How the mind works and what is its relation to energy?
In a previous article (ubaciti link) we talked about the nature of energy, how it’s finite and limited. We mentioned the benefits of investing our energy in those things or people that are most important to us.
And my talk today is about how to manage energy, direct it and invest into the things that matter most in our life. The subject is more about techniques and concepts that we have to apply in order to be consistent and have results we really want.
As we said before, the real goal in life should be to figure out what it is you want, what’s your purpose in life, who and what’s important in your life and then be able to direct energy towards that, so that you can manifest that in your life.
Where do we begin with this? In order to apply the right principles in our everyday life regarding managing our energy we need to understand a few more basics.
One of the basics that are crucial is understanding how the mind works and its connection with energy. This is probably the most important thing anyone could ever share with you. Just to understand how the mind works. Everybody is just talking about techniques or exercises like meditation or praying, or whatever. But I hardly found that someone explained those crucial elements or keys for understanding how the mind really works.
In my perspective or my experience of the mind, there are two different things we need to understand: awareness and the mind. We need to define what they are.
Let’s imagine awareness as a glowing ball of light. You can imagine a glowing ball of light that floats around. We will call that ball awareness. Let’s imagine the mind as a vast space with many different areas. We have a lot of different areas of the mind: angry, hatred, jealousy, joy, happiness, sex, food, art, science, technology, a whole bunch of different things, and areas, right!
Then we get back to that ball of light mentioned before. That ball can move to any area of the mind you want it to go to. So if your awareness, or this glowing ball of light, goes to the happy area of the mind it lights up that particular area of the mind, and you become conscious of being happy. Literally you are not happy, you’re just in an area of the mind called happiness. And if this ball of light goes to the angry area of the mind it lights up that particular area of the mind. Are you angry at that moment? No, you’re in an area of the mind called anger. By using your willpower and your powers of concentration you can take you with this ball of light to any area of the mind that you want to go to.
Now you can probably ask about willpower and your powers of concentration, they seem really interesting. As you could notice before I don’t want to complicate too much with my articles, so I divided those specific subjects in different articles. You can find out more about your willpower and your powers of concentration in this article. And there you can learn how to build and develop those abilities within yourself.
Now let’s get back to the mind and the awareness. What’s most important is that where your awareness goes, that’s where your energy is flowing. Which means if the awareness goes to the anger part of the mind, your energy is flowing there. And it’s strengthening that particular layer of the mind.
This is a theory, but you can do a little practice to better understand this. This practise requires you to close your eyes as part of getting yourself in a state of calm and relaxed. Of course you can’t close your eyes while you are reading, but you can read this and then do exercise. Or maybe a better option would be that you record yourself while you read these few lines, then close your eyes and listen to the instructions you recorded.
Now, you can close your eyes, relax, and enjoy the moment. Be conscious of the moment, be conscious of the chair where you’re sitting and the air you are breathing. Be conscious of the room you’re in.
Now while you are relaxed and calmed, with your eyes closed I want you to become aware of the most recent wedding that you attended. Do you remember whose wedding it was, were you happy for the couple getting married? Try and think as many details as you can about the wedding, remember what you wore to the wedding. Do you remember what the bride wore? Did she make a good choice with her dress? How was the food at the wedding? What about alcohol? Did you drink a lot? Was there good music, and did you dance, did you do some crazy wedding dance?
You can do the same thing with the most recent vacation that you went on. Just become aware of the most recent vacation that you went on. What kind of vacation was it, a surfing trip, yoga retreat, holiday shopping, camping, backpacking … Try and think as many details as you can about the vacation. What was the weather like where you went, was it cold, rainy, hot, humid, dry, snowing … Do you remember the hotel you stayed in? How was the food, land, spicy … Did you get sick eating the food? Did you shop a lot? What was one thing you bought on the trip that you liked?
Now, you can do a lot of exercises on this basis. But the main goal here is to prove two things to you. One is there’s a clear separation between awareness and the mind, two completely different things. Second is you can take your awareness and move it to any area of the mind you want it to go to. You took your awareness from the room and took it to an area of the subconscious mind where the memory of the wedding resided and then to the vacation area of the mind and then back to the room again.
When I perform this exercise with people around me, and when I ask, did the bride make a good choice with her dress? There would be a couple of facial gestures that suggested they weren’t impressed. Did you drink too much? Few heads would always go down. So you can take your awareness to different areas in the mind and you get certain results. You change your mood while you’re in that specific area of the mind. You get different kinds of emotions depending on that specific area of the mind. And wherever you direct your awareness to that’s where your energy is directed.
