I can never quite get over how busy life is, or at the very least seems to be. The other day, I stood for a moment beside the street, and the cars were just literally whizzing past me. And people were passing me even quicker.
And I said to myself, Gosh, what is the teaching moment here? What should I learn from this? And what came to me was that I must, when everything is going in one direction, I must try to go in the opposite direction.
So things are picking up pace increasingly. We are getting busier and busier and busier. I can turn on my phone and compare my actions and myself with virtually the rest of the world.
I can compare my beauty, my intelligence, my wealth, my understanding. It just goes on, doesn’t it? With everyone else.
So if everyone is going in one direction, this would suggest to me that I should be going in the opposite direction. When everyone is getting busier, I should be finding a way to truly slow down. Slow down.
And yes, I know, I know that we’re told that information comes to us in 10 or 15 second sound bites, if you will.
And if we’re looking at perhaps the television, everything is images, or on the computer, everything is instantaneous images, because our attention span is diminishing on an ongoing basis.
Then, if that’s true, once again, then I must learn to slow down.
The Sumerians, to document what was grown on a farm, leading itself eventually into writing as we understand it to be. There is no way that we were primitive and we suddenly learned to speed up.
We learned to slowly, through thoughtfulness, grasp the world we occupied. And initially, it was terrifying, wasn’t it? We had no access to nature, so we needed to thoughtfully understand what nature meant.
We needed an understanding of God or the gods as we saw it, and then from that we had to learn through trial and error how to plant a crop, so we wouldn’t all starve to death, and we had to learn an education, we had to learn something, and the first
person had to initially teach the second. Eventually that formed into some form of school and academy. We needed to protect ourselves from the animals, the wild animals around us, maybe even from more violent people than we were. And so it went.
All of this was obviously produced by a thoughtful civilization. So what has happened now? We’re being tricked, in a sense, aren’t we?
We’re being told that we should speed up, when if anything, we must learn to slow down and reflect on the world that we occupy. So how are we going to learn to slow down?
Well, for sure, when we awaken at the beginning of the day, we’re going to keep away from anything electronic.
Some people suggest that we should actually lay there for a moment, at six o’clock or seven o’clock, or whenever we wake up, just lay there, to take in our own thoughts, reflect on what this moment means to me, the gratitude that I should have for
just being alive, and the thoughts of gratitude for the people that are important in my life and my physical environment. My bed is warm, I’m relatively clean, and the day will soon begin, won’t it? And maybe even focus on your breathing.
How well are you breathing? Your body is alive, it’s alive. And then, once this beginning technique is over, slowly get up, make your bed.
Many people once again suggest with intention, I’m going to close the night and I’m going to open the day. And then when you wash, once again, you wash thoughtfully, identifying that you are washing.
Write in your notebook, say your prayers, begin the day.
And then you can certainly get in your vehicle, whatever that may be. It takes you to probably some form of employment.
You should focus on your travels, of course, but we are brilliant beings because we can hold a thought at the same time we’re thinking it.
And so, yes, we must be concentrating on our driving, but we can also be holding a thought about what the day portends. And then we arrive at work, and now we’re going to focus on the task at hand, aren’t we?
But once again, we’re slowing down, so we’re listening to people. We’re actually hearing what they’re saying. And of course, this cannot happen every day.
Some days, as we all know, I know, we’re just too stressed to really appreciate what’s actually going on around us because we have to focus on some task at hand, some form of emergency. But regardless, there are days that we can focus on this.
Can we not? For sure. Eat with intention, eat.
When you’re speaking with a colleague, you want to give a response, remind yourself, wait a moment, I can pause for a few seconds, right? Then, the workday is over.
I arrive home, and once again, when I go for my evening walk, I can for a moment sit perhaps on a bench in silence. I can ponder the day, I can ponder what my place is in this universe. Why am I here?
What’s my mission? What happens when I leave here?
So then, what are some of the benefits of this? Well, for sure, the first one will be, I will be a more thoughtful being, which means in theory that my thoughts will be much more clear than before. They won’t be so sullied.
I perhaps will make better decisions from that, won’t I? Perhaps I will be able to think through some of the angst and challenges that are a part of my own life. I will feel calmer because of this, I would think, for sure.
Maybe even become more creative, perhaps, right? And I think because there is no one but me in this consciousness, to me at the very least, even though I can touch you, I can feel the warmth of your body, of course. Who are you?
Because I’m inside of me, to a large extent. I exist in my own private thoughts, so this will help me in my interactions with other people, with other human beings. It will help in a, if you will, a more loving attitude to others.
It will give me a deeper sense of my spiritual well-being.
So then, ultimately, I must somehow get to nature, because nature, I think, is the greatest cleanser of all, especially if I walk alone. It purifies my being, because some day I will be connected with nature again in some way, for sure.
So think to yourself, when everyone is going in one direction with great speed, say to yourself, I am going to learn to slow down, so I can access the inner self, because the answers to me are inside of me.
When I was born, I was already a self-contained unit. Now, it is fair, I must learn. Of course, I must learn.
I must step into the world and get an education and have social intercourse with other human beings. I need teachers, I need mentors, all of this is true.
But ultimately, the greatest skill I learn from going to school, from university, whatever it is, is to learn how to learn, so I can somehow go forward in life. And you know what they say, you know what they say.
If I’m going to really slow down in life, I’m going to have to learn about me. I’m going to have to learn about learning how to think critically. And of course, critical thinking is great, truly great.
You take care. God bless. Bye-bye.