When I talk about mental Balance, I am referring to the operational state of the human mind. BalanceScience.com is investigating human Balance by examining the trinity of the Human Being; that is physical balance (the body), mental Balance (the mind), and spiritual balance (the soul).
I see the human mind as the operational liaison between spirit and body. This could be a hard concept for some people to accept but if we pull the body apart in such manner then it becomes easier to discover how human balance is achieved and how to maintain, correct, and enhance it. Remember that a human is a being of many parts acting in cooperation to perceive and define our reality but at the same time reacting to our reality to define ourselves.
Do we create our reality or does reality create us? Or are both moving together in some sort of a dance with the purpose of developing our self?
Just accepting that the mind is a separate entity was a tough concept to uncover. From my experiences with Kriya Yoga and meditation and what I’ve read on the subject , I have had to literally start with the spiritual aspect of a human, the real me (or you) and reverse engineer back to uncover the mind.
Now here I have to be careful not to cross the line over into spiritual development. So, if the spirit is the self that we identify with, our persona, our character, the ‘us’ with all it’s wants, desires, and sensibilities, then what the heck is the mind??
The mind is like a subordinate employee, dutifully gathering information thru the senses, gathering feedback from the bodily interaction with our world, filtering this information, processing memories, cross-relating information, running programs that we (in spirit) have instructed it to, and then continually displaying the results to us. We can pay attention to the continual display or, like most people, just cruise along on auto-pilot in our daily lives.
We think we are giving instructions to the body (ie move hand, read this, or do that) but the commands pass through the mind en-route to the body. We don’t even realize the mind is there. But now that we do, lets find out more about it.
What is it?
I could give you the medical definitions but they describe the brain. I could find no satisfactory definition of the Mind (at least not yet and I certainly would welcome a good one expressed in layman terms) so here is my definition:
The human body has a symmetry based on the spinal column. The brain is broken down into two halves each controlling the opposite half of the body. Each half of the brain has a different method of processing, filtering, and presenting information. Its been scientifically proven that the human body has different polarity on each side of the body and a tiny electrical current within the body. Vedic Medicine (Ancient India) has determined that this human life force swirls around the spinal column and forms tiny unseen whirlpools of energy at specific locations. They call these charkas. Its an underlying principle of the universe. We see these same spirals in the movement of water and on a large scale, in the shape of our galaxy. If an engineer wants to create electricity all he has to do is spin a magnet (with opposite poles) around and draw off the resultant flow off electrons via an adjacent coil.
So I will go out on a limb and postulate that the mind, the unseen but ever active servant of the spirit, is an electrical field created by the body’s life force. It exists in the vicinity of the brain. Is it part of the brain, quickly zipping along neural pathways? Or a by-product of the brain existing in close proximity? I would also say that the mind is a by-product of the cooperative interaction of the two halves of the brain.
Let’s not get lost in medical debate. The mind and spirit are separate entities. Some people have described them as the subconscious, the conscious, and even the super conscious mind.
What does the human mind do?
Why, it does whatever we tell it to.
If the mind does whatever we tell it to and if the mind tells the body to do whatever we tell it to, then by simple reasoning, we know we can train the human mind. When we train the mind, it has a physiological effect of making permanent changes in the physical brain which gives us the result of heightened and improved performance of the mind. Examples of this would be improved memory after repetition exercises, problem solving skills after solving problems thru reasoning, etc) Think of the brain as a muscle. The more we think ,the more permanent little bumps and wrinkles form in the brain.
We, as Spirit (or Soul if you prefer) review the information that the mind relays to us and then decide how to REACT to it. Our reaction could take the form of any one of the many emotions familiar to Man.
I think the clue to human mental balance is not to react but choose to act with some hesitation and discernment when situations appear to arose negative and contradictory emotions within us. We must use some objectivity in our perception of the world and carefully look deeper. In doing so, we are asking the mind to qualify instead of quantify, clarify instead of just delivering, and adjust the filters of perception to get a clearer input of whatever is on our mind.
First we realize the mind is a separate thing
Then we realize it does what we tell it to and consequently can be trained.
Then we find methods to train the mind for optimum operation and to yield specific results
Then we find methods to keep everything in balance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hA-7aq6OXI
Again, just as in physical Balance, we have uncovered two paths towards mental Balance.
1. We can TRAIN the mind by use of physical exercises, self-commands, visualization, self-hypnosis, and autosuggestion. There are many professionals out there with accepted programs ready to do just that.
Or
2. We can CALM the mind and effectively wipe the mental slate clean thereby balancing emotions and their physical consequences. The ancient peoples of Asia and India developed simple practices for this thousands of years ago.
We will investigate both ways.
Sincerely Yours In Balance,
Editor-In-Chief
BalanceScience.com