Heart vs Mind

This is an age long debate...that of the heart vs the mind. Which is stronger and which is wiser...I don't think anyone has ever been able to successfully conclude that one. Just thought I will share some thoughts on this one...including some guidance I got from a Brahmakumari. My belief is that the thoughts lie in the mind but when we symbolically divide the mind and the heart, we are really talking about thinking and feeling.

Thinking is a function of the mind and mind is a part of our body...so it becomes a direct function of the body. Thinking is the process of picking thoughts, of one's own or other's and processing them to make sense of them or ultimately lead to some action. Feeling is only about the vibrations or a thought directly generated from our intellect or our higher self. When we sit down peacefully and try to concentrate on any issue / life situation, there are feelings we get about them which could be thoughts from our own higher self or our guides. If one can identify when it is a pure feeling vs when it's a desire created by your own mind to tempt you to something radical, that is when one can really start the journey of wisdom.

I attended a Brahmakumari Raj Yoga session a few days back and this topic crept up and while she was explaining it, I asked her how is it that one can identify when is it that it is an inner voice or your own desire tricking you. It was a very profound answer she gave me. She said when the inner voice speaks, the message is universally accepted without resistance and if one faces resistance within, its an indicator that its a trick of your own mind :)

improving thinking power through meditation

Yesterday, I went for a seminar on "How to use meditation to improve your thinking power" held by the Brahmakumaris, here in Singapore. It was a very interesting session and hence I thought it will be a good idea to share it here with my readers. Meditation is something that we have heard of so many times, yet there are some basics, many of us might be unaware of, which sort of intruged me and I think a lot of my understanidng enhanced, with regards to the subject.

To start with, I came to know that on a average, every person has above 50,000 thoughts crossing their mind every single day...which is through a scientific research done a few years ago. We have no control over thoughts coming in our mind, yet, we have control over our thinking. The diierence between thoughts and thinking being thinking is the direction or the action of the thoughts. We can decide what to thinking and when to stop thinking. In order to make the mind more powerful, its important to think right.

When we say "think right", it means take a wise decision. What I gained here is an understanding that it's not only important to think right, but to put it into action is what makes us wise. There are people who are too analytical, while there are people who are too emotional. In both cases, wisdom is tough to acheive because a balance between the two is important to drive our thinking in the right direction.

Sister Meera, who was leading the program, mentioned that usualy for less enlightened souls, the thoughts come at a very high speed. Slowly by practicing meditation, the aim is to be able to last longer without paying attention to the thoughts but connecting with the divine energy and hence as we get wiser, the speed of our thoughts will slow down. We have to get used to directing our intellect to take wise decisions and slowly, when we will get used to taking right decisons, our sub-concious mind will also have a store of only positive thoughts and memories, hence there will come a stage where we really wouldn't have to think too hard to take a decision...the right will flow to us as intuition...we will know what to do without thiking it through

Another important thing was learning about the difference between prayer and meditation. Prayer is the act of talking to god, while meditation is the act of listening to god...first listening to ourselves or our souls, in preperation to listening to god. Meditation has three parts to it, which are awareness, awakening and connection, where it implies firts making ourselves aware of us being souls or packets of divine energy, then awakening the conscience to remain alert and sensitive and then finally to connect to the soul of supreme energy to receive a constant flow of energy and help strengthen our body and soul.

The mantra being - We become what we think

To know more about Brahmakumaris, you may visit their website at www.bgwsu.org