers you. The fact is, you are a part of this cosmos and the cosmos is part of you. You open your eyes to face the universe and all of its problems! And you do not want to accept this. You are too insecure to face this reality. You revert, invert, and divert your mind to not look. When you open your eyes, don’t open them to see how to be rich. Open your eyes to be able to make people rich. Don’t open your eyes to become wise or gather knowledge. Open your eyes to make other people wise. Become vast and remember that you are a part of this entire cosmos. It’s a cosmos that should be served by you and the legacy of your wisdom, love, affection, sweetness, kindness, and your compassion and caring. Train your mind to relate to your totality and to act without fear.

Your mind vibrates and will deliver your thoughts. It has a mechanism. The shushmanaa, the central channel of the spine, connects to the shashaaraa, the crown chakra. Each projected thought will vibrate a thousand in return, and those go to the cosmos like an indelible record. For each negative thought, you have to face one thousand negative thoughts. For one negative action, you’ll have to face the impact of one thousand negative actions. But you don’t know your mind and its Facets. The result is someone is rude to somebody. Someone doubts and mistrusts somebody.
Why? For each disrespect, you’ll in turn not be respected. This lack of grace, mistrust, and abuse is a habit. You did not train your mind to realize you are here for only a few years and have a chance to serve, touch, and leave a legacy for all. God has trusted you and respected you enough to give you this body and to put two of you together in this huge world. What is there to trust or not trust?

Will you live isolated, mistrusting, and small? It is against your nature. Problem is not whether you will live and how rich you can be. The problem is how much impact you have, how many legacies you leave, how much grace you show, and how much vastness you experience. Will you die like a little worm, burrowed in the earth, where no one, not even a grandchild, will remember you and have thanks? That is a choice. That is why you encounter the mind. That is why you rise in the twilight to become a huge light!

A human who by God’s Grace has a face, but who cannot or will not face all of life, is the worst of all incarnations on this Earth. Everything, every animal, both the hunter and the hunted, communicate with each other, except humans. It is most shocking. It’s very surprising. Have you seen two rams fighting in the mountains? Everyone knows they are fighting, and the best one will survive. There’s no sneakiness in it. If as a human you train your mind to make every action sneaky, you will not have a face and live with your grace. If someone calls, “Oh, tell her I’m not home, not available.” Thank God, with modern answering machines you don’t have to face anyone at all. This pattern of fear and lack of mental refinement is called Diagonal Self-destruction. It is a mental phenomenon. You get on a pedestal, a status with face, and you act to split it right through, diagonally down. Once you do this you will never, ever rise again. That’s the way this world is. That’s how the world of the mind works.

Just open your eyes, train your mind, and do your actions. Your actions will tell you how near or far you are from God. Be direct and face up to your own Infinite vastness. Have vastness as an attitude. Don’t sneak, hide, and avoid the crown of soul and body God gave you. Anyone who has no sense or attitude of vastness, no mental refinement to see the vastness will at any moment, for no reason, prostitute his own grace, and lose life, leadership, and legacy.

When you acknowledge your vastness, you have manners. Your mind supports your projection. The evidence of that is love. Love is the living power of Infinity. Where there’s a love, there’s no question. Where there’s a question, there’s no love. It is beyond your mental corruptions and calculations. If you say, “I love you,” then that’s it. Stop there, the matter ends. But you don’t love. Oh, yes, you can have sexual, sensual love and public, social love. You do have the love of money, the love of this thing and that thing. You love to collect things. You have so many loves. But what about love pure and simple, vast and clear? You can not even sense that you are the most deceitful, disgusting human beings when you use the word “love” for a bait on a hook. Even animals don’t do that. At least they are pure, with strong passions that are straightforward and simple.

