Woke up this morning and sat on the bed watching my mind running helter skelter with meaningless thoughts of unrelated events and images that pops out of You Tube; too much computer can do that tot you. I did my best to dismiss and discard, ignoring their imposition into my conscious mind. "I am not this body, nor am I this mind!" With every breath in and out i recited this mantra of a yoga meditation technique, trying to remind myself of what I am not. I helps to a degree bu the mind is incorrigible, it will not give up as easily. So most of the time i just simply sit and watch what passes through my consciousness and watch them disappear . To further remove these vexing thoughts I start my stretching exercises beginning the the neck rolling and forward and backward stretching to loosen the neck muscles. which usually deters migraine from happening. Then i work downwards by leaning over in my sitting position and lay flat with my face pressed against the mattress, followed by left and right over the thighs.
My stretching exercises can last somewhere forty five minutes to an hour ending with working with light weights for my arms. I do this almost every morning religiously unless I am unable to due to some engagements. Funny it seems when i fell ill, the doctors and my friends would advice me to do some exercise if i were to live longer. If i make it to seventy I would be grateful enough as i am not keen on living too long just for the sake of living out life. No, life is not that appealing to me not in this day and age, too much pain and suffering all around me if not in me. I have lived much of my life as I had wanted to doing what i chose to do. It may not be all for the right reasons, most of it i lived life to the fullest. Today i find myself weeding out my relationships and getting rid of all the baggage i deem no more of use. I am enlightening myself, so to speak. The way i see it, If i have become of no use to my fellow creatures in contributing towards their well being i am of no use to life.
Hence it is servitude, not prayers that is of virtue to me as servitude means some form of movement, action,you can pray without batting an eyelid but you need to move in order to serve someone else unless in serving it is required that you remain absolutely still.
The point I am trying to make here is that one of the many ways of slowing down the 'dual thinking mind' is to do something that involves physical actions. To try to stop the mind through meditation or chanting or contemplation is often not effective as the mind is much smarter than we give it credit for; it learns much faster than we do. Much of the erratic thoughts that arises upon waking up is the result of the subconscious mind's activities during the sleep state where everything and anything can arise from the deep in the form of dreams and nightmares. What we experience upon waking up is the residue of the sleep state activities of the mind and this often can bring about the morning blues or depression for no reason.
How to counter this 'hangover' of the night's mental activities is what most of us are looking into and albeit, yoga, meditation, morning exercises, morning hikes around the block or the park are a few of the ways and means and this includes for Muslims the fajr or the dawn prayer, which to me is one of the most sure fired way of cleansing the residue of the night's mental activities.
Thursday, September 07, 2017
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