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Empowering the mind : an individual’s model

Started servicing the interrupts at will? Are you finding it difficult? Don’t worry, so do we. Do not give up. That’s the key. Now, let’s take a step forward.

This time, as you would have guessed from the diagram above, we have something interesting to discuss. An Individual’s Model. Sounds complex? No, it isn’t.  Simplicity is one of the most important design value, I believe in.

This model represents each and every individual in our society. Yes, this is you. And that’s why, this model is  intuitive, isn’t it? What’s new with this? Let’s try to understand what it has to offer.

The human body can be treated as a ‘black’ box, as we are not concerned about the internal complexities. Based on the senses input to it, human body does some processing and performs some actions as output, which may or may not be visible, under the control of our mind.

The important point to notice is, assuming natural condition, that our body is always completely under control of our mind. Thus, empowering our mind would lead to utmost control over our actions, even on the split-second reactions, irrespective of our desires, if any.

One question may arise, where is our mind actually located? Is it a part of our brain or a completely separate entity? Science and Religion have different explanations. From the scientific viewpoint, mind is constituted by some parts of  our brain. And from observations, that science can’t explain yet, the spiritual viewpoint connects it to the unknown, soul. Where ever may it be located, for an individual, it means the key to complete control over actions.

Our mind evolves continuously with time and the current state of our mind and it’s ability to control is the impression of the past.  Throughout our life, we interact with our family, teachers, friends, relatives and others in the society and they contribute to make us what we are today. Sometimes, we notice it and sometimes we don’t. This interaction defines our early ethics/moral values as well as interests and how we approach life, which most of us stick to, unless one has courage to question and validate them. In the current state of our nation, this interaction is the biggest issue that we need to address. Does it mean that we should give credit/blame them for all our actions and do nothing, even if we feel or if someone points out, that we need improve our mindset and there’s more to it, than what we know? No, absolutely not, but the point take note of is that, it is not that easy to improve one’s mindset in the later stages of one’s life.

As an individual, every one has the ability to think, but definitely our surroundings influence the way we think. We should look forward to have an open mind, which would respect and reuse as well as ignore whatever we receive from our surroundings, based on how we analyze it. An individual should develop the ability to recognize and accept mistakes and more importantly, to correct them. Also, one must instill the ability to listen to other viewpoints carefully, learn from them as well as question them and accordingly modify one’s own viewpoint, if required. We must never let our perception to become static.

Let’s get back to the problem with the interaction amongst an individual and the society, in the early stages of one’s life. Today, considering the state of our education system, this interaction in the early stages of an individual in this world is the root cause of majority of the problems, we face.  Are our teachers or parents in a position to empower our children’s minds? The answer, unfortunately, is no for majority of cases and for variety of reasons. The most important reason being the quality of education, our teachers or parents received. And this is a chain, unless and until, we break this chain, we would never be able to reduce or completely resolve the problems, we face. The quality of education, one receives, from it’s surroundings, defines one’s mindset and as our mind is in full control of our actions, it in turn defines who we are in most of the cases, accepting the current state of our education system.

The surroundings are equally or even more responsible than a particular individual for any criminal  activity that we witness around us like corruption, sexual  assault, killings and etc. Whenever any crime happens, we blame the individual, punish that person and hope that it would not happen again, which I believe is a  completely incorrect approach. The punishment should be there, no doubt about that, but more importantly attention should be paid to improve the surroundings in order to allow our children to learn the ability to think on their own as well as making them aware of the social issues, including the issues involving sex, that we face and encouraging them to allow their perception to  evolve  with time.  We need schools that praise children for learning from the mistakes done in past, rather than scolding them for making mistakes.

Considering the current situation, a large number of children do not go to school, and those who do are not empowered to be autonomous learners, as suggested by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. By presenting this model, we hope that we would understand the importance of empowering our young minds by creating an environment  that would enable quality education as a fundamental right to each and every one in the society. This would reverse the chain effect, mentioned earlier. These children who receive quality education, would reach out to their parents, friends, relatives as well as others and also someday would successfully take up one of these important roles. If we perfect the causes, the effect take care of itself and in fact, will multiply automatically.

Every single mind, when empowered, with the ability to control actions, in the societal setting, irrespective of the senses, would lead towards the ideal society where love prevails and crime does not exist. While focusing on improving the quality of education, we must pay attention to the fact that, it is difficult to reach, each and every mind, instantly, thus the law and order needs to be given equal importance, which is a short term solution, as opposed to quality education, which is a long term and permanent solution.

We shall continue to use this model as we move forward towards empowering our minds. Stay tuned.

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Empowering the mind : interrupts

What were you doing before clicking the link to this post?
You can service this interruption later as well.
If you were doing something ‘ important ‘, switch back to that activity. Do not forget to mark it to be pending (assuming that since you clicked this link, you are interested in reading it).

We are naturally very susceptible to interrupts; events that cause diversion from the activity in focus. Does that mean that we have to accept it and live this way throughout our lives? Not  necessarily, but of course many of us would do. Not because that it’s something we really want to do, but due to the fact that we choose to serve our senses, we decide to act to each and every impulse immediately.

Now, does that mean interrupts are something to be ignored? Absolutely not, but serving them without any filtering or prioritizing is the main cause of inefficiency.

Okay, assume, that at this moment highest priority task of your life is to count.. 1,2,3… till 20.
Facebook these days has become a major cause of distraction to many of us, though it is a very important medium of social communication, it reduces efficiency, if it’s use is not filtered or prioritized appropriately.