That is where your curse is. Your mind locks into its Negative Mind, all the way. It is not linked nor refined. Then by reflex you compete, compare, and you become confused. You ignore your real impact and nature and you act rude, crude, and obnoxious. You act without self-control, without self-grace, and with no self-esteem. You can have lot of degrees, tons of money, astounding muscles, and be very sharp and quick. You may be superhuman in all these respects, but you will not have superior graceful manners because you are still mentally defunct. If you have not established some vastness in your attitude, then your habits and facets, your fears and pettiness will betray you.

An old saying assures us that if you put a dog on a throne and a crown on its head, the moment he gets a chance, he will go lick the grinding wheel. He can’t help it. It’s the habit of a dog, just as your corruptions are habits of your mind and its Facets. If your mind is crude and attached to the Earth and abandoned by you at the twilight times, then it doesn’t matter how many buildings and how many banks you have. With all your billions, you still will eat only two chapatis [a flatbread]. And if you didn’t care for your teeth and you don’t chew well, you will still have a stomach problem.

What is the cure? The protection? This is the secret of the mind enriched by vastness and the secret power of the devotee who trained the mind. The mental world within you has to be one world in unison. All 81 Facets of the mind must reach to the best—not good, not better—to the best. Then the three Minds—Negative, Positive, and Neutral—act on that to serve you to be the best. And over all those minds there is your awareness that controls and supervises the mind. It assesses if it happens to be the best, real, and whole. Finally, you can surrender your mind to your spirit. When you will surrender your mind to your soul, then the soul will make God surrender to you. Don’t react in doubt, guilt, or insecurity. This is a truth. The Bhagats said it this way:

myrI bWDI Bgqu CfwvY bWDY Bgqu n CUtY moih
Mayree baandhee bhagat chadhaavai, baandhai bhagat na chutai mo-eh
-Namdev, Siri Guru Granth Sahib, page 1252
A devotee can release anyone from My bondage,
but I cannot release anyone from his.

If the Infinite wants something, a devotee can change it. But if a devotee says something, then God cannot undo it. The devotee is merged in that vastness, relies on it, and has no barrier of ego between the two. So the One must stand for the one. Each thought and act stirs the universe and many subtleties occur. They seem like mysteries, but they are masteries.

Once a sadhu, a wandering holy man, had absolutely nothing to cover his body except a little piece of cloth to put over his private organ. He was walking and somebody saw him. He stopped and said to him, “Hey, Sadhu, this is lunch time. Will you walk with me to my house and let us feed you?”

He replied, “Okay.” The sadhu came. He was served and fed well.
The wife of the house came in. She said, “Hey, Sadhu, you don’t have any clothes on your body. If I give you these clothes, will you wear them?”

He said, “Fine.”

Then the son came home. “You must have shoes. I have these beautiful wooden shoes. Take them for your journey.”

He said, “Okay.”

Just as he was going, they all said, “You are a holy man. You have come to our house. You cannot go empty handed. Here are one hundred and one rupees. Please accept them.”

“Okay,” he said, and left.
Everyone thought, “I wonder who he is? Why did he come this way?”
The father said, “When I saw him, I had a feeling. I had to bring him.”
“We had a feeling, too. We respected him. We felt we should serve him.”

That night as they slept, gangsters and ruffians came to loot the village. Their habit was to shoot guns and make a lot of noise. Five or six of them came on top of their roof. They heard a great racket and gunfire. Six bodies fell right from the skylight opening used for ventilation. The family was saved. No one was injured. In the morning, the police came. They took away those six bodies. The family was grateful and also a little upset.
Three days later a man walked by. He looked like a wise man and a pundit. The father from that house stopped him and told him, “I have a problem.”
The pundit said, “What is it?”

He said, “Those bandits came and shot each other right on my roof. It is their habit to always shoot the guns. How could it happen that they shot each other and all fell dead?”
The pundit asked, “Do you believe in the words of Guru Nanak?”

He said, “Yes.”
Then the pundit recited,

krmI AwvY kpVw ndrI moKu duAwru
Karmee aavay kaparaa nadaree mokh duaar
-Guru Nanak, Siri Guru Granth Sahib, page 2 (4th pauree of Japji Sahib)
Each mortal obtains a human body as the result of good deeds,
and reaches the gate of salvation by God’s kind look.

