QUALITY OF YOUR MIND? HOW IS IT RELATED TO THE QUALITY OF YOUR LIFE? - Rise and Shine

QUALITY OF YOUR MIND? HOW IS IT RELATED TO THE QUALITY OF YOUR LIFE?




" The 'No!' mind is agitated, doubting, and miserable. "The 'Yes!' mind is quiet, holistic, and joyful. 'Yes!' is an acknowledgment of knowledge".  - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

 

Today I would like you to ponder, What do you think is the quality of your mind? Is it busy? Is it Still? Is it ruffled? Is it restless? Is it Judgmental? Is it accepting? And most important, do you control it or vice versa? Can you imagine the quality of your life if you have a negative, restless, and agitated mind? or a volatile, volcanic one? On the other hand, imagine if it were like a serene, sparkling lake. More than anything else, it’s the quality of your mind and how much it controls you that determines the quality of your life.

Here's an interesting exercise: Just stop reading for a moment and check how many breaths you're taking per minute. (One inhalation and one exhalation count as the single breath). Make them normal ones, not attempting to lengthen or shorten them. When you take 18 breaths per minute, you have 120 thoughts per second. If you take 12 a minute, this number falls to 20.

From time immemorial, two of the most crucial functions of the breath have been to support you and come to your aid whenever necessary. When you face danger, it quickness and becomes shallow to supply you with the oxygen you need to fight or flee from the calamity. When the crisis has passed the breath slows down. In our stressed and rushed lives today, our normal breath is fast and shallow. It never slows down.

The number of breaths you're taking per minute is a good indicator of your level of stress. The optimum is from 11 to 12. If you're breathing faster, and most of us are, your mind is cluttered with too many thoughts. That's why when you're stressed you feel confused and unclear. You're unable to think straight. It's the same when you're angry, you remain on high alert and so does your mind. High brain activity isn't synonymous with clarity. You will never make the right decisions in such a state.

Now, what can you do to cultivate a smart, sparkling mind if you haven't already done so? 

What would you do if you needed to de-stress, if you were really exhausted and had to refresh yourself, or if you had been working too hard? you would take a break; you would stop the tiring activity for a while. You would switch off your mobile mind if its battery is low to recharge it.

How do you tell your mind to just shut down? When you try to do so, you ran into a number of technical problems. It doesn't know how to do it. It doesn't listen to you. And it doesn't want to because it would then have to relinquish control, and that's frightening.

You may have got a clue from the exercise referred to earlier. The simplest doorway to enter the mind is the breath. Stop reading for a few minutes and do the exercise in the next paragraph. Observe how you feel.

Just start observing your breath. Concentrate on its inflow...the coolness as it enters your nostrils. Follow it down your spine and then back up out the top of your head...continue to so for a few minutes. Keep focused on it, you will be surprised to realize that while you're noticing your breath, you have no thoughts. They might interrupt but if you take attention back to the breath, they are banished, your mind can do one thing at a time!

Think about it: What a wonderful resource you have at your disposal to instantly calm the mind! you can do it anyplace, anytime.

The mind is naturally inclined to dwell on the negative and we encourage it! often you seek lots of information from it. Try altering them and observe the new results. The very quality of your thoughts will begin to change.


"Life is in the breath therefore he who half breathes, half-lives." - Tara Ward

 

 


 

 

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