Tending Your Mental Garden (D3)

If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it.  If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry ~ Dalai Lama

Ok so what exactly does mental hygiene entail?

Clutter disrupts your life. When it’s rampant, you feel stressed about everything. You can't find your keys, important letters, the right belt or a cherished memento. Disorder creates mayhem and hinders your ability to find peace. Make sure that your bedroom, closet and bathroom are in order. If you can begin your day with calm, you have a better chance of feeling centered as you go out into the world. One of the best antidotes to stress is an organized living environment.

Think of your mind like a garden.  We are geared to get weeds (negative thoughts) due to it being an effective survival strategy.  Any of our ancestors that did not have this advantage are dead.  So this accounts for the pitiful state of man.  The current research project I am doing demonstrates 50% of all women in North America are sexually or physically abused.  33% of all young girls are sexually abused, and 17% of young boys. 80% of the perpetrators being fathers.  These are Canadian government stats, Ok so say the average husband and wife have 2 kids, statistically the likelihood is 1 of them will be a girl.  So 33% girls are sexually abused, 17% of girls are victims of incest - 80% of those girls by fathers - meaning in Canada we have  about 1 in 5 or 6 fathers sexually abusing their daughters, pretty creepy.  Remember these are stats on the Canadian Government site - that have been confirmed.  In your wildest dreams, did you imagine the stats to be that high.  That is just creepy, it means that when you see a father with a daughter, every 4th father is abusing their daughter.  Radhakrishna, Bou-Saada, Hunter, Catellier, & Kotch (2001) demonstrated that the presence of a father surrogate in the home increased the risk of a maltreatment report to more than twice that of families with both biological parents in the home.  That just means a. that it is reported and b. due to the lesser genetic investment, surrogate fathers are twice as likely to abuse their surrogate daughters, or at least be reported.  The majority of people who are sexually abused never do report the abuse.  So all in all we are looking at about 1 in 4 or maybe 1 in 6 biological fathers perpetrating the crime, and more surrogate.  In any event this is just sexual abuse...we have not even discussed any other problems...This is an epidemic, but basically humans are geared to be violent, not very nice people.

Luckily we have a human brain which allows us to make alternate choices about being driven by instinct only.  We have a choice to plant fruit trees and tend to them so they bare fruit.  Dealing with the weeds can be done effectively a number of different ways. 1. Just don't water them, they will die off - this is very effective (remember - we are basically very efficient energy systems, our brain using 25% of our energy at any given time) as our brain does not wish to waste energy feeding neurons that are unnecessary.  2. We can yank weeks out - I am not really sure what this entails, but I think this is akin to effectively recognizing the uselessness of some of your cognitive schema and abandoning them, discarding them.  You know we can do this with asking ourselves - is that true (i.e. everyone criticizes me - is that true, does it matter)  Cognitive schema are short cuts that help us manage and interpret the world around us.  Ways that we deal with the world to make the masses of information we are exposed to manageable, and allow us to make quick decisions.  The problem is when they are negative cognitive schema they come from unhelpful situations from our past, and were designed to work in that situation, but not in a functional situation.  Thus there is the potential to recreate what we are comfortable, rather than challenge it and ask: Is that really true?  What else could it mean?


 So in this garden, we plant some fruit trees

If you have not read As a Man Thinketh, I highly recommend it....here are some of the quotes...more to follow on another post.

Here is a link to the book and you can listen to the whole thing on Youtube...

http://wahiduddin.net/thinketh/as_a_man_thinketh.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZC3v3LzrWY



"A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.
As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them. This applies equally to those acts called "spontaneous" and "unpremeditated" as to those which are deliberately executed."

"A noble and Godlike character is not a thing of favor or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long- cherished association with Godlike thoughts. An ignoble and bestial character, by the same process, is the result of the continued harboring of groveling thoughts."

"Man is always the master, even in his weakest and most abandoned state; but in his weakness and degradation he is the foolish master who misgoverns his household. When he begins to reflect upon his condition, and to search diligently for the Law upon which his being is established, he then becomes the wise master, directing his energies with intelligence, and fashioning his thoughts to fruitful issues."