He asked, “What did you do in the morning? God put a shield over your actions and redemption came to you through His sight.”

He said, “We did nothing special. We did bring an old sadhu to the house and clothed and fed him.”

The pundit smiled and said, “That’s it. One noble action makes God give back one hundred thousand noble actions to cover you. It’s a law.”

Your mind is not a joke. This mind of yours is a part of the Master Mind, the Universal Mind. That Master Mind is the custodian of the Almighty’s force. In the Almighty’s force, you are also a force. What can you do? Who are you? What is your concept? If you are not intermingled with that vastness, if you have not absolutely surrendered yourself into the Totality of this existence-life, then you will feel very independent, lonely, confused, and live a cursed life. You will have no following, no students, no trail of impact, and no tale for a legacy. You will be just one person—born, and died; that’s it. You never came out. Your ego, fears, and commotions are a cocoon, you will never hatch, blossom, and be beautiful.

That cocoon is woven from your habits—your mental patterns. You are such a slave of your habits, that you can never free yourself. You are so bound and stitched into your neuroses, you will never feel free. Your judgement will be biased; your words will be biased; your social relationships will be biased; your projection will be biased; and your living will be biased. Your facets and reactions will limit you. The tragedy is that everybody knows it, except you who thinks it is hidden. It is only the egomaniac who doesn’t know. Every one else in every realm of consciousness does know.

Without vastness and an enriched mind, you entangle in earth and try to have everything and end up with nothing. Husbands fight with wives. Father fights with the children. Children fight with the mother. There’s no familiarity, no capacity of connection. You do not develop anything and there is no depth.

Where is your kindness, tolerance, compassion, and humility? You come, you live, you die. Dust to dust. Have you heard the priest say that? “Heavenly Father, we go dust unto dust.” You will never hear the priest say, “Heavenly Father, our dust is going to the heavens.” He can’t say it. And he doesn’t know how to make it. The one power and gift you have from the Almighty is the mind. When the mind is enriched, when the mind has all the 81 Facets together, that mind which has all the projections together is capable of Infinity. Mind is the only power you have which is positive, and can be definitely finite or definitely positively Infinite. It can reach both ends of the pendulum.

When you enrich your mind you can break the slavery of low habits and ego. You can act as part of the entire cosmos and learn to elevate and to let go. Everything you hold onto, that you feel you possess, that is not a gift creates a karma, a debt. What is it you can give in life? When your mind is subtle, what can you give? You can give money, advice, a job, and many things. But that giving in itself is worthless if it has expectation with it. The only thing you can truly give someone is forgiveness. For the sake of giving, forgive. If you have an iota of refined mind, forgive, and forget it. Act from your grace, manners, and awareness, and trust the hand of God. You can not understand and master the mind without this knowledge of yourself, your reality, and your spirit.

There’s a beautiful story about Guru Gobind Singh, the Tenth Guru of the Sikhs, that shows the reality of karma, the power of the mind, and the beautiful sophistication of dharma. There was a businessman who was also a very good devotee. He had succeeded in a great business venture. His big trade fleet produced a profit of a hundred thousand fold. He went to the ruler of that area, a Muslim Nawab. He told him, “I have brought all these presents for you.” The ruler was very happy and said, “My friend, you always give me so many presents and so much love. Tell me honestly what I can do for you. Tell me and I’ll do it.”

He said, “I’m a businessman but I have a Guru, Guru Gobind Singh. I want to present him with the best swords, shields, arrows, and horses. They should be even better than your own best.”

The ruler said, “Do you know how much money you are talking about?”

The merchant said, “Yes. I can give it to you in advance now.”

The ruler said, “No, that’s not the deal. I’ll get you everything you can imagine. It will be the best of the best. But five percent of it shall be for my efforts.”

He said, “Fine. Done.”

