The answers to all our questions lie within. We just aren't looking
hard enough. It's time we realized the immense power that lies dormant
within our minds.
As you read these words, your beautiful biological wonder of a
brain is interpreting what these peculiar patterns, arranged in a row,
we call alphabets, mean. Now you are knowingly smiling with the
knowledge of the interpreted meaning. Not only are you able to rapidly
recognize each symbol which creates a word, but a parallel phonetic
pronunciation is being recited inside your head, piecing the words
together like beads on a string to understand the meaning of the
sentence. The complexity of these simple feats that we undertake
everyday, cannot be understood and the magnificent thing that is our
mind, cannot be appreciated, until an effort is made to write an
Artificial Intelligence (AI) software program which can mimic this
activity. The arrogance of strong AI proponents, who once claimed the
mind to be just a software program waiting to be written has been
vanquished. They realized the difficulty, when they couldn't write even
simple programs, which can mimic the most basic human cognitive
abilities. We've cracked the atomic nucleus and landed on the Moon, but
how our brain functions, to make these astonishing feats possible,
remains the ultimate enigma.
Human Brain - The Greatest Enigma
Consider this. An organ weighing just about 3 lbs., with about 100 billion connected neurons making trillions of connections inside, manages to be 'self-aware', imagine, simulate scenarios, adapt, survive, remold its environment to its liking, understand the working of the universe and question its very own genesis! The human brain, the pinnacle of evolutionary process that began millions of years ago, from the first progenitor molecules and unicellular life, is today capable of understanding this entire process on its own.
The once random particles of matter scattered over the cosmos, have been organizing themselves over millennia, through trial and error, to ultimately give rise to the beautiful machinery, which is enabling you to effortlessly understand what I am communicating through this write-up. The stuff that we are made of, was forged in the belly of a star, billions of years ago. All that has gone into creating the marvel that life on Earth is. So, as you can see, we owe it to the cosmos, that we make something of our lives and develop our inner potential. The mind is the most powerful tool ever and to waste its talent is nothing short of a crime. To unleash it, is our responsibility towards the universe.
The brain is plastic in nature and constantly keeps evolving with every experience you undergo. With each new experience, a new synaptic connection is created between the neurons. Our brain is the neatest little information storage and retrieval machine. The stored memories are wholesome, in the sense that information from all our senses, when experiencing any event, are stored together. So when you hear a Mozart symphony, you recall all that was experienced while listening to it for the first time, in the minutest detail. Each new skill that you learn, creates fresh synaptic connections and the more you work on improving, stronger they become. There is a division of tasks among neurons to control and coordinate every one of our actions. The ultimate question is how these neurons, each following simple rules of communication at a chemical level, interact together to create a self-aware entity, which is you. How imagination, cognition and intelligence emerges from this biological hardware, is the toughest question to crack.
Freeing Ourselves From Loopy Thinking
As you can infer, the mind is a highly sophisticated software that is projected by the brain hardware. However, it's different in the sense that both the hardware and software are adaptive to changing conditions. This property of adapting is innate in every kind of organic intelligence. The self aware entity created by this software, rarely learns how to harness its power. In other words, only a few percentage of people learn how to efficiently harness the power of their minds. The reason is stagnation and inherent inertia to change.
Minds stop growing, when we essentially close ourselves out from having new experiences and lock ourselves into a comfort zone, when we trade original thinking for what I call 'loopy thinking'. Like a computer program stuck in a loop or a stuck up gramophone record, we get trapped into fixed thought routines, which play repeatedly in our minds everyday, with nothing new in terms of productivity. With time, loopy thinking reinforces itself so much, that it becomes a way of life. The beautiful machinery of our minds is simply wasted, as we keep running around in loops. To bring about a change, a paradigm shift in our thinking process is essential. It creates fresh synaptic connections and fires up long unused parts of the brain. The analytical left part and the creative right part of the brain swing into action then, to provide us with innovative solutions to our problems.
When you throw yourself out of the comfort zone, the brain finds itself dealing with new challenges and rewiring begins as you force your mind to adapt to the changing conditions. Breaking the rut and dealing with challenging scenarios, you feel most alive and happy. At least, that's my experience. Challenging ourselves on a daily basis is the simplest way of letting our inner potential find expression.
Too muddled with the vicissitudes of mundane life, we rarely appreciate or use the amazing machinery of the mind at our disposal. We go to schools and colleges to get 'educated' and learn skills that may one day help us earn a living. We memorize a lot of important details, learn the ways of the world, get some culture, but rarely do we learn to master our minds and look within to realize its boundless power. Caught in our basic biological drives to procreate, feed and survive, rarely do we contemplate the wonder that is life itself. Tons of efforts are put into sculpting our bodies and maintaining our physical appearances, but the suffering mind within is ignored. It remains inept and unprepared, to deal with the real challenges of life.
