August 3, 2018. Life in today’s world often poses significant challenges. We live in an era where there is a constant demand on our time and on our attention resources. In our personal and our professional lives, we have to cope with an overload of information that requires us to constantly engage and respond to people and to situations outside of ourselves. We are often left feeling overwhelmed with stress and strain.
As a result, more and more people are turning to alternative and complementary health practices to support their mental, emotional and spiritual health. According to a recent US National Health Statistics Report published in 2015, about 21 million adults in the US practice yoga while about 18 million adults practice some form of meditation as alternative and complementary practices to aid their health.
Baridu provides opportunities to learn mental and spiritual skills that can serve as complementary health practices to increase our effectiveness in our day-to-day doings, to improve our ability to cope with the stresses and emotions of daily life, and to expand our spiritual awareness. One way to improve our engagement with life in the modern world is to become aware of the power of mind. It is with our minds that we think, organize ourselves, make decisions, observe, interact with and otherwise organize our reality.
But what is mind? Conventional scientific thinking equates mind with the conscious processes occurring in the physical brain. Although the brain is almost certainly the most complex organ in the physical body, is the mind really in the brain? Psychologists further complicate the notion of mind by classifying mind into conscious, subconscious and unconscious components all of which play different roles.
Then there are those spiritually oriented thinkers who not only refute the notion of mind limited to the brain but actually consider the brain as merely a “switch box” for the real mind. To them, the real mind is actually a field of energy existing around and interpenetrating the physical body. These spiritually oriented thinkers liken the brain to a radio, with the real mind sending “waves” to the brain. In this analogy, the voices coming out of the radio are not native to the radio but are rather transmitted to it.
Suffice to say, the notion of mind is complex. In this brief article and the next few to follow, I will not settle on any specific notion or definition of mind. Rather, I will focus on some practical ways we can train certain aspects of mind as earlier discussed to improve our personal and professional lives.
I will introduce 10 short practices which can help you engage more with your conscious mind. These practices can help you gain greater control and use of this aspect of your mind.
These are not practices I created. Rather they derive from established spiritual traditions I have encountered over the past fifteen years of my own mental and spiritual training and development.
I have personally benefited from using each of these practices. In coming communications, I shall expound upon each one of these 10 short practices in greater detail. I shall make connections with the traditions the practices derive from. I shall explain how they have been beneficial to me and how they may be beneficial to you.
The 10 short practices are listed below. Stay tuned for more on these!
Observing thoughts
Controlling thoughts
Dissolving thoughts
Structured thinking
Manifestation through visualization
Strengthening memory
Mind mirror
Contemplation
Concentration
Meditation