Training The Mind- Your Access to Increase Mental Power

When you talk about how to increase mental power, you can get a vision of your mind, working fast and furious at warp speed- solving issues and problems left and right.

At first glance one might think this was true.

Well Ekhart Tolle and some of the great minds of our time would say that obsessive thinking was exactly the opposite of what it takes for the mind to perform at ts optimum. Mr. Tolle calls compulsive thinking a ‘disease.’ And what many people of our enlightened times are beginning to see is that what we actually need to do is slow the mind down- and have it be still and quiet. And from this stillness, genius can arise.

How many of you, for instance, have gone through a time of tribulation in your life and have felt the stifling sensation of not being able to escape thinking about the problem. You try a hot bath- still the thoughts continue. You put the TV on- the thoughts sit in the background. You take a jog- your mind continues to churn. You try to sleep- but cannot. Finally desperate, you may seek peace through a sleeping pill- only to wake up still tired and with the same thoughts present. The mind in this sense could be seen as some out-of-control computer. You keep hitting the off button, but it won’t turn off. And it doesn’t solve the problem you want it to. It just churns away at the problem it wants to focus on- with very little success.

At times like this, it seems the mind is your bitter enemy. Not only does it work compulsive, whether you want it to or not. But the messages it sends to you- such as “You’re a failure” “What’s wrong with you?” “Can’t you do anything right”- are disheartening at best.

So in order to increase mental power, what we actually need to do is train the mind. The mind needs to be trained that it turns on or off at our control, and focuses on the subjects that we desire at any given time- instead of following its own agenda. Which is easier said than done.

And I can give personal testimony that yes, this can be done. For instance, right now I am facing what could occur to others as insurmountable obstacles in my personal life. To name a few, my beloved father is passing away and I cannot be there with him. My back is healing from an injury, and the instability of a new business has me living in the question mark in life. But because I have trained my mind, and it does not run me, I live a stable, peaceful life, one day at a time.

Today I used a variety of methods to train my mind. I listened to an entrainment CD, then a meditation CD, and then a hypnosis CD. I went for a nature walk, and I called myself to be present to the walk, the air, the sun, and the smells. When my mind stepped in with worries and concerns I thanked it for the thoughts, but I did not follow them. As a rule, I really try to thank and appreciate my mind because I know that my mind, like a misguided child, it is only trying to help.