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Listen to Randall Krause on Building Better Relationships [BlogTalk Radio] with Gary Loper as they talk about Discovering Your Inner Treasure.
One of the biggest crimes we can commit against ourselves is to never discover the buried treasure that is often buried deep within ourselves.
Randall & Gary Loper will take you on an exploration of some of the lost gifts & talents that are awaiting for you to discover and share with your world.
To understand what is meant by a “relaxed mind”, it is essential to understand what mind is. We, in the scientific, materialistic West, think of mind as an effect of the brain. We imagine that somehow the electrical impulses flowing along the neurons of the nerves and brain give rise to our consciousness and the experience of awareness, thinking, insight, memory and emotion that we call “mind”. However the timeless meditative tradition of yoga-meditation has a different view of mind. According to that Tradition, mind is an energy field.
It’s worth repeating, mind is an energy field, and so is like a magnetic field, or electrical field. Thinking about mind in this way has some advantages, one of which is that it helps us understand that mind can be stronger or weaker. We know that an energy field can be strong or weak. If you’ve ever been scanned on one of those nuclear magnetic resonance scanners, which has a very strong magnetic field, you know that you have to rid yourself of all metal object before inserting yourself into that machine. Similarly, there are weak magnetic fields, like those weak magnets that allow you to stick letters of the alphabet onto the refrigerator to make words.
Similarly, if you have the right equipment, you can make the lighting in your house brighter or dimmer by changing the strength of the electrical field that flows to the lights.
Similarly, mind is an energy field that can be strong or weak. You’ve no doubt experienced times when your mind seemed stronger, when you had greater recall, were more able to understand complexities and make decisions. You likely have also experienced times when your mind was weaker, when you couldn’t recall things that were normally easy to recall, and when you just couldn’t think clearly.
This definition of mind also helps us understand what is meant by a relaxed mind: It means a calm energy field, that doesn’t have a lot of waves in it. An example of this sort of energy field, in the physical world, is the laser. In a normal, non-laser light field, the waves of light are of random frequency and amplitude (strength), and go in different directions. In a laser on the other hand, the waves all go in the same direction and vibrate at the same frequency and amplitude. So, the laser light is very coherent, with all the waves being the same. So it might be said that laser light is calm, like a calm sea, compared to the incoherent normal light, which is much more like a rough sea.
As you know, this calm laser light is not weak. Rather it is more powerful and can be used to burn holes in distant objects, and shot great distances without losing power.
It is the same with the mind. When the mind’s thought waves are pacified, the energy field of the mind is strong. This is what is referred to in this context as a relaxed mind.
In this webinar, Randall explains the value of a relaxed, energized mind and lays out a path to attain one. You’ll learn a simple three-step process to get started that you can practice everyday for quick relaxation. [Please note, the first few minutes of the intro are in Spanish, however the webinar is presented in English.]
When hearing the word “relax”, it is common to think of a relaxed body. But truly relaxing means relaxing the mind. This is because nothing happens in us unless it happens first in the mind. You can test this. If I asked you to move your right pointer finger, does the finger move without you thinking it? Try it. Your mind commands and then the finger moves. Right? Except for random muscle spasms, the mind is the controller of all of the movements, relaxation and tension in our musculature.
So the goal in relaxing is to relax the mind. A relaxed mind is calm and energized. You might equate relaxation with being sleepy. But this is a misunderstanding which arises because many, or perhaps most, of us carry around a great amount of sleep deprivation, and are nearly sleep walking through our lives. Normally, we don’t notice this sleepiness because it’s masked by the stimulants, frenetic activity, and chronic muscle tension that have become the norm in our lives. So when we relax, we become aware of the sleepiness that’s been there all along. But that sleepiness is not relaxation, it’s simply being unmasked by the relaxation.
This unmasking is a good thing, because once we notice the sleepiness, we can get some well needed rest before our bodies fall sick.
Rather than sleepy, a relaxed mind is acutely aware and energized.
At this point, it’s essential to understand what is meant by the term “mind.” Mind is the brain, isn’t it? Not for this discussion. The definition of mind used here is from the timeless meditative science of Yoga, which defines mind as a field of energy.
