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SAR 6: Be Still
- Real rest leaves you calm, but alert. So many things leave you either agitated and restless, or dissipated and listless. If I spend much time online, or watching movies, I get agitated – sort of disconnected from my body, and needing to be grounded. If I overeat, or drink, I end up more zoned out – not truly rested then, either. These same things might affect other people differently…we each need to be in tune with what effects our activities really have on our well-being.
- Amusement is, literally, non-thinking – the reason and judgment areas of the brain are sort of bypassed, or held in suspension. This is nice for short periods, when we do it consciously. For example, we ‘suspend disbelief’ to enjoy a play, or a magic act. Engagement means we are actively attending to something real, and evaluating it, weighing, or judging it against whatever else we know, or believe, or perceive. Engagement makes demands, so it can seem like a party pooper, but the engaged mind begins to take real pleasure in being awake, working.
- When I am moving quickly, I’m more likely to be on auto-pilot, and to focus on some narrow slice of reality. If I just slow down deliberately, it gives all my senses a chance to ‘report’ on other aspects of the situation in and around me. Then my action becomes a response, instead of a reaction, and my ‘self’ has had a chance to be ‘heard’, to be considered as a messenger, instead of used as a machine.
- When I am moving quickly, I’m more likely to be on auto-pilot, and to focus on some narrow slice of reality. If I just slow down deliberately, it gives all my senses a chance to ‘report’ on other aspects of the situation in and around me. Then my action becomes a response, instead of a reaction, and my ‘self’ has had a chance to be ‘heard’, to be considered as a messenger, instead of used as a machine.
- It’s easy to see how what we eat affects us, but ‘intake’ of other kinds also has its effects. A steady diet of loud noise deadens our sense of hearing, which cuts mind and soul off from much of reality. Ditto a diet of violent, or prurient images – deadening to our sense of sight, and to the soul that is deformed. If we never read anything that demands mental work, our intellect atrophies. We are what we ‘eat’ in some ways!
- If vibrations are picked up by an ear and sent to the brain, the person ‘hears’. But unless he attends, makes sense of, translates what is heard into meaning, he has not listened fully. I often feel heard-but-not-listened to.
- he camera becomes my ‘eye’ when I watch TV and movies. In subtle ways, it directs me to notice, not to notice, to make judgments, to affirm values. By taking advantage of the fact that my eyes are designed to attend especially to movement, the cameraman manipulates by increasing the number of visual changes (movements, technical ‘events’) so that I’ll stay glued to the set for commercial input. Definitely hurtful, as so many studies have shown.
- We don’t experience Sabbath rest as deeply when we are numb to life itself. Dulling of the senses causes us to become more and more ‘disembodied’ – literally, more ‘out of touch’ with the world, with other people, with our own being. Realities begin to feel fake, or abstract; persons begin to seem like cardboard cutouts – not because something is lacking in them, but because we lack the capacity to resonate deeply with reality. Christ is a reality, a Person, without whom our souls cannot be at rest.
- Just like over-stimulated babies, we tend to insulate ourselves against stimulation. When hit by images, noises, fast-paced demands for our attention, manipulative attempts to seduce us into buying, or by actual hostility from other persons, we are likely to shut down – turtling into shells of self-protective disconnectedness from our senses.
- Self-defense is always temporarily helpful, but becomes self-destructive when we grow unable to release the protective mechanisms we employ. We get stuck in sensory dullness, lonely avoidance of others, impotent inattention and physical tension. Rest, if we knew how to get it, would reawaken, reconnect, re-empower, and release us into encounter with reality. Sadly, those who need it most tend to be least aware of that need, and most likely to persist in the self-destruction that masquerades as ‘protection’.
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