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

why are people so scared to start with a belief

why are people so scared to start with a belief - this is a question i have recently been pondering. i have often realised that the moment i start a discussion in any public forum regarding souls, life and afterlife, you will have some who will agree and be rational about things or atleast open minded to share what they feel about the subject, then there will be some who will negate the whole idea, which is also fine...but the ones that bother me are those who will try and attack with all negative spirits on their side

my belief is my belief and everyone has a good reason as to why they believe in something. in all fairness people have all the right to agree or disagree with anything, if not only the existence of souls but those who use attack as a way of discussing or immediately wear their helmets on as as not to be hit by something they might just start liking against their will are the ones who are the most interesting and yet probably the most ignorant

i would think if one doesn't believe in a point or a concept, its better to justify it to yourself in a more logical way than just saying oh...its all shit and crap

i would think a way is to argue with someone over their ideas or a better way is to assume they have a good reason to think that way and start with an assumption that it could be true and if possible prove it wrong...that way you atleast know you had a logical way of arriving where you did and you didn't miss out an opportunity at enlightening yourself

in this world, if one could start with the assumption that we all are here for a purpose and then start looking backwards at their life and karma or start thinking of what value they can add to their eco-system, it could do more good than harm to each individual

guardian angel...do you have one?

now all of us have heard stories that say we all have guardian angels that protect us from any harm ad some religions and faiths do believe that while we are still children, we are able to see and talk to our guardian angels but as we grow up, we stop believing so much in our so called imaginary freinds and hence we loose the belief in their existence

now from what i have understood after a bit of research on past lives, afterlife and souls is that every single soul has a guide / a teacher / a guardian angel who takes on the responsibility to guide us, mentor us through the journey of our soul...our guide helps us to understand and learn what we need to learn and helps us plan our lessons to be learnt while we are on earth, to review our past lives, to help us understand where we are going and most important of all, they help us forget the traumas, emotions, overwelming feelings we might have from a past life that our soul isn't willing to let go

guides / guardian angels have a very important role to play in our lives, not only in the spirit world but also while we are on earth. they have the capability to implant thoughts in our mind...which we call as our inner voice or sometimes there are these very powerful intuitions we have, which tell us something is an absolute must do, or something is just not to be done. it's not always the guides, but mostly it is but sometimes its the voice of our own soul that guides us too. the difference can be made since mostly when our angels are guiding us, we will get intuitive powers on things that maynot be connected to us, or are very different from our thought process

our souls in the spirit world

This whole thing is getting very interesting. I have moved from Brian Weiss now to reading Michael Newton, who has been researching in this area since about 30 years now and some of his work and books are really interesting. I am currently reading 'Journey of Souls", which also has a sequel that I will read next to this. Its a very amazing book since its written in the form of case studies with pateints and it covers a completly new and different side of PLR, it sort of focuses on the life of souls when they are not on earth, as in their life as spirits.

There is this entire symmetry between what his patients say about where they go after they die, what does it look like, what does it feel like, who welcomes them as spirits, can they communicate with earthly people after death, who are their guides, what are they expected to do as spirits and so on.I have read many books of Past Life Regression till now, but this one sort of covers an entirely new side of the soul life and it’s interesting to read people's experiences.

I am still half way through and one thing that keeps coming back to my mind while reading this is, the journey of our souls is pretty much a superset of the journey we have on earth and somehow it seems that we still carry the emotions, the relationships, the feelings, the goods with us life after life...so if some relationships aren’t working or that spontaneous connect isn't there or that bonding isn't there where you feel this love from deep down inside, it could mean that relationship is only build here but is not one that your soul has from above.

After reading this material, one thing that I am becoming more and more sure of is that there isn't any heaven or hell...whatever is there, its here. We go through difficult lifetimes because we have lessons to learn that only suffering can teach us and earth is our school...its here we get rewarded and its here we get punished too...the purpose of god or the high above entity isn't to punish us, but for us to learn the lesson well.

afterlife...do I believe in having crossed this journey many times before?

recently I have been reading a lot of stuff which again and again refers to the word "soul". I have been reading material right from blogs to published books on the matter and I must admit, being a Hindu and being Indains, we hear this stuff right from our school days, but I had never paid a lot of attention to actually think beyond what was told to me.

in hindi, the soul is called "aatma" and somewhere this concept of soul has been around in our religion and mythology for a while now but somehow I got drwn to this concept when i read the book called "Many Lives, Many Masters", by Dr.Brian Weiss. Its quite a read I must say and after reading it, did I realise that there is so much in the world that we don't know or just take for granted.

Now, let me explain what I understood and have started believing after reading loads of material and having discussions with people who sort of believe in afterlife. Every living person does have two parts to him, one is the physical being or the body and one is the spiritual being called the soul. The soul is eternal, it keeps on living...it cannot die or cannot be harmed. The physical being is what changes. The soul takes birth what is called "incarnation" and re-incarnation on the earth, to grow wiser. That is the purpose of our endless lives...to grow wiser at the spiritual level and to learn the lesson of unconditional love.

Important things I have learnt and have started believeing because they sort of make sense to me. The soul does not have anything negative attached to it. It is a spiritual being and only knows love. When it comes to the earth, it slowly picks up all the negativity from the surroundings, but only in the physical form.

The most important and profound statement I read in one of Dr.Brian's book, which I thought was life altering was that the soul carries the love, emotions and relationships it builds to the next life while it cannot carry any material assets. People spend their entire lifetimes in earning money and ignoring their relationships, where those are the relationships which will get carried forward with them in their next life while all the money will stay here. Furthermore, if you ignore the relationships or hurt people in this life, you will create debts or you will have lessons to learn which will come back to you either in this life or in the next lives...so you are actually doing more harm than good to yourself and those around you.

There is life on many planes of consciousness. This, our world is only one such plane. It is a like a graduating school for the soul. There maybe many other schools that we are unaware of, but the soul everywhere is the same. We have to learn our lessons and the soul keeps coming back to the school, untill all lessons are learned. We re-incarnate as male, female, rich and poor...are born into many religions etc because we have to learn from all sides.

Now you may wonder, why am I preaching. There hasn't been enough argument I have given to support my beliefs. Well, I will keep quoting various experiences from people mentioned in many places and soon through my own experinece also, that will show you why I think this is all true. For the time being, i just want to say...yes, I beleive in souls and I believe in Re-incarnation and I believe I have been to this earth many times before. It does happen to everyone I guess that sometimes when you are doing something, going somewhere or meeting someone, you get this very strong feeling that you have been here before...you know this person...well, your feeling might have an answer in your past lives :)