The source of most problems lies in our very mind. It wouldn't be an understatement to say that our muddled minds create more than half of our problems. We struggle to put every ounce of our energy in changing our external conditions to achieve that state of mind, called happiness, when the solution lies in transformation of our inner selves, our minds.
Mastering the Mind - An Art
Mastering the mind is an art. A neat and beautiful mind, undistorted, untouched by biases and impulses, a mind capable of seeing things as they are and making the right choice, without letting emotions corrode logic, is a rare thing. Cultivating such a mind requires years of practice in meditation and mindfulness.
Take some time off from your schedule. Try devoting time to meditation. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath and exhale. Look inward. Stop holding on to anything and try to focus on that part of you, which is pure awareness. You get this feeling sometimes when you are just about to fall asleep, while detaching from the external world. Momentarily, during that phase, you enter into pure awareness, independent and detached, calm spreads all over you as you find relief from the constant internal chatter of your voice and the echoes of other voices that keep bouncing inside.
Research has revealed that meditation actually modifies the brain structure, developing the brain centers that promote compassion and peace, while tremendously improving concentration power. When the brains of monks who've meditated for years, were scanned in the lab, they were revealed to be veritable giants, when it came to concentration and focusing on tasks. For hours together, with unwavering attention, they could carry out tasks accurately, with no errors whatsoever. They were revealed to be most patient and cheerful individuals. A remarkable serenity and compassion was radiated by these monks, which is ineffable. Some monks were subjected to violence and made to suffer immensely in the past. Still they harbored no hate towards their tormentors. They had conquered their inner demons to a great degree. Despair, anger, lust and desire had no power over them. These spiritual giants are living proof of the power of meditation and mindfulness.
Just meditating for a few minutes and letting your mind run wild the whole day, is useless. Mindfulness is the art of meditating on every task which we perform over the course of a day. It is about focusing completely on one task at a time. It is about leaving no unfinished business. When we do things mindlessly, without being fully conscious of what we are doing, we create future problems. Instead, if every task is done mindfully, we leave no future traces and carry nothing forward.
As a great Zen master has said, living mindfully, we make a perfect bonfire of ourselves in every moment, burning with focus, leaving no ash trails whatsoever into the future. This way, life is simple. One task, one hour, one day at a time, focusing on the present, we achieve peace of mind. At least, that has been my experience, since I've started implementing this philosophy. It is a tough job. Mind is like a wild horse, bounding into the past and dashing into the future, but with patience, with unyielding persistence, we can achieve an increasingly greater degree of mastery.
Realize that you have the power to stop this inner torment, that you inflict upon yourself, by mindlessly chasing thoughts like a crazy dog running after cars. The past is over and done with, never to return again, stop reliving it. The future will take care of itself. Just stop. Stop searching. Nothing can defeat you, if you don't let it. It's all about the mind. Within you, lies the amazing power to achieve whatever you want to. Believe in it. Conquer the inner world and the outer world is yours for the taking. Not only do spiritual masters advise thus, but our cognitive scientists will tell you the same. Let's not squander the beautiful gift, that is our mind. Look inwards. All the answers are in there, just waiting for you to ask the right questions...
Human Brain - The Greatest Enigma
Consider this. An organ weighing just about 3 lbs., with about 100 billion connected neurons making trillions of connections inside, manages to be 'self-aware', imagine, simulate scenarios, adapt, survive, remold its environment to its liking, understand the working of the universe and question its very own genesis! The human brain, the pinnacle of evolutionary process that began millions of years ago, from the first progenitor molecules and unicellular life, is today capable of understanding this entire process on its own.
The once random particles of matter scattered over the cosmos, have been organizing themselves over millennia, through trial and error, to ultimately give rise to the beautiful machinery, which is enabling you to effortlessly understand what I am communicating through this write-up. The stuff that we are made of, was forged in the belly of a star, billions of years ago. All that has gone into creating the marvel that life on Earth is. So, as you can see, we owe it to the cosmos, that we make something of our lives and develop our inner potential. The mind is the most powerful tool ever and to waste its talent is nothing short of a crime. To unleash it, is our responsibility towards the universe.
The brain is plastic in nature and constantly keeps evolving with every experience you undergo. With each new experience, a new synaptic connection is created between the neurons. Our brain is the neatest little information storage and retrieval machine. The stored memories are wholesome, in the sense that information from all our senses, when experiencing any event, are stored together. So when you hear a Mozart symphony, you recall all that was experienced while listening to it for the first time, in the minutest detail. Each new skill that you learn, creates fresh synaptic connections and the more you work on improving, stronger they become. There is a division of tasks among neurons to control and coordinate every one of our actions. The ultimate question is how these neurons, each following simple rules of communication at a chemical level, interact together to create a self-aware entity, which is you. How imagination, cognition and intelligence emerges from this biological hardware, is the toughest question to crack.
Freeing Ourselves From Loopy Thinking
As you can infer, the mind is a highly sophisticated software that is projected by the brain hardware. However, it's different in the sense that both the hardware and software are adaptive to changing conditions. This property of adapting is innate in every kind of organic intelligence. The self aware entity created by this software, rarely learns how to harness its power. In other words, only a few percentage of people learn how to efficiently harness the power of their minds. The reason is stagnation and inherent inertia to change.
