Our minds are active all of the time. Creating thought after thought, linked together to fashion what we refer to as mental thought chains. These thought chains are the culmination of your interaction with the environment, both internal and external. If left in their uncontrolled state, thought chains, can be very unproductive and detrimental to your overall mental and physical health. The main reason people start meditating and practicing Yoga is because they don’t like the thoughts in their head. So the problem is that we are inundated with thoughts that we don’t want to have anymore and we don’t know how to stop them from happening.
These unproductive mental thought chains, the connection of one thought after another, after another, often cause:
- increased levels of stress,
- reduced energy levels,
- reduced concentration,
- reduced levels of focus,
- insomnia,
- phobia’s,
- fear and anxiety, and
- an overall detriment to good mental and emotional health and stability.
If things are good and you are experiencing positive thought chains, then you are fine. There is no perceived need to seek help. It’s only when you are experiencing negative thought chains that you become unstable and seek assistance.
People turn to all kinds of remedies, from sleep aids to various ritualistic behavior, religious or otherwise, to quiet their minds and find peace. These remedies tend to provide only temporary rather than lasting relief.
The problem is that thought chains are caused habitually, they are rooted in deep seated mental patterns. Allow me to explain. The mind finds security in the known. Memories of past events provide the perfect solutions for a mind looking for security. So this mind creates mental activity based around what it perceives as being safe and secure. This mind reasons that memories can not harm it, since they are of time, of the past.
This type of mind also finds security in routines and patterned thought, in the mundane. This type of mind is very comfortable being mechanical, and repeating the same thoughts and thought chains over and over again. This provides a certain level of comfort. The mind needs to stay busy to feel secure. Most of us aren’t even aware that it’s happening. As a consequence we live very mechanical lives, repeating the same thought chains and as a result repeating the same negative actions, that very often provide us with inadequate and sub par results.
Why not think with a purpose? Why not break out of the mechanical way of thinking that you find so secure? Why not think outside of the box? Why don’t you stop repeating the same mistakes over and over again?
The trick to meditation is that it allows you to learn how to become aware, so that you can see these mechanical, patterned ways of thinking and understand that they’re just a normal function of the mind. They’re the result of millions of years of evolution.
Let’s not misunderstand each other, because patterned or mechanic thinking has it’s place in life. Could a chemist do their job without knowing the elements, and compounds and numerous other formulas that education has taught them? Of course not. But would the cure for small pox, or the discovery of penicillin have been possible without clear thinking out side of the box. Would the discovery of the jet engine have been possible without seeing the whole structure of propulsion and then making a leap beyond, outside of the normal mechanical thinking that most of us are so used to. I think not.
Now with the understanding derived from meditation, that all mental activity is the same, whether thoughts are good or bad. With the ability not to engage in these patterned chains of thought, but instead to just realize that they are the mind doing what it does. Not to judge or compare but to accept without prejudice or compromise that which is.
Only then can you begin to discover a way of thinking that is not mechanical and does not follow any particular pattern. Then you can begin to see things clearly, to see the whole picture, the whole moving structure of that which you are trying to relate to and not just a small piece of it. This is what we call intelligence. More specifically the awakening of intelligence.
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Have a truly spectacular day
Anthony D’Agostino
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