In this highly technological age there are so many wonderful devices and tools that we can keep constantly busy in our outer life. We check our emails, update facebook, write on our blogs and search youtube for unique videos. All these interesting and useful tools can keep us focusing on the world around us and can easily prevent us being aware of the world within us.

If you want to get the most out of using a software program such as microsoft word, you have to spend some time learning how to use it, understanding how it works. In the same way, there is an inner \’software\’ program for how our mind works. This is like an inner technology and if you want to get the most out of the experience of your life then it behooves you to learn how it really works. There are many books on the subject of the mind and most of them certainly have some value. You can \’train\’ your mind, you can unlock the subconscious and you can even fill it with millions of useful facts and figures. The thing I\’m most interested in and I\’m guessing you are too is how to have the best possible experience in every moment, permanent happiness.

That\’s impossible, you might say, but there were a few human beings that discovered this inner technology and with that knowledge unraveled the mystery of permanent happiness. These were \’masters\’ as we call them. Jesus, Buddha, Confucious and Muhammad were a few of the knowers of inner technology. As for me, I\’ve studied much of Jesus\’ and Buddha\’s teachings and I found Buddha\’s writings on how the mind works very clear, concise and informative.

There is no way for me to cover the fullness of Buddha\’s writings on the mind in this short article. I can only introduce some basic concepts that hopefully will ignite enough curiosity in you to delve deeper. When we look at an object such as a chair, what is it that we see exactly. Well, maybe it\’s got four wooden legs, a platform and some sort of backing to it. In the process of seeing a chair there are actually several chairs. There is the \’physical\’ thing, the concept of a chair inside of our mind, our memory of \’chair\’ and more. This all happens in a split second when the light from the chair hits our eyes and our brain processes the image and makes sense of it. For most of us when we look out at the world we are seeing our own concept of the world. Why is this important?

It\’s easy to think that the chair exists independently from our mind, but the truth is that everything is tied to consciousness. Nothing exists separately from consciousness. If you study buddhist meditation practices you might be surprised at how much visualization is involved in the teachings. But one of the reasons they use imagination so much is because in a real sense that\’s what we do all of the time. We are \”imagining\” the world. You might say,\”I\’m not imagining that chair in front of me\”, but somebody in the past had an idea and \”imagined\” the first chair. Before that there was no such thing as chair.

Much of buddhist meditation practice is learning to control the mind. Instead of lazily accepting a \”world\” that someone else dreamed up, you practice focusing on a much more compassionate, caring and joyful world. I\’m being very general just to paint a broad view for this short article. If you do take a little time to study more in depth you will gain a deep understanding of your own inner technology.

If you want to check out some of these writings, I recommend the books by a tibetan meditation master, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso.

Jeffrey Gilliam is the founder of Healing America and also a successful composer/musician. His mission is to help Empower others so they can heal from the past and live their dreams. He believes together we can create a new world where everyone wins.

Jeffrey Gilliam is the founder of Healing America and also a successful composer/musician.