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BlueStar
August 25th, 2012, 12:37 PM
(articles from my blog. Feel free to discuss :))

Don't Lose Yourself in the Mundane (Part 1)

Something I'm becoming ever more aware of is the importance of not losing ourselves in the mundane humdrum of everyday existence. Let's face it, it's so easy to lose ourselves in the neverending tasks, duties, responsibilities and, worse yet, trivialities and distractions, that are always demanding our attention and devouring our time, focus and life energies.

To an extent this is unavoidable. We have to exist in this world, we have to eat, sleep and get up in the morning, eat again, work or study, take care of our responsibilities, pick up the kids from school, feed the cat and walk the dog. That's just the way it is and it's best to take care of these things with the right mindset -- a mindset of ease and grace, which helps enable our lives to flow smoothly and without too much obstruction. I heartily recommend the approach of karma yoga, wherein our every action is undertaken with an attitude of devotion and detachment, for everything we do is offered up to the benefit of all life. If the busiest and most stressed of people could consciously adopt this mindset, a great deal of their stress would simply evaporate. Worth a try, no?

Where things get really sticky is the area of leisure time. We've done what we needed to do during the day and what time we have left over has to be filled somehow, right? So we plonk ourselves in front of the television and spend hours watching soaps and reality shows or whatever else tickles our fancy. If there's nothing on the TV, we could always while away the time gossiping on the phone or by text, or catch up with our social networking? Or we might read magazines or books we secretly know aren't worth the trees they're printed on, or trawl the internet watching silly videos on YouTube and engaging in flame wars with people who dare to have opinions that differ to our own on internet forums.

We'll do whatever we can to keep ourselves engaged. Only we're generally not very engaged while doing those things. Instead, we're kind of unengaged: unengaged from life, from the world around us, from other people and from ourselves. Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of the above activities in themselves. But what may be harmful is using them compulsively as a means of distraction and escape. I always used to be fascinated by the concept of 'escapism'. It always seemed a strange notion to me. What is it we're trying to escape? I believe what we're generally trying to escape is ourselves.

Most people spend an inordinate amount of time trying to distract themselves…from themselves. Our culture is almost designed to facilitate this. There's an infinite number of distractions, each seeking to consume our attention and numb our minds. It's a never-ending merry-go-round and one that's self-perpetuating; for once you've lost your attention in one distraction, it usually remains there until the next supercedes it. And that's the way we generally like it. This is what I call being lost in the mundane. It's pandemic in our culture: it's 'normal'.

The problem is, we can easily spend our entire lives lost in the mundane, never taking the time to consider what's truly important: never stopping to ask who we are, what we're here to do and how we can make a difference in the world. I remember being at a funeral and when the minister stopped to talk about the person who'd died, aside for the obvious factual statistics, about all I remember was "she loved watching her soaps". I mean, when you get older, you're wholly entitled to enjoy your soaps and that's wonderful. But I remember being struck by a sobering thought: what if, when it comes to my funeral, about all that can be said of me was that I liked watching TV? That thought filled me with horror. The thought of being so totally side-tracked by the mundane that TV programmes and entertainment become more important than my truest priorities, hopes and dreams was enough to jolt me awake.

It's pretty clear to me that we're not here to spend our lives watching TV, reading trashy books or picking fights with strangers on the internet. I can't tell you why you are here; only you can figure that one out, but really, you must take the time to do that and to make it a priority. Otherwise you'll probably tend to slip into mental default like everyone else and lose yourself in the endless sea of distractions that seek to swallow and entrap your minds, numbing you into a false sense of satisfaction (or stupor). We get totally lost in the matrix when that happens; with no idea who we are or what we're here to do...just totally consumed by the phenomenal dream.

BlueStar
August 25th, 2012, 12:38 PM
Trapped by the Mind (Part 2)

In the last post I spoke about how easy it is to be totally consumed by the mundane and to lose ourselves in an endless sea of trivia and pointlessness; distraction after distraction after distraction.

What is it with the human race and our distractions? Why do we so always feel the need to distract ourselves from ourselves?

