Preksha Dhyana Self Awareness by Relaxation

Author(s): Mahapragna Acharya
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

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Overloading the mental faculty is the main cause of mental fatigue and tension. Overthinking causes mental disorder and many people suffer from this disorder because they keep the delicate equipment active whether it serves any purpose or not. Constant use of the faculty is a way of life for them.
A simple way of giving rest to mind is to learn living in the present. We live more in the past or future and very little in the present. We constantly indulge either in the memories of the past or are busy with the planning for the future. We are very much enmeshed in the new-work of unnecessary memories, and thus, there is little time for living in the present. To live in the present is unloading the mind of the burden of the past and relieve it from mental tension.
The third type is emotional tension which is worst of all.
Intense craving to possess pleasant and desirable, intense grief for loss of dear ones or property, intense desire for getting rid of some unpleasant or undesirable infliction -all these produce emotional tension. Desire for retaliatory violent action also produces emotional tension. An incident of confrontation in the past may continue to fester for years and one is overwhelmed with a desire for violent retaliation.
Continuity of a high degree of muscular tension is a problem of the present times. Mental tension is far more serious than this! But emotional tension is the most difficult and pernicious of all. It produces dangerous psychological distortions and bestial behaviour. The only remedy is systematic meditation. Emotioanl tension, produced by bestial urges of retaliation etc., can be relieved by regular practice of 'Preksha'. If 'Preksha' is adopted as a way of, life, one acquires not only physical and mental goodness but also psychical goodness by eradicating all evils from one's thought, speech and action.
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