The thing is that this happens all day. All-day we allow people and things around us to dictate where our awareness goes in our mind. So literally other people, things or occasions can decide where we directed our energy.
Let’s do one little exercise again just to emphasize this point, because to me this is important, and it’s the crux of managing energy in your life. Can you remember your first kiss? Do you remember who it was, remember his or her name? Do you remember where it took place? Back at dad’s car behind the garage? Or? What was the experience? What was the emotion that was associated with that experience? Come on, really think about it, it wasn’t that long ago. Were you nervous?
Ok, some people would just laugh or blush when I ask them this question. You know you could see expressions of emotion on their faces and energy would definitely change.
And now, can you remember the first time someone you loved or someone close to you passed away? Do you remember that? Do you remember getting a phone call being told that this person that you love has just died? How did you feel? What were the emotions associated with that experience? Did you have the blessing of being able to see the body before it was cremated or buried? Do you remember standing next to the body wondering how it felt knowing that you’ll never see this person again? How did it feel for you? Do you remember the emotions?
Isn’t it interesting, in the space of just two minutes you can take your awareness from an area of the mind where people are usually smiling, giggling, or slightly embarrassed, to narrow the mind where people get completely sad. And I always feel how the vibration of the room has completely changed whenever I perform this kind of exercise. You can feel how the energy in the space changed.
Well, this happens all day. All-day we allow people and things to dictate where our awareness goes. And because they dictate where our awareness goes, that’s where our energy flows as well. And where our energy flows is what manifests in our life. So really the goal in life is not really to control your mind but rather to control where your awareness is going within your mind. I am saying this again, because where your awareness is going within your mind, that’s where you direct your energy, and that’s what manifests in your life. That’s where you get results in your life.
How do we control where our awareness is going within our mind? We do that by learning how to perform spiritual practice. The goal is to control where your awareness goes in your mind throughout the day and that’s it. In order to do this we must learn the fine art of concentration. With this power of concentration we are able to be fully focused on things and people who are important to us.
With the power of concentration we will get this ability to direct our awareness and our energy into those things and people that matter to us. I explained why it’s important to direct our energy into those certain things or people that we want in a previous article on the link. I suggest you read it if you haven’t already.
After we manage to get these abilities we’ll be able to continuously be mindful, and all those areas where we direct our energy will manifest in our life. And we can get our long term goals in life accomplished.
I will discuss the power of concentration in our next article, so keep up with me and have a great day! Thank you!
How the mind works and its relation to energy?
In a previous article (ubaciti link) we talked about the nature of energy, how it’s finite and limited. We mentioned the benefits of investing our energy in those things or people that are most important to us.
And my talk today is about how to manage energy, direct it and invest into the things that matter most in our life. The subject is more about techniques and concepts that we have to apply in order to be consistent and have results we really want.
As we said before, the real goal in life should be to figure out what it is you want, what’s your purpose in life, who and what’s important in your life and then be able to direct energy towards that, so that you can manifest that in your life.
Where do we begin with this? In order to apply the right principles in our everyday life regarding managing our energy we need to understand a few more basics.
One of the basics that are crucial is understanding how the mind works and its connection with energy. This is probably the most important thing anyone could ever share with you. Just to understand how the mind works. Everybody is just talking about techniques or exercises like meditation or praying, or whatever. But I hardly found that someone explained those crucial elements or keys for understanding how the mind really works.
In my perspective or my experience of the mind, there are two different things we need to understand: awareness and the mind. We need to define what they are.
Let’s define awareness as a glowing ball of light. You can imagine a glowing ball of light that floats around. We will call that ball awareness and put that aside for now. Let’s define the mind as a vast space with many different areas. We have a lot of different areas of the mind: angry, hatred, jealousy, joy, happiness, sex, food, art, science, technology, a whole bunch of different things, and areas, right!
Then we get back to that ball of light mentioned before. That ball can move to any area of the mind you want it to go to. So if your awareness, or this glowing ball of light, goes to the happy area of the mind it lights up that particular area of the mind, and you become conscious of being happy. Literally you are not happy, you’re just in an area of the mind called happiness. And if this ball of light goes to the angry area of the mind it lights up that particular area of the mind. Are you angry at that moment? No, you’re in an area of the mind called anger. By using your willpower and your powers of concentration you can take you with this ball of light to any area of the mind that you want to go to.
