What are our hopes, dreams, visions and intentions? Perhaps more generically, what are our thoughts and where do they come form? Our thought forms can take the shape of daydreaming, imagination or visualization.
Daydreaming is cognitively heavy and keeps our thought patterns in cycles of procrastination. This pattern of chronic thinking keeps recurring as we go about our daily lives. In neuroscience, we call this the resting state network.
The brain at rest uses 20% of the body’s metabolic energy even thought it weighs 2% of the body mass. This is 10% more energy given its weight. Any further brain activity adds little to the metabolic cost, as the energy reserves are allocated to other bodily activities. So in order to increase our cognitive capacity, we free up our minds from the burden of chronic thinking.
Imagination is when we are actively conscious of our thoughts without interfering with them. Imagination is like the wild horses. You jump on and hold on for dear life as you are taken way on a ride that you have no control of.
Focused visualization is a powerful technique where we simulate a procedure in order for it to be error free when we do it in realtime. I learnt this while I was doing my Masters research. My Masters supervisor asked me attempt the surgical procedures visually, till I was able to visualize the whole procedure error free. Only when I got the visualization perfect would I perform the surgery.
We may not know where our thoughts come from but we do know that it is our state that shapes our thoughts.
So we ask - what do our minds serve? Without a master, the mind becomes self serving or at best - human centric. The self serving thought patterns are a product of fear. It is fear that drives our thought patterns to become linear and goal directed. The fear that attempts to control uncertainty by simulating the most likely possibilities.
These simulations adds to the cognitive load already saturated by chronic thinking. It is uncertainty that drives fear, yet our linear goal directed thought patterns are precisely what does not work under uncertainty. This is the great paradox. It is when we feel safe that we have the capacity to imagine, the creative channels that have been shut off by chronic thinking because play and fear cannot coexist.
It is when our hearts begin to speak that the mind finally finds rest from the burden of chronic thinking.
Because the heart is responsive to this moment, anything that happens around us, changes our heart rate and therefore the rest of the nervous system. It is our state that shapes our thought patterns.
These are forms of lack. The lack that comes from fear - the need to escape from this moment. By finding harmony within ourselves, we find harmony with all else. It is through this harmony that we find that our dreams are never our own. It is through each other that we find meaning in our dreams. Then why don’t we work with each other and create together?
What do we prevent ourselves from dreaming? Only when we find safety in our own bodies do we dream the dream that no one else can imagine. It is when we follow our hearts that we find that our reality gains magical properties.
Co-creation is the magic that happens when we find harmony with this moment. The magic of collective flow. The magic that comes from the state of expansiveness rather than the self-centric fears that comes form a heart in a hurry. When the mind finally finds rest in the heart are we freed from the linear, goal directed thought patterns that betray this moment.
“Perhaps it is not magic that is elusive, but that which makes this moment unforgettable.”
Dr. Kaushik Ram