Many times, I heard the great Himalayan yogi, Swami Rama, say “All of the body is in the mind but all of the mind is not in the body.” He was saying that the body is an energy field in which the body exists. This mind, this energy field, controls the body and is much more than the body, much more than the physical brain.
Conceiving of the mind as an energy field enables us to realize that such a field can have more or less energy: The field can be strong or weak. As you know from experience, you can vary the power going to a lamp with a rheostat and make the light brighter or dimmer. If there is little power going to a lamp, the light is dim. As the power is turned up, the light gets brighter. So it is with the mind.
When the energy field of the mind is strong, when the mind is relaxed, that mind shines bright, and when the mind-energy field is weak, that mind is dim. A strong, calm, relaxed mind is a vast treasure. Most of us spend tremendous time and energy collecting resources, such as information, degrees, techniques, skills and much more, to advance our lives and businesses, yet few cultivate the greatest of all resources available to us, a resource that is our birthright: A relaxed mind. With a relaxed mind, collecting all those other things is much easier.
Take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of a relaxed mind:
Advantages:
The first advantage of a relaxed mind is what you’ll have less of: As your mind relaxes and grows in strength, you’ll have less mental confusion, will make fewer mistakes, and your mind won’t be jumping all over like a jumping bean. In addition, you’ll have less fear, anxiety, and irritation.
Will you really miss those things?
You’ll also receive gains: You’ll have clearer understanding, a greater sense of well-being, more insight, will feel more loving and enjoy your moments more. A more relaxed mind can better understand the subtleties of things, and so you’ll access more intelligence and be able to make better decisions. You’ll also have greater access to the amazing resources that are part of our innate equipment although we rarely experience them because of agitation in our minds: A relaxed mind is more creative, more intuitive, has better memory recall, is more patient, and can better focus and concentrate it’s energy.
So, as you can see, there is a lot to gain by having a relaxed mind.
Disadvantages:
Truly, there are not any disadvantages.
Would you like to cultivate a more relaxed mind? If so, note the words “cultivate” and “more” in the previous sentence. They were used intentionally. Having a relaxed mind is not something that you do in one step, like opening or shutting your eyes, it is a process. If you start climbing a mountain, after a few steps you’ll have a broader view of the valleys below, and you won’t yet experience the ultimate view at the top. Getting to the top takes time and work. Similarly, cultivating a relaxed mind is a process that passes through many stages, and each gain in mental calm from where you began yields definite benefits.
In the next post on this blog, I’ll suggest a simple three level process to begin cultivating a relaxed mind. If you’d like to get started before then, it would be very helpful if, over the next couple of weeks, you paid some attention to your own mind, and observe how often it’s calm and relaxed or agitated and frenzied, and how you feel in each of those conditions. Having this baseline information will help you in moving forward.
I’d love to hear about your discoveries in comments.
A question was asked: Is patience a desirable leadership trait?
Here’s my response: Patience is the ability to experience a situation and not be compelled to react to it emotionally. It gives the opportunity to chose how to respond to a situation rather than react. Such patience is not passivity. Patience includes balancing action and inaction. A patient person may act instantaneously, by choice. The difference is that when a patient person acts, s/he does so from clarity rather than from emotional compulsion. Patience is a strength. Nothing is lost by having the strength of patience and much is gained. A patient person can time his/her response for the most effective moment; a patient person is able to stay at peace internally, which grants clarity of mind, and leads to better choices; a patient person can act from her/his best motivations rather than worst.
If a leader is truly patient, the results will reflect the intelligence that went into the choice. A truly patient leader is more able to give credit to others, to listen, to resolve differences when it is possible to do so rather than fight.
Patience is the wisdom to wait for planted seeds to sprout and put shoots above ground rather than digging them up to see if they are sprouting. Patience is waiting for the cake to rise rather than opening the oven and causing the cake to fall. A martial artist patiently awaits the perfect moment to move, to block, to punch. Patience is more about what happens in the inside of a person than on the outside. A patient person’s actions and those of one who is impatient may look, externally, the same in a situation. However the patient person’s heart is at peace while the impatient person’s heart is agitated.
