To be able to slip into sleep is like heaven.
To not be able to slip freely into sleep can be a subtle torture.
There is much written about insomnia and the importance of’getting enough sleep and there are innumerable theories and techniques suggested to help someone who ‘can’t go to sleep’.
Once old age was merely called ‘senility’ and it was anticipated that acuteness of faculties would diminish gradually in those who lived beyond the age of seventy. Now generally referred to as Alzheimer’s disease, the following states are generally considered as important in early diagnosis, particularly if associated with dementia.
Considered as one of the most common signs of Alzheimer’s, especially in the early stages, is forgetfulness which hardly needs description as most of us suffer mild memory lapses. However should minor signs such as forgetting names, dates or events, or mislaying articles begin to include major incidents, with potentially dangerous ramifications, these memory lapses become a more serious problem to the individual and to those around them.
The journey of life and over many lives leads to a gradual evolving of the human being along with all things in nature.
Many developments and skills are the obvious ones such as physical abilities, intellectual skills and technological achievements. But the subtler aspect of our progress is measured in other ways that demonstrate we are changing, developing and refining our faculties and senses.
Memory is a complex faculty relating to recall of information stored in the subconscious mind, available through normal consciousness or even events accessed from the deeper strata of the psyche or soul. The faculty assists us in deliberate learning and training of the intellect as is does in a more instinctual manner from experiences already learned. These habits apply in the learning of basic physical control as in walking and movement, as well as more sophisticated examples such as speech.
There are degrees of learning and many ways of storing past information. Apart from the usual techniques used in classical educational practices when we learn through familiarity with exercise and practice, we respond to events and life circumstances spontaneously as if reacting to unconscious causes and an unremembered past.
Concentration is our most potent mental tool and essential in developing mental fitness.
It is our main faculty we use when learning or reading and when we are in a receptive or listening mode. We use this faculty to help us focus upon important personal interests in everyday life. We also use it to deliberately programme our own mind and so develop grooves of comfortable opinions and attitudes.
Concentration is mind power. It is the element we require to accomplish anything.
Our life is simply what our thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius
Each of us is generally responsible for all sorts of things, even from a young age when we are first conscious of good and bad actions and influences.
When we choose to reflect upon ourselves within the vastness of the universe, it would seem as if we are as nothing.
But as a conscious intelligence with Free Will, each of us represents a formidable potential for creativity and for better comprehending the Universe in which we live as well as becoming aware of the ability we have to contribute to it.
Our Free Will is the Power which gives us the gift of Choice and the capacity to create what our minds conceive. Any limitation is only defined by our imagination.
Memory has two facets. On one hand, memory is a particularly personal faculty that is directly related to our unique life experiences and is therefore subjective.
It is more generally applied in the process of learning and gathering information that can be shared with others and increased by exchange and communication with others on an impersonal level.
We would all like to think of being able to retain all our mental faculties as we age. This includes the subtle faculties that are less easy to define, but that nevertheless play an important role in our inner life. As well as all the obvious benefits of keeping a healthy, balanced body, our psychological health is needed if we wish to preserve both the faculties that allow us to function in the physical world and the subtle faculties that preserve the life of the mind and consciousness.
Whereas our general mental faculties help us to relate to the material world, our subtle faculties provide us with such qualities as insight, intuition, and the inspiration we need for mental creativity and also for our own integrity. These are faculties required for both the creative arts as well as for our use in the creative processes of our daily life.
All our mental faculties are important, with those perhaps best known to us being the ability to reason. to comprehend, to articulate, to communicate, to concentrate, and to imagine.
In addition we have special faculties and mental abilities that vary vastly with different individuals such as language skills, musical abilities, mathematical skills, and artistic abilities amongst them.
Insight, imagination and visualization are all involved in creating a mental vision. It is our clarity of inner vision of our life plans that helps determine our degree of success. This applies to our daily short term plan or to our long term goals and to our most intimate picture of ourselves – our self image upon which our self confidence depends.
Another important faculty we tend to overlook is the ability to translate all sensory information that comes to us from the outside world through sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch into material our mental system can best relate to.
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