Did you complete counting or even started counting before you read the next sentence?
It is most likely, that the word ‘Facebook’ might have caught your attention, which you can say is an interrupt of a kind in this context, but in spite of that your priority was to complete counting till 20 first, before moving ahead. Though this is a very irritating example and you might have continued counting in your mind while moved ahead, the point to consider is generally, whenever an interrupt occurs, we serve it, forgetting all our priorities, even after judging that this interrupt is not so important and can be served once we finish the task at hand.

Suppose, somehow, as everyone might adopt different ways of doing it, if we achieve to serve interrupts at will, it would definitely be the first step towards empowering our minds. There are other aspects as well, which need to be considered next.

Till then, do practice serving interrupts at will. Do share the ways you adopted.
Stay tuned for more on this topic.

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I hope.

For a NATION, to be PROUD of.
For the WORLD, that ensures PEACE.
For the PEOPLE, who LOVE WITHOUT BARRIERS of race, religion and caste.
For a SOCIETY, that nurtures EQUALITY.
For a CULTURE, that evolves with TIME.

For a MIND, that’s OPEN to new ideas.
For a HEART, that beats to say, ‘I’m ALIVE’.
For a FACE, with a beautiful SMILE.

For an IDEA, that gets REALIZED.
For a DREAM, that leads to ACTION.
For a DECISION, driven by a VISION.
For a MISTAKE, that leads to LEARNING.

For GROWTH, that’s SUSTAINABLE.

I HOPE.  I ACT.

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Empowering the mind : the role of religions

Religions are a kind of research work. Research on mind and life. There are a lot of things to learn from one’s own religion and an individual may choose to contribute to improve it. The stories you were told, which guided you how to live life, is to me your religion by default.

Now, to say that all our stories are better, is not correct on anyone’s front. The problems occur when these stories are used to create a negative atmosphere. The problem with the Muslim world today is the excessive distortion of such stories. And the same problem exists with other religious entities as well, but to a smaller extent. The point to understand is everyone needs to contribute to improve these stories we tell and rules we follow.  We should not do or spread something, just because a ‘so called’ representative of our religious ideology said so. We must analyze it and then decide to act accordingly.

The stories we tell our children are extremely important,  we must always continue to improve them by doing more research. Throw away the content that is irrelevant or was proved to be wrong. For example, just because many things said by Vivekananda are useful to live a better life, don’t assume that everything said by him has to be perfect. No one is perfect or can be perfect. Even Vivekananda was no exception. We must understand that, making mistakes is natural in the process of learning.

On a religious front, we must try to improve the existing stories or practices or even find out some better stories from other religions, if required, as well. We may even choose to write something new on our own to be told to our children, but let’s not forget to reuse what we already have. Improving a system from within is better than creating a parallel system.

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Empowering the mind : the God, the unknown and the universe

There’s no doubt that there are more unknown things in this world than what we know by means of Science. The theories that arrived to explain these things led to religions and faith in God as a superpower controlling this universe, because we tend to relate to someone like us easily.

So our saints, let’s call them, researchers in terms of the modern world, decided to put across to people, the experiences that they had or ideas they thought, through the stories, the most effective medium of conveying ideas till date. There were scientific experiments carried out to know more continuously, but the unknown part was so much more as it is even today, that they understood that this not how it’s going to work out, we need some assumptions, to structure the unknown, in turn the universe, in more familiar words, God, in order to achieve a balance in the society, by guiding people on how to live.

A lot of research was done by these saints on human mind, which led to a unanimous conclusion that expectation is the main cause of all the pain. When one starts working on what one believes in after defining the effect, that what needs to be achieved, and by identifying the causes, that would produce this effect, then one just needs to keep working on these causes and stop expecting the effect, as it will come automatically.

But this does not mean that don’t ever seek change or define the effect itself. If we start to think that whatever happens around is act of God, then everything will start appearing fine to us, there would be no motivation. It’s us and the one’s around us who make up the God, the unknown, the universe. So the only way to unify with the God is to make sure that our actions do maintain the balance of this universe and we always seek betterment by defining effects/goals that will ensure balance. The means of interpreting or the stories to convey this message can be different, but at the end the God or the unknown is within.

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Where the mind is full of fear

Where the mind is full of fear and the head’s never held high
Where knowledge is not free
Where the world has been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the worst of the lies
Where tired lazy even fails to stretch its arms
Where the clear stream of reason fails to find its way
Out of the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is misled by pseudo-thee
Into ever-widening divide
From that hell of a prison, my Child, set my country free.

This is with highest respect to Rabindranath Tagore’s vision for India, but the reality today is completely opposite. And our motherland is asking her children to set her free from this prison.

It’s high time, that we paid attention to her tears.
Let’s rise beyond the ordinary to realize Rabindranath Tagore’s vision for India.

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Mind is like an inductor

Mind is like an inductor, it resists a sudden change. Later slowly it shifts to a state where the same change appears to be regular, as if there was no resistance.

What is an inductor?
An inductor is simply a device which, when connected in an electrical circuit, resists the change in current (flow of electrons) through it, just like our mind.

How an inductor works?
This video made by MAKE magazine represents a simple and practical view of an inductor. Click on the question above, to read more about it from HowStuffWorks.com.

For detailed understanding, watch MIT OCW video below,
which is a part of Electricity and Magnetism course at MIT, USA.

Now, let’s go back to the fact that our mind resists a sudden change.
See this article from Harvard Business Review.