Deep Thinking Strategies

Mind Power Series – Part 1

I love studying the mind and the thinking process.  It has been a passion of mine for many decades now and thankfully, it seems to only grow stronger with time.  Yoga was actually a system put together by another who was a student of the mind, Patanjali, and it’s purpose was to still the thinking process so that the deeper and more profound levels of consciousness could be directly perceived.  For those of us who are serious about this most important goal of life, we know how difficult this can be to do.

Our minds are continuously running from thought to thought, and unfortunately the thinking it is doing is mostly superficial, narrow, shallow and born out of insecurity and fear.  So how can we develop a mind which is wide and open in nature, and capable of deep and meaningful thinking?  That is going to be the topic of this new series of articles, which I call Mind Power. 

There are many excellent strategies and methods for creating such a deep and powerful mind, and in this first part of the series I will share 3 strategies for you to experiment with.

Mind Power Series – Part 1:

3 Strategies for Deep Thinking:

1. Indifference:

Thoughts gain strength when entertained, attended to, welcomed and chewed on.  So for thoughts that are simply habitual patterns, negative, ugly, egocentric, superfluous, etc., don’t feed them your precious attention and concern.  Treat these thoughts like unwelcome visitor and show them the door.  Bye Bye :-).

So when useless and harmful thoughts try to grab your attention and pull you in, your challenge is to learn to stay away and not touch them.  This will starve them of the energy they need and as a result, such patterns and types of thoughts will start to diminish, whither and die off.

This will in turn start to free the mind, increase your energy and create space within for deeper thinking to take place.

It is important to note that with this and other strategies I am going to propose in this series, persistence and hard work will be needed on your part to make progress.  The mind and thoughts have great velocity and have been in control for a long time, and they will not easily give up their dominance.  So you need to be patient and devoted in order to change the hierarchy and establish your mastery.

2. Body Awareness:

Body awareness is a very key part of spiritual evolution and if understood and practiced correctly, it can be instrumental in helping one realize their true nature.  Although this topic can be fairly complex, there are 3 aspects of body awareness I want to focus on here, which are related to helping one settle the mind down and assist in deeper and higher thinking.

A. Increasing Energy:

Energy is a key aspect of intelligence, insight, awareness and life.  For great intelligence and great awareness, great energy is needed, so it is important to harness all the energy one can and an important way of doing this is by preventing the dissipation of energy through the body.

What I mean by this is that the body can waste a lot of your precious energy through habitual muscle tension, nervous energy, bad posture, restlessness, irritations, unnecessary gestures, etc.  This wastage can be prevented by being aware of the body and becoming aware of these physical patterns.

Such awareness will lead to corrections, which will lead to the conservation of energy, which can then be used for higher purposes, including deeper thinking and greater mind power.  So try to be aware of the body and it’s movements and pick up and correct your habits which dissipate energy unnecessarily.

B. Diminishing Useless Mental Activity:

Practicing body awareness, brings you out of the mind and into the physical moment.  This means that the mind has not been left to roam endlessly from useless thought to useless thought.  Similar to the practice of indifference above, this too will go a long way into breaking the habits of superficial thinking and endless daydreaming, and start to free the mind for more deeper and meaningful communication.

So in this case, you are using body awareness to cultivate being attentive as it is serving as an instrument to help you step out of your predominantly mental reality.

C. Reminder for Self Awareness:

Being a witness to life and being in the moment is the key to realizing your full human potential and body awareness can help you in doing this.  Being aware of your body and it’s movements as explained above, will already require you to be vigilant, but alas it is hard to maintain such constant awareness and you will often find yourself lost in thoughts and thinking.  So how can the body help you remember to be present again?  By using it’s signals and sensations as a reminder.

Anytime there is discomfort, pain, upsets, accidental movements, sudden physical changes, train yourself to consider these as alarms to once again regain your witnessing consciousness.  As signals to once again come out of your endless thinking and become aware.  In this way the body will become your assistant in helping you awaken.

3. Abandon Useless Desires:

If you want to have a mind capable of deep thinking and encountering the silence of Truth, you need to free it from trivial and non-meaningful desires.  As I explained in the article, 4 Key Laws for Manifesting Desires, you can do this by contemplation, reflection, self-study and studying the lives of others.

Review carefully if what you are desiring, seeking and chasing is really worth your time and energy.  Time on this planet is precious and you certainly don’t want to spend it collecting junk.  Worse still, all the energy spent chasing meaningless things will consume all your attention and keep the mind too busy to investigate the great, profound questions of life.

So drop those desires which have no real value and have simply been adopted due to conformity or petty pleasures.

Deep Thinking Summary:

For deep thinking to take place a mind needs to be less cluttered with endless random, meaningless thoughts, worries and desires.  Being constantly occupied, not only dissipates precious energy, but also prevents you from experiencing and exploring the higher levels of consciousness and the great mysteries of Reality.  So it is essential to free your mind from constant trivial occupation and the 3 strategies above will to help you do this.

Remember the mind and thoughts will not easily break their stranglehold, so be prepared for a sustained effort.

In the next part of this series on Mind Power, I will continue to provide tips and strategies on how to master your mind, silence it of thoughts and free it to delve into the deep and profound.  Be on the lookout for those article coming up soon.

If there are any strategies you have successfully used to deepen your thinking and master your mind, please do share them with us in the comments section below.

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