Human progress and development, believe it or not owes a great deal to the powerful and enigmatic minds of the many great philosophers who have walked through this planet and have made their mark at different points in time across civilizations and nations, ushering in new hope, thinking and empowering them to create a wonderful collective future for the society in particular and the nation in general! Join me here as we try to get a broader sense into what goes into the minds of these magical beings and what is that we can emulate and carry with us so that we too get a few anchors that help us through the choppy lives that we have!

Choose any point in history, and each time you arrive at a society that was flourishing and leading in that context of time, chances are that alongside art, culture and trade that would have been flourishing, there would have been instances of philosophers too (many of which) who till date, continue to inspire, motivate and keep us engaged on some relevant facets of life! Why does this happen? Well, simply put, as our needs are satiated and as we begin to climb higher up on the ladder of enquiry and begin asking more and more compelling questions that is where the realm of the philosopher commences! You see, majority of humanity takes birth, lives and dies and more or less has a templated pattern- either a job or business or a profession with varying levels of success and failures and depending on what is played out and more often then not, the general outlook and perception about everyone and everything around gets developed in this way! Importantly, this is the very space where, acquiring a philosopher’s mind helps! Let me explain!

Most of us when confronted with failure and rejection will almost always start with the first question, ” Why me?”, but when you face the same scenario and have a philosopher’s mind, the questions change based on the depth of the philosophical enquiry! Consider you got fewer marks or that pay rise which was much less than what you thought it would be – the normal way would be to crib, bitch and sulk on the outcome and come up with excuses which are disguised as reasons- the impact- well nothing really changes in your life or the other person’s life in the NOW or anytime in the future! Instead of this, if you were to hold on to the philosopher’s mindset the range of questions and the depth of questions (sure enough depending upon your own intrinsic intelligence) could range from, “What next” to “Why did I think I would get more”, “Why did my judgement on this fail?” “Was my judgement only wrong on this one instance or is there a problem with the way I come to judgements and outcome analysis?” You see, using a philosopher’s mind, you can dive deep into the abyss of human intelligence and seek answers from within and depending on where you stop your questioning, from thereon you get to develop and build a foundation for your future instances!

The mind of the philosopher, is all about being able to hold on to compelling questions and undertake long and challenging journeys to get the answers to them! Sure enough it is not the space of wishful thinking, day-dreaming or intellectual hallucination, rather it is the quite opposite of all of this! The mind of the philosopher and the process of questioning is all based on sound science, unforgiving rationality, clarity and a huge generous dose of common-sense which is so important to de-clutter the ambiguity that almost always tends to creep up on to our mind and cloud our ability to think, and discern in the way that we really should!

What we often miss in plain sight is the fact that the quality of our lives is not a factor of the answers that we are able to provide to others or ourselves but rather the questions that we are able to ask ourselves and others! The relevance of these questions, their depth, their impact and what their unlocking potential is, determines how high we will be able to fly individually or collectively how far and how fast we will be able to lead the society!

Acquiring “The philosopher’s mind” is perhaps one of the most simplest ways to bring about a compelling and visible transformation in our lives; a transformation that will stick and not fade away! Once you are able to embrace the mind of a philosopher, you will begin to see come amazing things happen! Importantly you get to understand what can be controlled and what can’t be, you realize there is a reason for everything and everyone around you, no matter how trivial, helping or harming that is and that everything else fades in front of a commodity that we all call “time”! Sure enough there can be more in-depth and more intriguing questions that one can arrive from this space and one must; for that’s where magic happens and new breakthroughs are achieved, sometimes to empower the material plane of life and yet other times to uplift the spiritual and intangible pockets of peoples’ life! What also unfolds unmistakably is the ability to stay collected and firm- not to be mistaken with ego! This ability to be- steadfast is what makes a vital difference- for this provides amazing clarity and as anxiety is stripped away- all that is left within the mind is only relevant and a scientific process of progressive questioning to a problem or an incident- this method then allows people to see through and frame instances with a proper context thereby de-cluttering and avoiding unwanted layers of ambiguity, chaos and artificial hues which tend to distort what the reality is and what perception perhaps gets built over or around it!

The concept though seems to be simple, it is that much more challenging and unless one is able to stay firm, resolute and unwavering, the path of walking through the mind of the philosopher remains uncertain!

I will leave you with these thoughts here and urge you to take some time off and wade away into the depths of the “philosopher’s mind” that exists within you and see what new questions you are able to deal with and what are the answers that you see coming back to you! Engage within and liberate yourself that’s the way to move ahead with an empowered mind and a frame that is fluid, wide, in-depth and built on compelling questions and thoughts which make a difference to you and to the world around you!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then keep walking and keep asking! The only way to be sure of success is to keep failing towards it and keep moving towards it always asking vital questions through the frame of a “Philosopher’s mind”!