How to train your mind to be alarming for shortly upcoming events ?
I was wondering one day — ‘why I keep on forgetting things?’.
I woke up that morning. Hot day it was and I realized that my water cooler was out of water. So I connected a hose pipe to it and I knew that it would be full in some 10 minutes, still I forgot to close the tap in time and it overflowed for 15 more minutes.
We do not train our brains to be alarming for small situations. There are some people who do. My girlfriend does. She is an extraordinary being. She is so peculiar about things. She wants everything on perfect place and time. Even slightest of delay or mismanagement traumatize her. Like that is a big word but I see her every time doing that and that is why I said. And probably that is not wrong at all. She is right at her place. Though many a times I feel wrong about this because I am a human and regular humans have a tendency of comparing. So, when I know she is better than me in this aspect, I do not like that.
Other examples:
1. I put milk on the stove to boil and forget to take it off on time. And what happens is it spills.
2. I start water pumps to fill the water tanks situated over the roof and forget to switch it off on time ( usually it fills in 10 minutes )
3. I give someone time to meet and do not reach on time due to mismanagement of the events occurring in between.
4. I calculate time to complete a topic to study and fail to complete it according to my plan.
5. Someone asks to me to do some work for them, I willfully give my words to them and because of any reason there might be, I just forget. It is not every time that it happens, but yes it does.
Reasons we forget :
1. This was a small thing for me at that time and that wasted water did not matter to me much. Or it could be this way that I do not understand the worth of the small things.
2. The main reason which I feel is we are lacking on consciousness. We physically remain at a place but our mind roams at indefinite places. It happens to most of us that when we try to not think upon something, we do. If you would have seen the movie — ‘Inception’, you would know the basic idea. The narrator explained this with an example- “. If I tell you to not think about an elephant, the image that pops up in your image is that of an elephant.” So the conclusion is, we have not trained our brain to be in our control. We are lacking on consciousness. Our mind bounces back and again.
3. Or we do not take things seriously
4. We train ourselves to keep important things on hold.
5. ‘Bhagwat Geeta’ defines the human enemies — ‘kaam’, ‘krodh’, lobh’, ‘moh’, ‘mad’, ‘matsarya’. These enemies exclusively or in combination destroys the decision making power and to a great extent the ‘sensible being’. We have fallen prey to some or all of these.
6. The lack of mindfulness. It can be a consequence of anything that puts us in pressure. In my case or more specifically in my father’s case, he had taken a loan of Rs.5.5 million. it was split into two — one of Rs.4.0 million and other of Rs.1.5 million. He works day and night. He is chief controller at Indian Railways. The worse thing working at Indian Railways is, you do not have a personal life. He has not many things to say unrelated to his job. What he is talking, it is most of the times about work. While growing up all these years, I saw him working for us only, so that he can give us a better living.
Let me get back to the main thing, when he took loan, he knew that the monthly instalments will last long to 18 years. The initial 3 years passed by very smoothly but as few more years passed, it was hard to continue with that burden.
My mother used to tell me at that time, “Papa sometimes sits vaguely at one place and keeps on thinking stuff, he is skipping meals unnoticeably, he is not truly in his senses”. It’s true that I cannot tell you the exact feeling of what he was up to. But one thing was sure that he was not mentally healthy. He had so much pending work without much emotional and monetary security.
He had to pay for my MBBS degree.
He had to get my sister married.
He had two loans pending.
This all made him weak.
He was losing mindfulness.
And the bad consequence was that he was diagnosed with Myocardial infarction. The Right coronary artery had 99% blockage. I was there at the night when the attack happened. Since I cannot ever forget the scenario, I cannot deny the factors which led to that condition.
It is all in mind, the mind absenteeism is always in correlation to mental health and had led to absenteeism in giving attention to physical health, which appeared to be like a bad life style.
Was it really a bad life style?
My point is just that there are a number of factor which lead to mental burden and in a way absence of mindfulness.
