Saturday, October 31, 2009

The Wonder and Health of an Enquiring Mind

“An enquiring mind is the best defence against issues of attack on mental, and therefore emotional, wellness.”

Almost all of life starts and finishes in the mind. We’ll think this a little odd but the creative mind has the tidal wave power for us to break like a tsunami over our mental, emotional and spiritual futures and it perhaps leaves us never having to face that torrent of hopeless sadness again. (I say “never” very conditionally.)

The enquiring mind is set out of a paradigm for moment-by-moment, default learning. It’s a mental construct that blocks the negative out simply because it leaves no room for it to enter—most if not all space is prioritised for learning and growing.

The enquiring mind does this more and more, the more it is practiced. Like the rewiring (myelination[1]) of the brain, the brain is gradually being programmed (or reprogrammed) to thrive, not simply survive. This is precisely how new habits are formed, in many cases replacing old, inferior or bad ones.

Sure, we need to ‘save’ some part of our minds for dealing with the tougher things of life that cross our bows, and these will take priority even over the enquiring processes we’ve just talked about.

‘Maintaining’ mental processes come before ‘improving’ mental processes do. It’s just the pecking order of survival vs. thriving. The most important accompanying virtue in these cases is, of course, courage: courage to fight in truth; to endure the necessary journey in truth.

We must never underestimate the role of the enquiring “learning” mind in our mental, emotional and physical wellbeing. It alone—the mindset—has the power of optimism and resilience that is life-giving and positive, leaving less room overall for the things of darkness.

Attack is often the best form of defence!

© S. J. Wickham, 2009.




[1] “myelination.” MedicineNet.com, Retrieved 31 October 2009. http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=33824. It says myelination is the formation of the myelin sheath around a nerve fiber (US). My thoughts now: This myelin sheathed nerve fibre then becomes a ‘preferred’ neural pathway, and so the brain begins to ‘go a different route’ in its thinking.

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