UNDERSTANDING THE MIND AND MEDITATING.
More and more people are rediscovering meditation—a practice that takes you inside for an out-of-the-world experience.
Parveen Chopra
Introduction:
What do Clint Eastwood, Richard Gere, the Canadian musician Leonard Cohen and the famous new age Indian Guru, Dr. Deepak Chopra have in common? The answer is, they all meditate. Clint Eastwood has been practicing Transcendental meditation ™ for years. Cohen spent six months in a Zen monastery. Richard Gere is a staunch meditating Buddhist. Mitch Kapor was a TM teacher before he created software history by creating Lotus 1-2-3.
We are all a holistic combination of the Body, the Mind and the soul. To be successful in life, we have to keep our bodies healthy with exercise and proper vegan lifestyle. The exercise for the mind is meditation. Meditation is a fundamental spiritual discipline of all major religions. Meditation may be defined as a withdrawal or the reversal of one’s consciousness from the body and the world, into the realm of the soul. It is an inward journey onto the bright path of contemplation of God. Meditation helps one to have more awareness of oneself. It helps us experience a state of internal freedom and a sense of joy.
What is the Mind?
The mind is just a bundle of thoughts. It is a Body within our bodies at a finer rate of vibration. The mind and the body are inter-connected. Matter is the mind at a lesser rate of vibration and the mind is matter at a higher rate of vibration. A disease of the body will affect the mind and vice-versa. To be successful in life one has to control the mind. It is constantly wandering and distracting us. Great thinkers, scientists and all the successful people on earth are innately meditative by nature.
Why should we meditate?
Meditation is food for the mind. It will help to still the mind and the soul force will take over our lives and the true purpose of life is revealed to us. Meditation is a healing balm that helps us understand the chaos in this world. It is a tool for understanding the true meaning of our lives.
Several Hindu seers have compared the mind to a monkey that is innately restless in nature, which is drunken by the wine of worldly desires. They further add that the monkey becomes bitten scorpion of jealousy and then possessed by the ghost of the past. Such is the state of our minds today. Sad! But true.
The constantly over-working chaotic mind is always preventing us from living in the present and being creative. The mind is fear driven and always is either in the past or the future. The 21st century mantra is BEND THE BODY, MEND THE SENSES AND END THE MIND.
Will one become a zombie if the mind ceases to work?
When one begins to meditate, anguished friends warn us against taking up this spiritual practice. They feel that people practicing meditation will become non-functional and useless to society.
Nothing is further from the real truth. It is well known that when one goes into deeper states of meditation, one goes into the alpha levels in the brain (as recorded by the Electro Encephalogram – EEG) and meditative people become more creative, error free, intuitive and highly successful.
Medical benefits of Meditation:
Medically speaking, regular Meditation and Prayer helps us in the following way:
- It reduces stress.
- It bolsters the immunity of the body.
- It increases the memory and will power.
- It can slow down the progress of cancers and certain forms of degenerative diseases.
- It prevents the premature aging of the body.
- It helps fighting psychosomatic disorders.
- It helps fight depression, phobias and fears.
Meditation can make you a successful and creative person. It can be a valuable modern medical tool in many branches of Medicine such as; Psychiatry, Cardiovascular Medicine, Respiratory Medicine, Geriatrics, Gastro-enterology, Skin and Connective tissue diseases, Sports and Aviation medicine. Meditation can also be a valuable tool in terminal diseases like cancers and AIDS and help in alleviating pain in the terminal stages of such diseases.
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