The mind is a complex aspect of human nature. Its evolution from childhood curiosity to adult convention and ultimately to creative mastery defines how we perceive and interact with the world around us. These stages — known as the Original Mind, the Conventional Mind, and the Dimensional Mind — shape our capacity for creativity, adaptability, and growth.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust.
The mind is a complex aspect of human nature. Its evolution from childhood curiosity to adult convention and ultimately to creative mastery defines how we perceive and interact with the world around us. These stages — known as the Original Mind, the Conventional Mind, and the Dimensional Mind — shape our capacity for creativity, adaptability, and growth.
The journey from an original to a dimensional mind reveals a transformative potential within each of us. By understanding and nurturing these aspects, we unlock the ability to think freely, deeply, and innovatively, blending innocence with insight to reach higher levels of personal mastery.
There are various ways to define them, and I will use a simple way to discuss them and how they can mend our lives. First, let us understand what each of them are.
The Minds That We Have.
The original mind is the mind that we had when we were children, the mind that a child possesses. It is pure, untouched, open to everything, and analyzing, learning every bit that comes inside this mind.
It looked at the world more directly, not through the words that it received, not through the ideas that it received, and certainly not through the suggestions it received while executing any task at hand.
It was flexible and receptive to the new information. There was no filter installed, and no limitation to its learning. This mind is the most creative one there is.
If you give a child a task to do, he will find the most creative way to perform that task. Children are naturally creative. They actively transform everything around them, play with their ideas and circumstances, and surprise us with the novel things they do or are able to do.
As time passes by, this quality of our mind inevitably diminishes. We see the world through the screen of words and opinions that are passed on to us.
Our prior experiences, which have been added to our inventory, apply the Sieve to the information that goes inside our minds. We now no longer look at things as they are, notice them, or wonder why they exist.
Our minds become compact and tighten in their flexibility. We have developed beliefs and assumptions, and we become defensive of them. If they are attacked, we feel hurt and upset.
This is the mind that is known as the Conventional Mind. In other words, this mind is possessed by all the adults.
There are various contributors to the way new think with this mind, like the pressure of making a living and conforming to the rules and laws of society.
We force our minds into ever-tighter compartments, molding our brains to the ways that society wants us to. We lose most of the originality of our minds that was there when we were children. We lose touch with our childhood selves.
Finally, there is the Dimensional mind. This mind is able to use Both the Original mind of childhood and the conventional mind of adults to have creative, novel solutions to real-world problems. These solutions the children can not get (mainly), and the conventional mind is not able to even comprehend. Creative persons are the ones who manage to retain a sizeable portion of their childhood spirit with an original mind.
The dimensional mind is able to add bread and butter to the novelty of the original mind. It is able to focus on problems and ideas deeply, leading to a higher level of creativity, which was limited in the original mind.
What kills our creative force is not age or lack of talent but our spirit and our attitude. We are afraid of new ideas and the efforts that may be required. Our minds become dead because of the lack of challenge and novelty.
The conventional mind is passive; it consumes information and reproduces that information in familiar forms.
The Dimensional mind is active. It transforms everything it takes in and creates something new and original, thus creating instead of consuming.
The Dimensional mind has two requirements:
High level of knowledge of the subject
The openers and flexibility to use that knowledge in new and original ways.
Once the dimensional mind is opened, we become masters, and change becomes inevitable.
Reclaiming the essence of our Original Mind, enhancing it with the Conventional Mind’s learned wisdom, and cultivating the active creativity of the Dimensional Mind empower us to transform our lives and surroundings. It is not age or experience that stifles creativity but our willingness to embrace the unknown and reimagine the familiar.
