Focus and Inner Peace

We have all tried to focus and to varying degrees succeed. I think it

is an essential skills to learn to clear your mind. If we all learnt how

to clear our minds – the world would likely be a lot more rational

place.

The interesting part is that there are different ways to do this and

different reasons why the mind is noisy. ?When we are students we beat

our minds into submission and eventually even possibly learn

something.

The Core Argument

I have read many procedures that asks of you to “clear your mind” and

really took a concerted effort to try to do it. Just as you finished

putting all the thoughts that came to you in a bubble and letting it

float away, the pink elephant that you do not want to think about comes

running across the scene and the candle starts to flicker and you start

wondering how hot the blue part of the light really is. Or the incense

makes you sneeze and you wonder if it will jinx you. The theory goes

that if you do this long enough and learn to control your mind you will

in time be able to focus on a single point and thus through this point

focus be able to direct your thought. Honestly – I did not have success

with this initially – but strangely now I can do it.

How did this happen? I found at least five techniques essential to

gaining focus for myself, and thought I’d share some of this.

Initially I started by asking a question or stating a fact that I

wanted to resolve. I had to welcome and acknowledge the

feelings that I felt around each of these, as they

arose and ask myself why I am having these feelings. I asked challenging

questions around fear, dependence, control and I had to ask for each

feeling if I could acknowledge if I wanted to feel this way or not, and

if I did it was okay and if not – it was also okay. This brought up more

feelings and one thing led to another. After doing this for about 3 or

four weeks – I really started feeling a lot more okay about the feelings

that I had about a lot of things.

The second technique is something that I thought I had the skills for – but on starting to practice it – found out I had a lot to learn. I started to visualise things and also exploring in a similar way – explore the feelings around it. The objective of this exercise was to see clearer. The interesting twist was to work out where things came from. I.e. I would think about how I got to eat the apple I was eating and starting thinking about the whole value chain that led to me eating the apple today. If you do this exercise long enough and keep on asking how you got to have this apple in your hands right now (and you do not lose your mind in the process) – you start realising that there are many factors that have contributed from the attitudes of your parents, to your perception of them, advertising, production processes – some of which you may have influenced directly or indirectly.

In real terms if you do this exercise you realise that you have a significant impact on the world and that your attitudes, preferences and expression thereof have a massive impact on the world. What was a simple apple – is now the sum total of your existence. How does this make you feel and are you willing to be comfortable with those feelings. Do you even like apples – and what does that mean… It all sounds a little surreal – but I believe that this is a critical process in calming the mind. It really allows you to see what is around you. A further variation to this is to visualise things that you want, not like you want to get it – but like you have it.

What Changes in Practice

I really wanted stuff – and realised that I was so busy wanting some stuff – that I never actually focused on getting it…

Another essential technique is to learn how to think! How many of us actually take the time to learn how to think and build skills in the thinking game. I did some courses in logic, reasoning and argumentation and a whole world opened up. Does the statements that others make have their foundation in fundamental assumptions that are sound – is there a valid argument and how many fallacies are perpetrated. What I found most useful in this process is that a lot of what we think about is driven by a lack of a process of thinking. I started looking for thinking processes and found some that are more or less practical. I think that a thinking process is very important and that there is a lot of quiet that comes in the world – I you can learn to think through an situation by analysing the argument.

I did a lot of work on improving my memory, and this opened up some more aspects. It makes a big difference is you start to ask people their names, and then remember them. Also starting to learn languages and other interesting facts allows you to interact with more people on a more meaningful level – ultimately enhancing various aspects of your being. Learning how to use your mind on a conscious and subconscious level is very important. Learning how to listen is also key – but also listening and remembering combines to be a powerful set of tools. To do this I stopped taking notes in some meetings, started listening and recalled the minutes of the meeting afterwards.

This and other techniques helped to help me listed (and I did mess up a couple of meetings…)

The fourth technique I found useful is to surround yourself with the things that you want to think about. The reality is that we think between 30,000 to 80,000 thoughts per day. The key to getting to any sort of focus is to allow yourself to direct these independent thinking events to a point that you want to reach. If you do not take control on the thinking process, it happily guides you exactly to where you are thinking anyway. The reality is that you will never not have that many thoughts – you can just choose to direct the thought-stream into a single (or couple of) topic(s). It is like the orchestration of many spikes of inspiration into a beautiful idea that will move the body through the spirit to be a soul.

The Practical Discipline

This is what it really means to focus. Through combining a thinking process (i.e. steps to go through to get to an end – that has been thought through once) with the combination of directing your amazing ability to think that you can create a clear picture in your mind that is vivid, real and that allows for achievement of a well thought through idea. In my experience if you then start acting on these thoughts – you really start moving at a pace that is unstoppable.

The fifth technique comes from understanding when you are stuck. If you are stuck then you have to move on. Allow yourself to get rid of being stuck. For a long time I had to work through some specific issues and after really thinking about why I got stuck – I realised that it was convenient for me to be stuck. The pattern is somehow familiar – somehow the thinking pattern gets stuck. A simple question to simply ask is – what if you decide to be unstuck for a moment. What if you can suspend your judgement or need to be something for a couple of minutes, drop your fear, your pride, your anger for a moment and follow a path of thinking that even for a split second assumes that the point on which you are stuck does not exist.

If you can conceive of a reality that is different from your current reality for a minute – then combining it with the process above can create freedom. Ultimately you find that you are in control of your feelings, emotions, thoughts and the execution of those thoughts.

When the mind is calm – you can ask youself meaningful questions

about what you want to do, where you want to go and what is important to

and for you. The answers are there – you know where you are going and

your whole being moves with you. This thinking combined with the idea of

just starting – makes nothing unattainable.

This all is very different from making ideas float into a candle – it

does creates a lot of peace. Once you start you will find it takes

little effort and that these ideas support each other and each idea

makes the other more powerful.

I personally still have a lot to learn about this – and feel that I

am only starting to learn how to calm the body, ignite the spirit and

move the soul. For me it has been an amazing journey of self discovery

and expression. I wish you well in your journey to inner peace and outer

expression thereof.

May 2012 be a year of focus for us all.