Minds stop growing, when we essentially close ourselves out from having new experiences and lock ourselves into a comfort zone, when we trade original thinking for what I call 'loopy thinking'. Like a computer program stuck in a loop or a stuck up gramophone record, we get trapped into fixed thought routines, which play repeatedly in our minds everyday, with nothing new in terms of productivity. With time, loopy thinking reinforces itself so much, that it becomes a way of life. The beautiful machinery of our minds is simply wasted, as we keep running around in loops. To bring about a change, a paradigm shift in our thinking process is essential. It creates fresh synaptic connections and fires up long unused parts of the brain. The analytical left part and the creative right part of the brain swing into action then, to provide us with innovative solutions to our problems.
When you throw yourself out of the comfort zone, the brain finds itself dealing with new challenges and rewiring begins as you force your mind to adapt to the changing conditions. Breaking the rut and dealing with challenging scenarios, you feel most alive and happy. At least, that's my experience. Challenging ourselves on a daily basis is the simplest way of letting our inner potential find expression.
Too muddled with the vicissitudes of mundane life, we rarely appreciate or use the amazing machinery of the mind at our disposal. We go to schools and colleges to get 'educated' and learn skills that may one day help us earn a living. We memorize a lot of important details, learn the ways of the world, get some culture, but rarely do we learn to master our minds and look within to realize its boundless power. Caught in our basic biological drives to procreate, feed and survive, rarely do we contemplate the wonder that is life itself. Tons of efforts are put into sculpting our bodies and maintaining our physical appearances, but the suffering mind within is ignored. It remains inept and unprepared, to deal with the real challenges of life.
The source of most problems lies in our very mind. It wouldn't be an understatement to say that our muddled minds create more than half of our problems. We struggle to put every ounce of our energy in changing our external conditions to achieve that state of mind, called happiness, when the solution lies in transformation of our inner selves, our minds.
Mastering the Mind - An Art
Mastering the mind is an art. A neat and beautiful mind, undistorted, untouched by biases and impulses, a mind capable of seeing things as they are and making the right choice, without letting emotions corrode logic, is a rare thing. Cultivating such a mind requires years of practice in meditation and mindfulness.
Take some time off from your schedule. Try devoting time to meditation. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath and exhale. Look inward. Stop holding on to anything and try to focus on that part of you, which is pure awareness. You get this feeling sometimes when you are just about to fall asleep, while detaching from the external world. Momentarily, during that phase, you enter into pure awareness, independent and detached, calm spreads all over you as you find relief from the constant internal chatter of your voice and the echoes of other voices that keep bouncing inside.
Research has revealed that meditation actually modifies the brain structure, developing the brain centers that promote compassion and peace, while tremendously improving concentration power. When the brains of monks who've meditated for years, were scanned in the lab, they were revealed to be veritable giants, when it came to concentration and focusing on tasks. For hours together, with unwavering attention, they could carry out tasks accurately, with no errors whatsoever. They were revealed to be most patient and cheerful individuals. A remarkable serenity and compassion was radiated by these monks, which is ineffable. Some monks were subjected to violence and made to suffer immensely in the past. Still they harbored no hate towards their tormentors. They had conquered their inner demons to a great degree. Despair, anger, lust and desire had no power over them. These spiritual giants are living proof of the power of meditation and mindfulness.
Just meditating for a few minutes and letting your mind run wild the whole day, is useless. Mindfulness is the art of meditating on every task which we perform over the course of a day. It is about focusing completely on one task at a time. It is about leaving no unfinished business. When we do things mindlessly, without being fully conscious of what we are doing, we create future problems. Instead, if every task is done mindfully, we leave no future traces and carry nothing forward.
As a great Zen master has said, living mindfully, we make a perfect bonfire of ourselves in every moment, burning with focus, leaving no ash trails whatsoever into the future. This way, life is simple. One task, one hour, one day at a time, focusing on the present, we achieve peace of mind. At least, that has been my experience, since I've started implementing this philosophy. It is a tough job. Mind is like a wild horse, bounding into the past and dashing into the future, but with patience, with unyielding persistence, we can achieve an increasingly greater degree of mastery.
Realize that you have the power to stop this inner torment, that you inflict upon yourself, by mindlessly chasing thoughts like a crazy dog running after cars. The past is over and done with, never to return again, stop reliving it. The future will take care of itself. Just stop. Stop searching. Nothing can defeat you, if you don't let it. It's all about the mind. Within you, lies the amazing power to achieve whatever you want to. Believe in it. Conquer the inner world and the outer world is yours for the taking. Not only do spiritual masters advise thus, but our cognitive scientists will tell you the same. Let's not squander the beautiful gift, that is our mind. Look inwards. All the answers are in there, just waiting for you to ask the right questions...
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