Our minds, our gardens

Most of us live busy lives and have little time to reflect, always running in a spinning wheel, multi-tasking through the week and then when we finally have time for “us” we want to escape reality, weakened by the time we reach our week-ends, so we anesthetize ourselves with empty, mindless “programming” on TV, so we don’t have to think. We probably also try to de-stress and decompress with some drinks or “comfort foods”.

We have “no time” to cultivate the gardens of our minds. We all agree that words can be powerful; a skillful writer can make you cry or laugh, depress you or inspire you. An unkind word can demoralize you, frustrate you or anger you and ruin your whole day.

The self talk that we repeat over and over in the tapes of our minds; it's a never ending list of self critical thoughts, demeaning thoughts (when you do something wrong: “I am such an idiot” or “stupid me”), all judgmental comments we make about ourselves. We repeat ingrained thoughts that can originate as far back as childhood or adolescence, all words and sentences that devalue us, defeat us and belittle us. It can be a sentence (a jail term) that we allow to repeat over and over in the back screen of our minds without concern for the effect that they have in our health, physically, mentally and emotionally. It’s a self defeating behavior that becomes an automatic habit.

If we imagine that our minds are our innermost secret garden we can start cultivating the kind of flowers or thoughts that we want to enjoy.

Becoming aware and mindful of our thoughts is the first step. When we catch ourselves thinking a thought that is a weed growing and suffocating the flowers of our garden, then we must stop right away, nip it in the bud, “delete’ it in our minds and replace it with new seeds or flower- thoughts.

A garden can be a great source of inspiration and so it’s a mind that is blossoming with insights and ideas that are no longer stifled or suffocated by the relentless weeds of limiting thoughts and believes.

As any garden, our minds require tender loving care and some time dedicated to growing our plants and trees of elevated ideals that will nourish and beautify our lives with their fruits and blossoms. We need to water our garden and feed it with kindness, compassion, self love, encouraging words, altruistic ideas, philanthropic thoughts, inspiration and beauty. The concept of mindfulness teaches us to become aware of each moment, each thought. It’s a gentle and patient process.

Remember that:

Also:

In addition let us pay attention to the words we speak. Sometimes to “fit in” and be “cool” we tend to imitate and assimilate the new trends and fads of slang but what are we really saying? What reality are we trying to create?

Let us just examine some of our new “ass kicking” slang that is overtaking our communications.

• The show was  to die for.
• This situation burns me up.
• Over my dead body.
• You  scared me to death.
•  I cannot laugh anymore, you are killing me!
• Drop dead!
• Oh that was deadly!
• He really killed them with his last joke
• You killed it! (meaning you did a good job!)
• We are just "killing time"…
• Oh he is just fit to kill!
• I won’t tell you, even if it kills me.
• You slayed the test, man!
• Oh that was sick! (very good)
• Oh go to hell!
• Yeah, we crashed the party.
• That  stinks.
• Break a leg! (good luck)
• It beats me! (I don’t know)
• He is a bad-ass!
• It blows my mind!
• She is drop dead gorgeous.
• We had a blast!
• I’m busted (caught or have no money)
• He is dressed to kill..
• I’m broke (have no money)
• I’m gonna crash (sleep)
• These shoes are killing me
• What the hell are you talking about?
• Blow a bomb (to fail or be unsuccessful)
• That was a “rip off”.
• Let’s shoot the breeze (talk)
• That hit the spot!
• Over my dead body
• I’m gonna "hit" the road
• Don’t kill yourself studying
• You drive me crazy
• You kick ass!
• Pimpstacular!
• he just gets under my skin.
• Smashing idea!
• Slamming party!
• That movie was so vicious! (awesome)
• Wicked! (awesome)
• Man that was stupid-fresh! (awesome)
• “These shoes are savage” (good quality, nice)
• “The concert was rancid” (awesome)
• Swatching! (awesome)
• This movie is the bullet! (awesome)
• She is a bomb-ass girl! (good looking, cool)
• He did a bang up job!  (good job)

I think you get the idea….

When we look around at our world and we see some trends of violence and luck of respect for lives, bullying,  aggression, luck of concern for people’s feelings, lack of care for the well being of our animals and our environment and the total indifference for the suffering and despair of humanity at large, this is telling us something about the state of affairs of our minds.

Perhaps we are becoming a culture obsessed with consumerism and superficiality, with a love for wars and aggression such as its depicted in the majority of our films and video games. We can kill people like flies because “it’s only a game”.

We don’t realize that our subconscious minds are not able to differentiate what is real from what is fiction, it takes things at face value and then it processes those brutal images and emotions associated with them. They become deep rooted in the dark soils of our sub conscious minds. We are never consciously aware of them, but they keep growing and deeply affecting our thoughts and behaviors and our physical and mental health in so many ways. However, they grow unnoticed under the earth of our garden.

One of my friends was telling me the other day, that after her grandchildren play video games for a few hours, when they get called for dinner they are despondent, irritable, short-tempered and quick to to answer back in unpleasant ways.

Nightmares, anxiety, depression, irritability ,insomnia, increase in blood pressure, are just a few examples of the impact of such intense emotions and images that are implanted without our consent or awareness into our subconscious minds. Horror or violent scenes cause our adrenaline and cortisol levels to spike. This changes our brain chemistry! We may even be reliving past traumatic events that caused us fear and terror in the past because our bodies are reacting in the same way.

Many of our movies now are filled with fast action, destruction, strident bombs, noisy fights, thunderous car crashes, killings, earsplitting sound effects and piercing music (if you can call it music) with insignificant dialogues and shallow, trivial story-lines.

On the other hand, we know that for example comedies can lower your blood pressure and laughing also changes our chemistry causing a positive cardiovascular effect.

There are plenty of psychological experiments that have been conducted to test this. Our subconscious minds can be very susceptible and vulnerable to exterior influences, manipulation and programming, (especially children). We know this is how advertising works.

I am not saying we should stop watching television, only that we could be a bit more selective with the music, films, shows and books we choose to cultivate in our minds.

I love to hear your comments and if you are new to my blog, check out previous inspirational stories  and articles under "older posts" starting in May 2016: https://bodyandsoulnourishmentblog.wordpress.com/

Thank you for stopping by.