Subsuming the Self

It's the end of another work week and today is a good day to blog since it's a rather quiet Friday. I've been maintaining my discipline of rising early and ending my workday early, with the hope that at some point I'll be able to incorporate some exercise routine into my day.

Right now I'm certainly lacking a lot of exercise as my weekend routine has been disrupted since my mother's surgery. Mum is recovering well now and I've been slowing easing off my care so that she could practise going back to your usual routine. Having given care to my father and now my mother, i think I've become quite an expert care-giver for the elderly.

My years of taking care of my dad was great training. I like how it had shaped me into a more patient and compassionate person. Not that I wasn't one before; just that you are ignorant of the limits of your endurance until you have been fully tested.

Meditation trains you to be constantly aware of the thoughts that arise in your mind. And you know how to sandbox them so that none of them take control of yourself. People who lose their temper reveals a lot about the poor state of their minds. An even-tempered person detects anger arising from a very early stage and is able to dissipate their energy before it becomes uncontrollable.

The skill of mindful awareness is one that can be honed through practice. Most of the time, we are consumed by our thoughts but when we are mindful, thoughts are just one of many 'application processes' running in our minds. We have another monitoring process that oversees them. But even this monitoring process monitors itself and ensures that no single thought process consumes all resources.

An angry mind is a mind descended into chaos. The entire mind is taken over by a single all-consuming thought that seeks the path of least resistance. It even induces the body to act violently sometimes. It is a sorry state of mind indeed.

Mindfulness means constant awareness and monitoring of one's state of mind. When a single thought appears to be hogging resources, we ease it off. We allow it to fade away by not reinforcing it. That means letting go--which is another skill I talked about in an earlier article. 

By caring for others, we let go of our own self-serving thoughts. The ego is forgotten because to serve is to subsume oneself to others. And that works better than any self-absorbed meditative practice.