Can You Stop COMPULSIVE THINKING?

In the weekend series, we try to look beyond business and financial issues and see the side-other of the coin. Thinking is a great tool associated with intellectual activities?it?has contributed to the technological advancement of humans. It?is regarded?as the hallmark of the mind, intellect and material. Governments and various organisations set up Think Tank groups to solve specific problems. So why?then?is it necessary to stop compulsive thinking??

First, WHAT IS COMPULSIVE THINKING? Simply, it is an addiction to which many persons find it hard to control thinking and relax, even when they want to relax. In other words, it is a long-lasting?disorder in which a person experiences uncontrollable and repetitive patterns of thinking?like a gramophone. It leads to obsessions, depression, and diseases and affects daily behaviour negatively. When it becomes addictive, it is like an avalanche, like a stone?once?it leaves the hands of the thrower, he has no control over the damage it can cause.

According to Tolle (1999), Enlightenment: Rising Above Thought is the gateway to overcoming “compulsive thinking”.?Tolle and other?scholars of thought, posit that the present moment holds the key to liberation.?In some cases, compulsive thinking can lead to suicide. To Tolle (1999), enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling to a level below thought, the level of animal or plant. In the enlightenment?state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before.?You use it?mostly?for practical purposes,?but?you?are free of the involuntary internal dialogue, and there is?INNER STILLNESS. When you?do?use your mind,?and?particularly when a creative solution is needed, you oscillate every few minutes or so between thought and stillness, between mind and?no mind.?No-mind is consciousness without thought. Only in that way is it possible to think?creatively,?because only in that way does thought have any real power.?

In the book Steve Jobs written by Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs wrote that?intuition is?a very powerful?thing, more powerful than intellect. That’s had a?big?impact on my work.?If?you sit and?observe?you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things - that’s when your intuition starts to blossom?and?you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more.

The 191-page book?entitled:?The Power of Now provided insights into the presence of being, of being in the present moment.?He used different metaphors and psychoanalysis to trace the root cause of compulsive thinking and then created a pathway that humans can use to navigate out of the?compulsive?thinking patterns – he called it the POWER OF NOW – Be in The Present Moment and advised readers or listeners not to believe what he says, but to try the mechanisms he proffered, so that through experience(s) they could?become reality(s) for them.

The Power of Now?is reported?to have sold over five (5) million copies in 2005 and still counting.