“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened
but go on in fortune and misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock
during a thunderstorm.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson
Making a study of the features of
time might seem numbing to the younger player, but there is something
tantalising in the truths bestowed within the characterisation of time; that
is, to imagine our emotional lives, more or less, at the steady state
resembling time.
Some people naturally resemble
such clocks. Their emotional ambience flickers little; they are not easily
swayed, upset, or even buoyant. They just keep living, one ticking moment
following the previous one, and so on. These have little redress for regret,
for they seem to manage the tremulous minute the same as they ever do—there is
a pleasant casualness about them that we tend to admire. They seem resilient
and stoic.
Could it be that their minds
function quietly? Are their hearts, underpinning, also more present to
self-acceptance?
Quietening The Mind
We all seem to understand the
theory—that a quietened mind is preferable and critical for control—but we
struggle with the practicality of instituting same.
This is because we understand,
implicitly, how the mind should operate but we have little understanding on
gaining control over it.
Could it be that there are levels
of psychological functioning and coping well below the thought processes? We
need to conceive that the feeling heart underlies the thinking mind. Only when
we venture into steadying the heart, in seeking to understand and accept
ourselves, will we be granted opportunities to sustainability quieten the mind.
The Value Of Steadiness Of Heart
Much deeper below the thinking
process is the heart silently informing thought, especially stressed thought.
When the going gets tough, not only do the tough get going, but the heart
becomes more fully engaged. At non-stressful times we couldn’t care less.
The more fully employed heart,
coming in to the allegiance of both eustress and distress, is either ally or
enemy. We, of course, are interested in enhancing the former and dispelling the
latter.
The tumultuous seconds must be
managed, not in a way where the mind is busied by the chaos of the instant, but
in such a way as to busy the mind only with logic and reason enough to get
through. That, there, is victorious kingdom living and it is retrieved moment-by-steady-moment.
Heart And Mind Combined
The state of the imagination, now,
is sent to crisis:
Heart and mind will work in unison
to produce the seedbed of the calm reality, but the default is to panic, where,
again, heart and mind work together, but against us.
This level of inner collusion will
produce avoidant or risky decision-making, and particularly procrastination, because
of a lack of courage or the winning of fear, where what we really need in a
crisis is a steady heart producing a quietened mind.
It is important to understand we
have two allies in the heart and mind and that they work together to achieve,
for us, peace. If we feel in steadiness, despite our fears, sticking with logical and
reasoned thinking, we treat the heart and mind as allies and they work
industriously for our defence.
***
We are to aim to live,
emotionally, from within ourselves, as clocks—ever turning clockwise at the
same cadence, neither running ahead of time nor behind. That requires thinking
soundly, feeling in steadiness, and, with mind and heart aligned, it achieves
for us quietness of mind—even in the midst of life’s thunderstorm.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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