When we mention exercise, the first thing that comes to your mind is physical exercise. When we mention rest, you think about physical rest. The physical rest we that know as sleep. Physical is whatever exercise that you do. Today I am going to talk to you about mental rest and exercise. How many of us actually do mental rest and mental exercise. The problem faced by most people today is because they do not rest their mind nor do they exercise their mind. Because of this their mind is a storm. When you are physically ill, you go and see a doctor. He gives you a medication and you are cured. But when your mind is a storm, who do you go to? The storm gets so bad sometimes you have to see a psychologist. That is the worst case scenario. We shall not talk about that because there are ways in which you can address your mind. Now let us look at how to exercise your mind.
Now if you don’t do meditation, by the way meditation is one form of exercise, quietening your mind is an exercise by itself. How do you quieten your mind? If you are not doing any specific meditation, take time to imagine the sea which is calm, a lake which is calm. See the calmness in your mind that will enable you to calm your mind. Most of us are always thinking, we worry about this, we worry about children, we worry about money, we worry about health, and we worry about everything that you can worry about. We even worry about worrying. That is where the storm in your mind comes in. So you need to take mental breaks. The mental breaks allow you to quieten your mind. Quietening your mind is very important. Listening to Bhajans (devotional) is one thing, listening to meditation music is another thing, soothing music. Don’t listen to rock music, rock music has another effect.
Exercising the mind, now this is very important. As a person aged, they say the brain cells deteriorate. So when you exercise your mind, you exercise your brain cells. A very simple exercise is you look at a flower. Try to imagine the colours of the flowers and then you close your eyes and make a mental picture and imagine the flower, its colours, its petals etc. I am sure that when you see and close your eyes, you cannot remember most details. Why is this so? Because the mind doesn’t capture the details. It refuses to allow you to direct it to focus, it wants to roam free. Do this as an exercise, anything, be it a flower, be it anything because it allows your mind to remember things and as you remember things you sharpen your focus, you sharpen your mind. Why do you need to sharpen your mind? It is for your spiritual growth and development. When you do visualisation technique, this is very important where you have to visualise yourself in the pink of health.
You see most of the health problems we have is because the mind gives you the problem. You can visualise yourself to be in the pink of health, if you have an aliment visual yourself to be in good health. Why it doesn’t work because our mind is not strong enough. Our mind is very weak because we imagine it but we don’t know how to visualise it. So what I am telling you today is to learn this technique of how to visualise and do it as an exercise every day. It doesn’t matter what object you take. Focus on the fine details and not just the gross. It is not easy initially but with effort it is possible. It has to be practiced, it has to be done every day as an exercise and then you can perfect it. The best exercise you can do is to picture a flower because it is nature, or a picture, anything that you find you are comfortable with. Do this as an everyday exercise and you will find that your mind will become very strong. So much so that you can focus and you can remember things which you cannot remember before.
Now as long as exercising is concerned, that is one thing. Now even when we physically exercise we have to feed ourselves with good food. How many of us feed our minds with good food? When we say feed our mind with good food because what you see with your eyes goes into our mind. So if you watch television, you watch all the bad television, you watch all the action shows, all the horror shows, all the killing shows, it affects you. It affects your mind and that is a fact. Swami has also said this many times and scientists have also said the same thing. So if you have nothing better to do and you want to watch a show on TV, watch a good show. History channel, National Geographic channel, something that makes your mind calm. Never watch action shows just before you sleep because your mind will be agitated. You cannot sleep because your mind is thinking. Very important is how do you exercise your mind and how you feed your mind and how you take mental breaks, which means to say how do you allow your mind to be calm. If you have nothing to do, just stare at the open sky. Stare blankly which means you are not looking at anything. Don’t think of anything just stare blankly even for a few seconds into the open sky because there is vastness there. Why do you think our Guru goes to the sea? Because when He looks at the sea and when he stares out into the open sea, there is the vastness, there is nothingness. When you see nothing, your mind thinks of nothing and then you take your time to look and say “Now I want to see the star which I see in the sky.” You tell your mind “I want to see” as an exercise. Then you say “Now I want to see the nothingness again.” When you think of the nothing your mind is at peace. Your mind is at rest. We don’t know how to rest our mind, from the time you wake up to the time you sleep, you think and think. Even when you sleep, your thinking mind shuts down but your sub-conscious also working but your body rest. At least your body has got a chance to rest. The mind has no chance to rest, the sub-conscious is working non-stop. When you wake up you feel very tired, Why? Because your mind did not rest. So learn something new. Rest your mind, exercise your mind and feed your mind with good things.
Learn from a young age so that as you age your mind remains very sharp. Always exercise your mind so that the mind is sharp. Exercising the mind means you give your mind something to do. A task which is very difficult to do, like remembering things. The best exercise you can do actually you look at a bouquet of flowers. I imagine the colours then close my eyes and try to imagine in my mind the position of the flowers and the colours. Can’t remember, I open my eyes and look again and then I close my eyes. As you do that many times, what you are doing is you are putting in your mind; you are forcing it to remember certain things.
This exercise will help you when you are into the next stage of visualisation because that is where we are trying to move on to where you visualise things. You visualise things that you need. You visualise the job that you are looking for. You are visualising a situation in which you visualise that it doesn’t rain. Why do you think people visualise things but it doesn’t work? Because the ability to visualise is lacking, they think only “Don’t rain” but there is nothing there. Visualisation has to be very specific in detail and the detail can only come if you are very focused, if you are able to zero in on the object that you wish to focus on. They call it one pointedness. It is just like the cameraman who zooms in and takes a close-up shot. Your mind has to be like that. So exercise is not just physical exercise but mental exercise, mental rest and good food. So remember these three things.
Comments are closed