Holding The Vision:This is the theme for the May Global Unity Festival.
On a broad level, for us presenters, it's about each of us keeping in mind the overall vision of the Global Unity Festival. Which is a big vision, about coming together, helping, doing our wee bit for overall global wellbeing.
How do we find answers for ourselves?
But of course, within that, most of us are looking for ways to have a better life. Of course. And this too, it does help. These have not been easy times, and all of us are looking for answers that we can use within our own situation.
We have our own "sorting things out" mechanism
So weird - recently, there was something that I just couldn't work out, and, without realising it, I was definitely holding the vision of it. For ages, actually. I truly couldn't get it right, though. So I just kept randomly trying out new things, to see how they worked out.
Trial and error, I believe it's called.
However, years ago, I was told, by people I knew who worked as trainers in Accelerated Learning, that our brain loves a question, and will do it's best to work out the answer. I have found this to be true. But, and here's the trick, we do have to keep wondering, pondering, that question. We can't just ask once, and hey, presto! the answer appears. I hadn't been allowing my brain to do this. Instead of asking, I just kept coming up with ideas, and looking at other people's methods too. Not the smartest ways.
And, for me anyway, answers do come in the form of myriads of thoughts, about how to do said question. Sigh. Not an immediate answer.
I'm that person who actually has to let those thoughts come, then try out these relevant thoughts rather than me thinking randomly about what to do, until I come to the one that works. More sigh. And then, being me, keep doing what does work, instead of thinking: "oh, why don't I just check by trying out a few more ways?" Also not the smartest way, veering off course like this.
But the answer does actually come through following through until I get what works for me.
And that's the important part: what works for oneself.
Strangely, my errors over holding the vision, are in everyday life, but not with the spirituality. With spiritual questions, the answers have just come. I kid you not. I was never using my brain/mind complex here, I was using my heart and deep, deep longing. Maybe that's two clues, right there, for one's vision?
Our brain helps us
So I'll be getting into the mechanics of this, in a simplified way, on my Holding The Vision talk. To do with our brain and thoughts.
Years ago, when I was training yoga teachers, I got into investigating the mind/brain link, and various parts of the brain. Basically to further the yoga teacher trainees knowledge of what they were doing. Every now and then, I just can't help myself, I have to find out more.
A weird form of nerdism that I have.
What else can we do?
It truly helps to write things down. When we write down what we are trying to achieve, our vision, it helps our brain to analyze, work out what to keep in our long term memory, store the relevant information and to then start working on it. I never realised that it had to be vividly described to make it more achievable. However, because I'm rather visual, I do keep bringing strong, colourful, moving images, of my vision, into my mind. And this helps too. Dramatically.
Imagine what would happen if we did both?
When I spent many long weekends learning Maori deep spirituality (for the healing that I do), I wrote down screeds as we learnt. Because I knew from experience, that I personally would remember it better, by doing this. And it really did work for me. It still does.
I'm tragically useless with learning auditory style
Whereas, with yoga ashram training where we had no access to books, nor pen and paper, I struggled with learning all of the long chants, because I do not learn in an auditory way. And yet, decades later, I was at a yoga ceremony, and one of the very long chants that I just could not remember when we had been doing them every morning - I knew that chant. I remembered it, word for word. I realised that with auditory things, the memory of those words, would just emerge, maybe only a couple of years later.
This is exactly what happened, when I spent a year learning the Maori language. I was honestly the worst in the class. I tried so hard, I practiced saying the words, over and over. My memory was terrible. But when we read the language, I often could understand it. (more weird... ) My classmates who had more Maori genes than me, learnt very quickly. Maori are auditory. I was not. So, different ways of learning.
But, my vision of wanting to speak the language, was, and is, strong. Mysteriously, I can talk to myself (silently or out loud) with some sentences, now. To my surprise. I'm sure that it is because I just kept holding the vision of being fluent. I have a really long way to go with this. But I shall just keep going. And the auditory stuff having to sink into my brain and memory for a while, knowing that sooner or later I would start to remember bits and pieces, effortlessly.
I'm sure that other people have suggestions, too. About keeping the vision, learning, and such. I'd love to hear them.
Post here about dreams and goals
Link to chakra meditation and my talks and other meditations on Earth Elders: here. Click "join" if you haven't already, then click the search icon, and enter "Ratnamurti Saraswati".
Link to Global Unity Festivals on you tube, here. I'm in the Wave 1, Asia/Pacific episodes.
Also find me:
In Buddhism, we have a verse in the Pali language which starts with "mano pubbangama dhamma" - which very loosely translated means all things arise from the mind, are created by the mind, is foremost of the mind. For us, the mind is a very powerful tool and visualizing is just one aspect of developing our minds. :)
ReplyDeleteThat's really interesting, Bless. I use visualisation here and there.
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