Lately, I've been thinking about my approach to thinking of God. As I see it, there's two ways of tackling such an important issue: put It on the back-burner, or chase after It consciously. Both are valid, yet... I feel as if both are lacking.
The train of thought with putting Brahman on the back-burner is simple. If you've got the Divine on your mind all the time, somewhere, then it'll spread and begin to control your thoughts, impulses, speech, behavior, and so on. It doesn't take much effort, can be practiced at any time, and helps desegregate devotion time from every other time. However, it's a fine line between simmering on the back-burner and off. I've come to realize, the hard way, that this method is insufficient, for the simple reason that you forget things. By definition, you shouldn't notice anything on your mental back-burner, so you shouldn't notice when it's working, going bad, or has gone MIA. As such, you won't notice you've gone astray until there's a major wake-up call.
The opposite is actively thinking on Divinity. It remedies the draw-backs of the back-burner method, but isn't flawless. It takes effort and time to think about and meditate upon God, which means it's detrimental to whatever else you're doing. While that's great for monks in the middle of the Himalayas, it isn't so great for those of us with a 9 to 5 job. After all, we're paid to work, not meditate. Additionally, I feel it tends to create a mental segregation. "Now is work-time," "Now is relax-time," "Now is worship time," and so on, which is exactly what we're trying to get away from.
I'm starting to ramble now, so I'm gonna cut it off for now. But it'll be interesting to see what balance I strike between these two ways of keeping God on my mind.
Naa Varain!
The train of thought with putting Brahman on the back-burner is simple. If you've got the Divine on your mind all the time, somewhere, then it'll spread and begin to control your thoughts, impulses, speech, behavior, and so on. It doesn't take much effort, can be practiced at any time, and helps desegregate devotion time from every other time. However, it's a fine line between simmering on the back-burner and off. I've come to realize, the hard way, that this method is insufficient, for the simple reason that you forget things. By definition, you shouldn't notice anything on your mental back-burner, so you shouldn't notice when it's working, going bad, or has gone MIA. As such, you won't notice you've gone astray until there's a major wake-up call.
The opposite is actively thinking on Divinity. It remedies the draw-backs of the back-burner method, but isn't flawless. It takes effort and time to think about and meditate upon God, which means it's detrimental to whatever else you're doing. While that's great for monks in the middle of the Himalayas, it isn't so great for those of us with a 9 to 5 job. After all, we're paid to work, not meditate. Additionally, I feel it tends to create a mental segregation. "Now is work-time," "Now is relax-time," "Now is worship time," and so on, which is exactly what we're trying to get away from.
I'm starting to ramble now, so I'm gonna cut it off for now. But it'll be interesting to see what balance I strike between these two ways of keeping God on my mind.
Naa Varain!