Part of it is no doubt a response to the stressful, turbulent, unbalanced and dysfunctional society we live in, a society that's almost totally cut off from the natural balance of life. We're all victims of the capitalist/rampant consumerist agenda; brought up and conditioned to feel dissatisfied with ourselves, to feel that we're not good enough as we are, that we're not whole and complete and that in order to be happy we need to accrue as much money as we can in order to buy a whole lot of crap we don't really need in a world that's alarmingly being stripped of its resources.

We're programmed to be unhappy. Perhaps that's why we spend so much time trying to escape the basic unease we feel within. Most people simply aren't comfortable in their own skin and accordingly find it exceedingly difficult to sit alone in a room without things to occupy themselves. As Blaise Pascal noted, this is the source of all humanity's problems.

I believe this is because we don't like to be alone with our thoughts. Many of us aren't even consciously aware of our inner monologue -- the never-ending stream of thoughts constantly flowing through our minds -- even though, for most of us, it's present almost every moment of our waking lives. The funny thing is, it's not so much us that's thinking these thoughts, for they can be difficult to control and predict, rather it's more like the thoughts are thinking us. They arise and subside, constantly rumbling away like a talk radio station we're tuned into and can't switch off.

Although generally mundane, many people's inner monologue is not a pleasant one: it often comprises a torrent of abuse and negativity, focussing on the very worst in life, perceiving problems where none exist and generally creating a whole lot of needless upset. Life is actually very simple, but the mind makes it into something ridiculously complex, embellishing it with so much needless dramas and stress. The inability to disengage from the babble of the inner monologue is a dreaful affliction.

I wonder if this is a defect of sorts at our current stage of evolution. It seems to me that we're a species with minds so over-developed and out-of-control that it's causing wide-scale insanity.

Our education system fails us on so many levels, not least because we're not taught how to deal with our thoughts, emotions and the content of our psyche. We're taught just about everything except ourselves, so we're left without a clue as to who or what we are. Our understanding of ourselves is based wholly upon assumption and misidentification. We form an image of ourselves in our minds, one that is totally arbitrary and ever-changing and yet which we construe as being 'us'. It's usually quite a distorted and negative image. Our entire experience of reality, ourselves and others, is utterly distorted by our uncontrolled minds, which run rampant, causing unaccountable misery and suffering for ourselves and others.

This insanity can be seen all around us. You need only switch on the evening news to be reminded of the devastating effect of our individual and collective dysfunction. On a small scale it's reflected in dysfunctional relationships and our personal miseries (depression and anxiety are now pandemic in our culture, as well as anger and aggression) and on a larger scale it's evident in the corruption that's evident in virtually every organisation and institution, and most dramatically in wars, conflicts, genocide and terrorism. It's not a pretty picture, and it all stems from the mind, and from believing certain thoughts and beliefs.

The dysfunctions of the human mind are destroying us.

So what is the way out of this?

First of all, we need to stop trying to simply drown out the mind by losing ourselves in mundane and mind-numbing activities or behaviours. I mean, getting drunk might have the desired effect for a short space of time (it dulls and numbs the mind, often making us feel good), but it's not exactly a long-term solution. It does nothing to address the underlying problem and when the hangover hits you'll feel ten times worse than before. We've been playing out our addictions and compulsive behaviours for what seems like lifetimes. Surely we can see by now that THEY DON'T WORK.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. That might very well be the human race's epitath. Waking up to reality means finally acknowledging that what we're doing isn't working and that we need to stop doing it. Instead we need to do something else, something that might be radically different to what we've been accustomed to in the past.

If the problem is our mind distorting our perception of reality, then surely the solution must involve taking control of the mind? Until we learn to control our mind, we are controlled by it, and this results in the succession of nightmares the human race has created throughout history. No other species is as inherently destructive and as pathologically insane as the human race, because no other species has such an over-developed cognitive faculty. The solution, according to one Zen Master could be concisely summed up as: "no mind, no problem."

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The first step is always simply being aware and seeing things as they are. We can't solve a problem until we've first clearly identified that it is a problem. Denial is another defining human characteristic and it's incredibly hard to do anything so long as we're intent on denying the reality of the situation. Denial keeps us entrapped in the mind-created prison of our personal and collective suffering.

