Name: The Protective or Negative Mind
Key Word(s): Protection, containment, obedience.
Key Saying(s): Longing to Belong.
Guru: Guru Angad – Known for his obedience, discipline, and endurance.
Question(s): Can I determine if there is danger in a situation? What do I need to consider? “In my urge to merge, in my need for completion, can I calculate the danger in a given situation?” as per Nivair Singh Kahlsa.
In “The Ten Light Bodies of Consciousness” by Nivair Singh Kahlsa he gives a brilliant example so one can truly understand this body and the next two. Usually taught in a bundle are the three mental bodies: the Negative or Protective Mind, the Positive or Expansive Mind and the Neutral or Meditative Mind. They all work together.
If all your Minds are acting in balance, what will happen is first the negative mind kicks in. It’s trying to tell you some useful information about what is going on and what you might want to look at before making a decisions. Then the Positive mind will kick in with all the good stuff that we can get enthusiastic about and hope for. It will tell us what might be, the greatest possibility. After that the neutral or meditative mind will move into action. When it comes into action we are able to make a wise decision based on the information from both the positive and negative minds. This entire process will last less than 8 seconds inside your mind.
When the minds are not in balance then we can get stuck in either the negative or positive minds, which will influence our lives accordingly. Here’s the example of how it might look according to Navair Singh Khalsa.
You are trying to cross the street. If you were to attempt the crossing of the street but you can’t do it because your Negative mind takes over you might have fear come up attached to the thoughts: “Well, if I cross the street, this might happen, or this might happen. I might die. My mother said to never cross the street because this might happen or that. It’s really not a good idea to cross the street.” So you set up camp there, constantly overprotecting yourself, fearful of the risks that are inherent to life. You do need to cross the street – and its not nearly as big of a deal as your Negative mind likes to make it out to be.
This is the body where boundaries are looked at as well. Boundaries in relationships to others. This is the body where the longing to belong each of us has resides. This longing can cause us to rush into relationships, or to stay in unhealthy relationships without setting boundaries. In the highest expression this “longing to belong” will drive us to connect with Source (or Universe, or God, or whatever it is you want to call that big nameless thing most of us acknowledge in some way).
The second body will help manifest your creativity stemming from the Soul body into the physical. It helps do this by giving us patience to create, discernment in the creation process and the ability to create our ideas into reality.
The Negative mind is a very helpful body in the way that it gives us very important information we need to protect ourselves. It helps us look at how we could be effected in harmful ways and defend ourselves from a space of wisdom. It can overtake us though, and leave us camped out on the side of the road, never crossing the street.
It can also be under functioning in which case you can become overly influenced by others, can’t seem to stay centred, and can enter self-destructive relationships.
How to Balance: Value discipline. Develop conscious relationships. Strengthen the positive mind. Meditation for negating false identity.
Resources: From my understanding, Yogi Bhajan taught about the ten bodies sporadically over many years of teaching. He didn’t teach a class on the Ten Bodies. Various students of his have collected the information I will be presenting to you here, namely from the The Aquarian Teacher Instructor Manual Level One and The Ten Light Bodies of Consciousness by Nivair Singh Khalsa.