7. Happiness is lacking. Humans have stopped doing things which make them happy, they have unnecessarily burdened themselves with expectations of others. We hardly think for us, we hardly do things for us, we hardly satisfy our mind, we hardly satisfy our souls.
Ways you can get rid of forgetting things:
1. Practice meditation, it keeps your mind calm. There are numerous benefits of practicing meditation. I recently went to Rishikesh, the yoga capital of the world. One fine day I saw people woke up early in the morning to make poses at the banks of River Ganga. Yoga and meditation have always been interrelated.
The water of river Ganga was flowing as quietly as the water of Ganga. I know that may sound absurd but that feeling is incomparable. If you would have ever been to that place, you would know what I am talking about. The weather seemed to be just pleasant. Birds chirping at the trees nearby. Fishes were swimming freely as if they knew they were in the Holy place and they are safe. The wind was still but it was flowing. The breeze one could feel on their forehead.
So, I just want you to know that the pre-requisite for meditation is quite environment, fresh air, good people around you ( positive aura ).
However some things like light and flexible clothes, a soft place to sit, etc. are materialistic things but these are also required to make your body free. Because if your body is not in accordance with your mind, you cannot sit relaxed.
I am not here to teach you how to do meditation or yoga but I am telling you the importance.
2. ‘Mind Zero’ — The mind zero state is a heavenly experience.
Have you heard of ‘Art of living’?
It is an initiative ‘Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’, He is an Indian Spiritual leader. I suppose it is an insult to him, but I feel pride in it telling you about the process — ‘Sudarshan Kriya’. As a member, we do not talk about it because there are teachers specially kept of ‘Art of living foundation’ who not only tell about it, but also teaches how to do the process.
I won’t ruin the dignity of it, yet I must say if you ever get a chance to perform and learn that kriya, do not ever miss that. It is seriously a heavenly experience, it cannot be told, it cannot be read, it cannot be perceived, it can only be felt.
So this ‘Sudarshan Kriya’ is in a way an example of meditation. But what I have personally felt is that it is a forced meditation and is meant for those who struggle with self induced meditation. So basically, it is meant for all of us. ‘Maya’- the materialistic world is so around us that we cannot see ourselves separated from it. So we need some experienced person’s advice and help to meditate and become mindful. And that work is performed by Sudarshan kriya.
3. Finding the balance between ‘Spirituality and Materialism’. Both these terms are very wide and cannot be covered here. But understand the balance between these two.
There is always a fine line of demarcation between what is right and what is wrong. We all know that well but it is always the choices that we make.
Talking about the intensity, choosing right doesn’t bother you as much as choosing wrong does.
Spirituality is the essence of doing things right, things that do not hurt anyone else, things which are not bad and planned intentionally to hurt someone physically or emotionally. Spirituality is about the mini god that is inside you, which strike back every time you are going to make a wrong decision. Spirituality is the quality of being concerned with the human soul.
While materialism is about living in this materialistic world. Yes that is not a proper definition. I cannot compare a materialistic world to a non-materialistic world because, we have all not experienced the latter. But the kind of world we live in is materialistic. The good ironed clothes we wear, the shiny shoes we buy, the expensive lipsticks we use, the ear rings, the gifts, the royal cars, the big mansions, etc. are all components of materialistic world. We very well know that all these things do not matter. For survival it is just the food, a place to live and sufficient to wear clothes is required. But still we buys all those expensive stuff. Materialism cannot be kept away from our lives neither does spirituality.
Every person alive has the capability to find this balance for their life. The balance cannot be generalized.
4. Make yourself happy
There are many ways to make yourself happy. In the 24 hours of your daily life, take out at least 1 hour for yourself. Generate hobbies, if you do not have any, try things out and figure out what your hobbies might be. Like start drawing, sketching, dancing, singing, playing keyboard or any other instrument, start cooking, start with YouTube channel, start writing stories or poems. There are ’N’ number of things which can you happy, so that you smile from inside.
5. Feel good about you.
See you are a wonderful person and that is the truth. We underestimate ourselves and demotivate our own selves. So simply feel good about yourself.