And what’s most important is that where your awareness goes, that’s where your energy is flowing. Which means if the awareness goes to the anger part of the mind, your energy is flowing there. And it’s strengthening that particular layer of the mind.
Now, this is a theory, but you can do a little practice to better understand this. You can close your eyes, relax, and enjoy the moment. Be conscious of the moment, be conscious of the chair where you’re sitting and the air you are breathing. Be conscious of the room you’re in. Of course you can’t close your eyes while you are reading, but you can read this and then do exercise. Or maybe best practise would be that you record yourself while you read these few lines, then close your eyes and listen to the instructions you recorded.
Now while you are relaxed and calmed, with your eyes closed I want you to become aware of the most recent wedding that you attended. Do you remember whose wedding it was, were you happy for the couple getting married? Try and think as many details as you can about the wedding, remember what you wore to the wedding. Do you remember what the bride wore? Did she make a good choice with her dress? How was the food at the wedding? What about alcohol? Did you drink a lot? Was there good music, and did you dance, did you do some crazy wedding dance?
You can do the same thing with the most recent vacation that you went on. Just become aware of the most recent vacation that you went on. What kind of vacation was it, a surfing trip, yoga retreat, holiday shopping, camping, backpacking … Try and think as many details as you can about the vacation. What was the weather like where you went, was it cold, rainy, hot, humid, dry, snowing … Do you remember the favorite hotel you stayed in? How was the food, land, spicy … Did you get sick eating the food? Did you shop a lot? What was one thing you bought on the trip that you liked?
Now, you can do a lot of exercises on this basis. But the main goal here is to prove two things to you. One is there’s a clear separation between awareness and the mind, two completely different things. Second is you can take your awareness and move it to any area of the mind you want it to go to. You took your awareness from the room and took it to an area of the subconscious mind where the memory of the wedding resided and then to the vacation area of the mind and then back to the room again.
When I perform this exercise with people around me, and when I ask, did the bride make a good choice with her dress? There would be a couple of facial gestures that suggested they weren’t impressed. Did you drink too much? Few heads would always go down. So you can take your awareness to different areas in the mind. The thing is that this happens all day. All-day we allow people and things around us to dictate where our awareness goes in our mind.
Let’s do one little exercise again just to emphasize this point because to me this is important, and it’s the crux of managing energy in your life. Can you remember your first kiss? Do you remember who it was, remember his or her name? Do you remember where it took place? Back at dad’s car behind the garage? Or? What was the experience? What was the emotion that was associated with that experience? Come on, really think about it, it wasn’t that long ago. Were you nervous?
Ok, some people would just laugh or blush when I ask them this question.
And now, can you remember the first time someone you loved or someone close to you passed away? Do you remember that? Do you remember getting a phone call being told that this person that you love has just died? How did you feel? What were the emotions associated with that experience? Did you have the blessing of being able to see the body before it was cremated or buried? Do you remember standing next to the body wondering how it felt knowing that you’ll never see this person again? How did it feel for you? Do you remember the emotions?
Isn’t it interesting, in the space of just two minutes you can take your awareness from an area of the mind where people are usually smiling, giggling, or slightly embarrassed, to narrow the mind where people get completely sad. And I always feel how the vibration of the room has completely changed whenever I perform this kind of exercise.
Well, this happens all day. All-day we allow people and things to dictate where our awareness goes. And because they dictate where our awareness goes, that’s where our energy flows as well. And where our energy flows is what manifests in our life. So really the goal in life is not really to control your mind but rather to control where your awareness is going within your mind.
How do we do that? We do that by learning how to perform spiritual practice. The goal is to control where your awareness goes in your mind throughout the day and that’s it. How do we do this? We must learn the fine art of concentration. With this power of concentration we are able to be fully focused on things and people who are important to us.
With the power of concentration we will get this ability to direct our awareness and our energy into those things and people that matter to us. I explained this subject in a previous article on the link. I suggest you read it if you haven’t already.
After we manage to get these abilities and after continuously being mindful, all those areas where we direct our energy will manifest in our life. And we can get our long term goals in life accomplished.
I will discuss the power of concentration in our next article, so keep up with me and have a great day! Thank you!
Using these two techniques: power of will and concentration.
