Again I feel to share this morning. Time is limited but I thought I would put down a few words before I begin the day. My morning shower is what caused me to think of writing a post. My mind tends to run in the shower. For me, it seems to gain a better foothold in the mundane. I often find myself intending to have a nice hot shower and enjoy the early morning but then I discover a minute or so in that my mind is running along planning out my life or considering some conversation I had the day before and (of all useless and preposterous things) trying to figure out how I might have responded better to that person. I am more able to stay firmly rooted in the present moment when I am experiencing something new. The shower for me is such a part of my regime that it is easy for my mind to stray. My mind…there we go again. I believe that part of the struggle of the shower is the fact that the colors there are so bland – so familiar – white everywhere. There are the little beads of water that glisten, but I find it hard to find the beauty in that small wonder consistently – in other words, it is difficult to find it anew every morning. So, then enters the alien force. Can I really call it that? Alien? This brings up the underlying question…what am I? Who am I at the core? It doesn’t make sense to me that I would not have complete control over every thing that is mine. I know that this may be a stretch for some of you reading if you haven’t considered it yet, but look at it with me for a moment. Does it really make sense that MY mind could ramble on for 10 minutes in the shower without MY permission.
The next most interesting thing about these little episodes of “mind wandering” is that when it is finished, I hardly know what was said. I find myself having a vague memory of worrying about something, and I can often name that something, but I am not sure of the particulars and I would be hard pressed if you asked me to outline the course of the mental conversation. That is a pretty WILD phenomena. Really! Think about it. Could it really be possible that I could be standing in the shower having a conversation with myself for 10 minutes and then have little to no idea 3 seconds later what it was I was talking about? It occurs to me that those of you who may have never considered these things may be thinking that I may just need a need a little help from a good shrink. But if you do, I would invite you to consider the conversations of your own mind. For sure, you have times (if your mind has not completely taken over and runs constantly, you will still notice them – or at least you will notice small breaks of silence when perhaps you see something beautiful and your mind goes quiet) when your mind runs. During one of these times, I invite you to try an experiment: Experiment Part 1: During one of these mind running episodes, stop and ask yourself what it is that you were just thinking about. Then, if you can remember, try to come up with the particulars and try to follow the conversation back and outline what was said over the last 5 minutes. Experiment Part 2: Now try to stop thinking about that particular topic. My guess is that you will discover what I have – that you have less control over your mind than you thought. There are so many implications of this that I do not have time to explore. But one thing is for sure. I am pretty convinced that anything over which I do not have control is not really mine and certainly, is not ME. If I am not running the show, who is? It is said that possession is nine tenths of the law. Were I brought into a court of law, could I claim my own mind based upon this principle? Hopefully more and more yes. But as it stands, showers are shaky ground for me. :-) This also shows that if I desire to keep my own mind both here and in the hereafter, I will need to understand more and more the principles by which I may fully inhabit it. I hope you find this post helpful. God bless you all today - especially in the mundane. :-) J.A. McCormick
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