Are you aware that your mental patterns actually create certain mental grooves in your brain?
According to neurophysiologists, samskaras or deep-rooted mental patterns create grooves in our brain, just like rivulets in sand, which makes the water run in certain patterns. They say that each time we react in a certain way, for example, if we react with anger, we strengthen the power of the pathway. In this way, the anger pattern becomes stronger each time we react in the same way.
As we observe from nature, each time the water runs in the same pathway, the rivulet becomes deeper. Same way, each time you react in a certain way to a situation, you only strengthen that pattern. Another example, if you are accustomed to falling sick every time you have any stress or fear, you are encouraging and strengthening that engram of falling sick due to stress and fear. This is a very important truth – catch it.
Just like a river running in the same direction becomes deeper and permanent, the same principle applies to our brain if we have so many rivers in India – Ganga, Kaveri, Yamuna, Saraswati, Godavari, Narmada, Sindhu! Some of the rivers in our brain are wild rivers, forest rivers. They have the power to suddenly flood and cause calamities in our life. So we need to make a dam to divert such rivers; to make them flow in a different direction. By making that dam and diverting the river to a different direction is what Paramahamsa Nithyananda, a living incarnation (fondly known as Swamiji) called sadhana (spiritual practice). Hence, in Vedic tradition, all the different lineages (sampradaya) agreed in the importance of spiritual practice.
Neuroplastic science also says that your brain has the ability to create new grooves and pathways, and the existing ones will heal up and disappear if left on their own. So whenever you are really feeling, be it stress or fear or anxiety, do something very active and dynamic. Either do a cathartic meditation or intense weight-lifting to make the body active. You will create a new engram, a different flow of energy, a new groove in the brain which replaces the old pathway. So in future, whenever fear or stress happens in you, the whole thing will automatically get converted into useful energy for expansion and well-being.
When awareness is added to your rajas (restless energy), it can just become part of your life which can be directly useful to you. If you are stressed, if you have anger or fear towards somebody, just take it out with awareness in the gym, heavy yoga or do some intense cathartic process such as Manipuraka Shuddhi kriya (gibberish meditation) and pranayamas (yogic breathing techniques) like Bhastrika, Kapalabhati, loud chanting of Upanishads (ancient scriptures) and Vedic mantras (sound vibrations). If one can release the stress and fear in these methods, you will see that you will be creating new rivulets which fundamentally change the way your responses to situations in life. You will not be strengthening the old mental patterns of suffering and torturing yourself, instead you will be giving life to a new possibility. This is one powerful healing technique which can lead you to a permanent shift in cognitions and experience of a higher consciousness.
In essence, what responses you strengthen play a major role in either solidifying your old mental patterns of suffering or changing the subtle brain grooves for the evolution of a new consciousness! Namaste 😀