A life dedicated to Practice

In this day and age, where AI auto-completes our sentences and insta stories keep us scrolling endlessly, our attention spans face a great deficit. In such a world, where hustle is key and mindfulness has just become another hyped term, how do we really learn to sit still with ourselves? How do we stay present and live our lives with intention?

If we go back to the older times, when students learned under their Gurus, they would spend days, even weeks, in learning just a small verse of a hym, to uncover its deeper meaning. Even the physical practices were practiced over and over, till the discipline became a life-system and the wisdom behind it was uncovered and embodied. It was a life dedicated to constant practice. To truly absorb the wisdom of any subject, it took great patience, deep intention and - practice.

Today, these qualities are being stripped from us in our pursuit of modern techno-advancement. With our phones constantly chiming away notifications every few minutes or the involuntary itch to check our phones, is constantly grabbing our attention in short bursts.

Speaking in nervous system terms - the information overload and over-stimulation of sensory inputs impairs our nervous system with a constant stream of read-interpret-respond actions. Or the brain rot viewing adversely informs our cognitive decision-making.

We can start with mindful attention for a few minutes everyday to notice what’s happening internally. Is our body feeling calm or are we constantly battling a low-level urgency? Are we able to be with ourselves, or are we too quick to numb our system.

Although it's unsettling to see how we’re gradually losing the power to guide our own lives with intention, we can always take the power back with small intentional steps.

In all, I hope we all find ways through regular practices and teachers or guides to train our minds with the patience required to truly dive into presence, to come back to ourselves, and to live a life dedicated to practice.