What activity expands your mind, your thinking, your world?

Question

This sounds pretty basic, but this past week I have found walking in the country at home and being alone with my thoughts are helping calm the turmoil of my marriage.
So I no longer feel hopeless...How do you expand your thinking?

Answer 1

How do I "expand" my thinking?

The word expand, to me, implies in increase in the scope of thought, and not with the amount, or the clarity of those thoughts.

To use a similie, it is like zooming out of the perspective from which you see a picture. Your not changing the number of dots per square area that makes up the picture, or increasing the size of the picture. just the amount of the picture seen from your point
of view.

Thought can be thought of in the same way. you could focus totally of something, becoming an expert in regard to this item, act, thought, word or feeling, but have no understanding of how it fits into the puzzle. Or you can look at the big picture, and see how all the pieces fit together, but haven't the slightest understanding what each piece does or means. In today's society people are immensely rewarded for becoming experts, while the versatile people may feel whole but be financially and/or socially poor.

The best way to expand one's thinking, speaking from experience as one who is very versatile, is firstly to choose to think of your ability to think as a tool, which you can use to achieve what you want. You don't have to use the tool, but so many people today are so addicted to thinking they don't know how to stop. In order to know how to use a tool, it works better to know how to get along without it. The most obvious benefit resulting is an appreciation of having the tool to use. For some advise on acheiving a calm mind, read "The Power Of Now", by Eckhart Tolle.

This is followed by mental stimuli. The space between stimulus and response is choice, and the power to choose is often primarily a mental process. This includes mathematics, such as plotting constants and variables to form predictions, and a clear understanding of self, including knowing what you want, having the courage to change the things you know you can, the humility to accept the things you know you can't change, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Experiences that involve cause and effect, choice and consequence, provide the brain with far more information than the mind can process, so once again you have a choice. Which information do I absorb from the effect of my choice that will help me the most in making the right next choice, thereby leading to what I want?

This is a question only the experiencer can answer, and for almost every person on the planet that choice is entirely and constantly subconscious. The brain processes 3 billion "bits" of information, but the mind absorbs only 2000, in any given jiffy (very small amount of time). This means your mind is choosing what you know for you, and it is not random.

There are many techniques available, several types of Yoga and meditation, concentrated focus on sensation or silence or space or mental projection, but almost all of these are temporary, and therefore must be practiced regularly to maintain those good feelings. In this way they are similar to the effect of psychotropic or hallucinagenic drugs, without the adverse health consequences.

Some yogas are practiced stationary, in silent and dark environments, others in natural or colourful environments. Many more yogas are active, including meditations conducted while engaging in activity, sport or other physically useful pasttime. There is a yoga for manual labour, a yoga for lovemaking, a yoga for marathon running, a yoga for body building, a yoga for social interaction. For more details on this, read "Island", a fictional novel by Aldous Huxley.

Seeing the big picture means establishing a versatile mind that not only accepts change, but seeks to remove the mind from it's comfort zone at every possible opportunity. To seek change is a constant challenge, but provides the experiencer a life lived through the mind of more than one perspective. The more perspectives you can collect and store, the more of the picture you will have viewed.

Remember, I can only see the world through my eyes. That is the essence of individuality. To understand the world from another point of view through my eyes is a true gift.

Gandhi said, "be the change you wish to see in the world."

Enjoy Awareness Now!!!
Love,
I

Answer 2

Just using my mind. Learn something "Real". I have found learning can be fun, there so much to know. Not have to become a professional, but, I can usually carry a conversation with a person about what they know. Also, as you say, just walking in the woods. Our brain is like a muscle; "Use it or lose it", but, just like exercising our muscles, the brain needs to rest too. Simple thoughts in the woods or even reading a simple children's' book helps. I call it; "Downloading my brain".

Answer 3

Walking alone may be a good way to do this. So is reading the newspaper (a real one, like the NYTimes), learning a language, learning to play a musical instrument, studying nature.

Excellent question.

Answer 4

Two things: One... Painting. You dont have to be good. Get some acrylic paints and put your emotions on paper, let it be an organic process... It can be very very basic and let your inner healing begin!

and

Travelling: It can be a simple day-outing or a good Holiday. Meeting other people and listening to their stories - it gives you amazing perspective.

Answer 5

Reading, conversations with friends, listening Pink Floyd & Rush.

Answer 6

i like to go in the lot behind my house and sit under this big tree and meditate or i like to go to my uncles house behind his house there's a creek and the sound of the water really calms me but i have to be alone if someone is there it makes me really mad and that's not way i went there it was to calm me not anger me..lol

Answer 7

Talking to yourself is a prove therapy that will calm you and get you thought as clear as you can see them. So I do the same

Answer 8

I reach up to God as He reaches down to me.

There are many things that I do not understand and many issues with which I struggle; God brings peace and provides answers to the turmoil of my common life.

Answer 9

the mind can be expanded through meditation and yoga,this path is for the seriously spiritual minded person only, who is prepared to sacrifice much to become the all

Answer 10

Mastering our creator's universal communication system in the new universal language with knowledge on what is going on around us.