It took six months. Everything was forged and created as the strongest, best, and most artistic. The merchant took many carts loaded with everything. He came to see Guru Gobind Singh. He went as a real devotee with humility, head bowed, and arms outstretched. He asked for permission to stay a month or two and enjoy the company of the Lord. The list of gifts was given to the Guru who said, “They should be put in the storeroom.” When the merchant opened his eyes to see the Guru’s face, he witnessed something funny. The Guru had a pigeon in his hand and a wild hawk was tearing the flesh from it as the Guru sat. That shocked him. Seized by feelings, he immediately said, “I must be permitted to go very soon. I won’t stay the two months you graciously granted me.”

The Guru said, “So be it.”

As the merchant left and passed the gate, Guru called to Bhai Daya Singh, “Bring this guy back.”

When he returned the Guru said, “Do you have doubt about something?”

The merchant said, “No, Sir, no, no my Lord.”

The Guru said, “But there must be something. You planned to stay two months and now you can’t stay even one day? Speak directly.”

He said, “My Lord, your hawk is always well fed. It needs nothing. And this is a wild hawk torturing this poor pigeon. A hawk can hunt the pigeon and do it, that’s natural. But you are helping and tearing this little meat and muscle and feeding the hawk yourself. That does shock me. Now, I’ve no doubt you must do it for some purpose.”

The merchant spoke with emotion and duality. He thought something had gone wrong. But he said, “Lord, whatever you are doing is perfect. You know all. You are Omniscient, Omnipotent, but I just had this thought.”

The Guru said, “Why don’t you ask these two birds what the problem is?”

He replied, “My Lord, how can the hawk and pigeon speak?

The Guru said, “Both are alive yet. If you just ask them, they will answer you.”

The man gathered his devotional feelings and bowed with palms together toward the birds. He said, “Oh, hawk and pigeon, please solve my problem.” Both spoke with one voice, “There’s no problem to solve. Who the hell are you?”

He said, “Just tell me what is going on?”

The birds said, “We’ll tell you what is going on. I used to be Sikh So-and-So, and he was Sikh Such-and-Such. I went to him and asked him, ‘Give me some money on loan.’ We both witnessed it and then put the Guru as a witness to it. The Guru was our Guarantor. Then Such-and-Such died. I decided not to return that money to his family. Then I died. Today I’m a pigeon and he’s a hawk. He wants my meat to clear the debt. I tried my best to escape but he caught me. I requested, ‘Take me to the Guru because we agreed the Guru is the Guarantor. In his presence we’ll ask him to return that loan of mine.”

They said, “We are just settling the account. Why are you so upset? What makes you so disturbed?”

The merchant said, “But you are alive and life is sacred.”

They said, “Life? What about all those lies which we did? We have to deal with those, too, or how can we be free?”

They were more concerned for their awareness and karmas than just holding life. When karmas remain so do you. Karma has to become dharma. Dharma is where the account is cleared. It is where your discipline and commitments make you positive and graceful. Then you break out of your cocoon and become a leader, elevate all and leave a legacy. That ability to turn negative into positive, to support all your actions with your facets and manners is the result of meditation. It comes with the refined mind. It is what develops through sadhana and aradhana. Through jappa and discipline.

When you stay in your own ego, the other person will find that you are only for your self. You are empty and have no world. These types of people have minds which are very negative, fearful, and cannot think positive, let alone neutral. This universe, this life, this body, and you are not a curse and not a mistake. By the Will of God you are in that image and have earned a life of grace, glory, and greatness. That is what you are born for. We only forget sometimes to be vast. We become too near and personal and have contempt for teachings, teacher, and the world. Just forgive, excel, and lead with grace to leave a legacy of kindness and compassion.

Give this prayer with me: God, give me the vastness, the courage so I can be kind. Give me the strength so that I can serve. Give me the wisdom so I can be positive. Give me the nature so that I can be compassionate. I ask Thee in Thy Name to uplift me my soul so I can serve all in Thy Name.
Sat Naam.