The Power Of The Mind Is Something To Be Mindful About
From the earliest of times, Indian civilisation has treated mindfulness as a virtue. The highest exaltation in this tradition is to have turned the gaze inwards.
The Jitendriya - one who has controlled and conquered the external sensory faculties is considered to be in a state of spiritual elevation and superior realisation of the self and beyond.
Mindfulness was embraced in the ancient Vedic tradition by the various leaders of different spiritual disciplines. To be a sage one had to be profoundly mindful with no distractions whatsoever. With the rise of Buddhism, this was further adopted and adapted and spread all across the Far East. Zen – from Sanskrit ‘Dhyana’ - defined focal attentiveness at several levels from calm to a chanting flow to a meditative poise to a full submersion into self. Zen became the descriptor for Japanese Buddhism itself.
In Sanskrit Tooriya -is the fourth state. It is what is dignified as the Paramhansa often accorded as an honorific title to describe one with pure consciousness .The Tooriya is the background that underlies and transcends the three common states of consciousness. These states of consciousness are: waking consciousness, dreaming, and dreamless sleep.
In all disciplines of eastern meditative practice – a sense of calm, attentiveness, raised levels of consciousness and a sense of supreme oneness are defined and prescribed.
Even Godliness has been defined as a state of consciousness – Sat – Chit- Anand - namely, the evidenced existent, conscious and blissful.
In all traditions – Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Jewish- Kabbalah, Sufi-Islam or monastic Christianity there is a focus on deep concentration, seclusion, meditative intensity, silence and above all , mindfulness.
Moving beyond spiritualism, in our everyday existence as ordinary citizens, professionals and in discharging several responsibilities and relationships in the material world we can still gain mindfulness through specified approaches.
Anyone who is more mindful will automatically see vast improvements in productivity, confidence, comprehension and focus.Stress levels drop sharply as do stress hormone levels simply because attention and deep focus is a state of low conflict and hence low cognitive strain. Your conscious mind can do more with less.
Mindfulness has gained a lot with the western approach of scientific experimentation and refinement. Jon Kabat Zinn at the University of Massachusetts medical school devised an eight week program called ‘Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction’ (MBSR) to help those in need.
All forms of cognitive therapy ultimately rely on acceptance and committed behaviour.
I have spent 15 years as an advertising professional and a marketer. I have first-hand experience of how frenzied and fragmented our work and personal lives can become. I also had life changing incidents that made me realise my sheer mortality and how the mind and bodily health is inextricably linked.
My own search took me to several meditative practices and I chose to specialise in access bar consciousness and a self suggested and meditatively approached mindfulness.
Today , I am able to help hundreds of people each year by doing sessions where they can lift themselves above and beyond their challenges and barriers.
If you bring both your hands together in front of you as a double fist, that is roughly the size of your brain. That’s it. It even has two hemispheres like your brain.
Every single thing that you have ever learnt or experienced or been exposed to – consciously or subconsciously - is stored there. All your emotions, memory, sense of being and relational capacities are in this most powerful organ of your mortal being.
There is no denying that our overall wellbeing is beyond medicine and beyond the body. In fact, modern medicine arrives on to the scene in life’s drama only when wellness has gone out of the act.
The art of holistic medicine lies is in assessing the patient as a whole – the mind and the body. Many patients come with complaints referred in symptomatic bodily terms but the true origin is due to a disturbance in the mind – the result of stress, worry, conflicts and frustrations.
The world is recognizing that there are entire systems of healing beyond chemistry or biotech based medicines discovered in the past couple of hundred years. There is growing realisation that there is an even more brilliant ‘science of the brain’ in which energy pathways are tapped and channelled for healing. It’s called access consciousness.
Just as music needs no language and penetrates the soul so also humans can differentiate intuitively between noise and music. The way tone, tune and rhythm turns noise into music so also a practitioner working on your energy channels can cause resonance and harmony and amplification that energises and heals you.
Civilisations across the world have developed recognized systems of medical practise – Homeopathy, Acupressure, Acupuncture, Naturopathy, and Ayurveda.
But now the biggest appreciation is about recognizing that there is a transcendental, sublime way to be healed and that involves the inner consciousness and its focal point is the mind. Pranic healing , Mindfulness, Reiki and Access consciousness are all examples of these methods and modalities.
All these modalities can lower the heart rate, regulate blood pressure and eliminate stress hormones thus improving immune strength.
One has seen that depression has reduced dramatically with such processes and it has been impacted across all cases some as soon as after one session.
Modern medicine cannot decipher what it terms as ‘Auto immune conditions’. Nor is it able to give any prognosis for ‘psycho-somatic’ issues. However to those who are afflicted, the suffering , pain and discomfiture are real.
This is where mind processes are designed to provide deep relaxation alongside revitalisation and opens your conscious being to receiving new information allowing more relaxation in all aspects of your life.
Working as it does on the energy flows within us, it allows us to let go of the situations and negative qualities in people that create difficulties in our own lives.
Finally it improves mental clarity allowing improved work performance.
The proven benefits of healing systems such as White light therapy, Chakra Kundalini, Pranic healing, and of course Access consciousness are too numerous to list but above them all is the feeling of elevated consciousness and well being
When we pray our devotions, our mantras, our focused attention and our feeling of surrender stems from our mind submerged with a love of the Almighty. It is in the mind we feel the bliss. This is true for such healing systems too. The belief precedes the benefit.
In the Katha Upanishad, where Nachiket seeks enlightenment on the mystery of life and death from Yama there is this passage:
“The supreme self is beyond name and form,
Beyond the senses, inexhaustible
Without beginning without end
Beyond time, space and causality.
Eternal, immutable.
Those who realise the self are forever free from the jaws of death”
I can say those who realise that wellness is in the mind can be free from the jaws of illness.
I wish that all of you may experience the benefits of mindfulness and alternative healing and live a life of vigour and wellness without pain, toxicity or incapacity
Search and you shall find!!