When we're willing to look at the situation openly, honestly and without whatever old baggage, beliefs and dogmas we've been clinging onto, we can finally see things as they are, and only then are we in a position to do something about it. Freedom is then within our grasp.

Kiran
August 25th, 2012, 02:51 PM
(articles from my blog. Feel free to discuss :))

Don't Lose Yourself in the Mundane (Part 1)

Something I'm becoming ever more aware of is the importance of not losing ourselves in the mundane humdrum of everyday existence. Let's face it, it's so easy to lose ourselves in the neverending tasks, duties, responsibilities and, worse yet, trivialities and distractions, that are always demanding our attention and devouring our time, focus and life energies.

To an extent this is unavoidable. We have to exist in this world, we have to eat, sleep and get up in the morning, eat again, work or study, take care of our responsibilities, pick up the kids from school, feed the cat and walk the dog. That's just the way it is and it's best to take care of these things with the right mindset -- a mindset of ease and grace, which helps enable our lives to flow smoothly and without too much obstruction. I heartily recommend the approach of karma yoga, wherein our every action is undertaken with an attitude of devotion and detachment, for everything we do is offered up to the benefit of all life. If the busiest and most stressed of people could consciously adopt this mindset, a great deal of their stress would simply evaporate. Worth a try, no?

Where things get really sticky is the area of leisure time. We've done what we needed to do during the day and what time we have left over has to be filled somehow, right? So we plonk ourselves in front of the television and spend hours watching soaps and reality shows or whatever else tickles our fancy. If there's nothing on the TV, we could always while away the time gossiping on the phone or by text, or catch up with our social networking? Or we might read magazines or books we secretly know aren't worth the trees they're printed on, or trawl the internet watching silly videos on YouTube and engaging in flame wars with people who dare to have opinions that differ to our own on internet forums.

We'll do whatever we can to keep ourselves engaged. Only we're generally not very engaged while doing those things. Instead, we're kind of unengaged: unengaged from life, from the world around us, from other people and from ourselves. Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of the above activities in themselves. But what may be harmful is using them compulsively as a means of distraction and escape. I always used to be fascinated by the concept of 'escapism'. It always seemed a strange notion to me. What is it we're trying to escape? I believe what we're generally trying to escape is ourselves.

Most people spend an inordinate amount of time trying to distract themselves…from themselves. Our culture is almost designed to facilitate this. There's an infinite number of distractions, each seeking to consume our attention and numb our minds. It's a never-ending merry-go-round and one that's self-perpetuating; for once you've lost your attention in one distraction, it usually remains there until the next supercedes it. And that's the way we generally like it. This is what I call being lost in the mundane. It's pandemic in our culture: it's 'normal'.

The problem is, we can easily spend our entire lives lost in the mundane, never taking the time to consider what's truly important: never stopping to ask who we are, what we're here to do and how we can make a difference in the world. I remember being at a funeral and when the minister stopped to talk about the person who'd died, aside for the obvious factual statistics, about all I remember was "she loved watching her soaps". I mean, when you get older, you're wholly entitled to enjoy your soaps and that's wonderful. But I remember being struck by a sobering thought: what if, when it comes to my funeral, about all that can be said of me was that I liked watching TV? That thought filled me with horror. The thought of being so totally side-tracked by the mundane that TV programmes and entertainment become more important than my truest priorities, hopes and dreams was enough to jolt me awake.

It's pretty clear to me that we're not here to spend our lives watching TV, reading trashy books or picking fights with strangers on the internet. I can't tell you why you are here; only you can figure that one out, but really, you must take the time to do that and to make it a priority. Otherwise you'll probably tend to slip into mental default like everyone else and lose yourself in the endless sea of distractions that seek to swallow and entrap your minds, numbing you into a false sense of satisfaction (or stupor). We get totally lost in the matrix when that happens; with no idea who we are or what we're here to do...just totally consumed by the phenomenal dream.

:mr_cool:good:o

BlueStar
August 26th, 2012, 01:02 PM
Thanks for reading :) Hope it makes some sense

Kiran
August 26th, 2012, 04:10 PM
Thanks for reading :) Hope it makes some sense

Made perfect sense and a kick in the butt I needed ;) Seem to be getting a lot of those lately LOL