My Dear  Friends.....  In order to bring in a sense of purpose and quality into our lives, we need to look at the nature and working of our very mind.

The mind is meant to absorb information, transform it into knowledge and lead it into action. Action and speech determine the quality of our life and these come from the mind.

How can we understand the nature of absorption of the mind ? Wise men who have dwelt on the truth of this, have said that most people's minds are as hard as rock. Just as the rock is impervious to water, information that falls on a hard mind bounces off without a trace.

A hard mind offers immense resistance ; it is full of previously absorbed information that prevents the flow of new knowledge and action. Our mind must be soft as sponge for maximum absorption. Just as water can be easily absorbed by a sponge and squeezed out, a soft mind easily absorbs information and allows free flow of knowledge to enable suitable action. The two processes are reversible --- a soft or open mind can be easily hardened and a hard or closed mind can be easily softened. We only need to be aware and exercise caution.

What makes our mind hard and closed ? Sages have said that this is an automatic, front-line defence mechanism for the protection of our belief systems based on our state of ego. If we encounter an idea or a situation that is not in line with our thinking, we immediately close our mind ; we put up a block against it ; this is what we call mindset. Ego creates mindset. Mindset is a protective mechanism of self-defence because we are scared of what others think about our notions and beliefs. Mindset is self-destructive and we have quite often experienced this. For example, a simple discussion develops into an argument and leads to a verbal fight, and can get more intense because of mindset.

Therefore, mere gathering of information by our mind is useless. We must transform this to knowledge. Our mind must be pure to be able to perform this conversion efficiently. The work of an impure mind will rebound while the work of a pure mind will reach out to the world for its welfare.

(How to purify and soften our mind?...  continued... (part -2)