Clearing your mind and Catholicism?

[bfree1216]

Edwyn. Thank you for such an amazing and thorough response! Wow. This is seriously such a helpful breakdown. I read your post before I started the day today and I’ll be honest, it changed the entire tone of the day for me. I actually felt much more present, applying the methods you talked about versus trying to clear my mind. I felt full of hope and wonder and gratefulness, just accepting what was in front of me instead of rejecting it. And replacing negative thoughts with positive ones: I’ll admit I felt pretty skeptical about this, but whenever negative thoughts popped up throughout the day today, I decided I wasn’t going to “run away” (clear my head), or even to “fix them” (turn them into something positive), but simply replace them by introducing positive thoughts. It made the negative thoughts practically weightless and insignificant, at least in comparison to the positive ones. Of course I’m no pro at this by any means, but I felt so much more peace today with my mind than I’ve felt in a while. And I’m excited to keep working on this. Thank you so, so much.

Also, it exposed me to some deeply flawed beliefs I’ve held that I think are what’s driving me to believe that the best way to get away from them is to clear them from my mind rather than confront them and challenge them. This is a topic probably for a different post—a few questions about the faith that have really been consuming me lately—but regardless, replacing my thoughts with positive thoughts rather than running away or fixing them helped me understand what’s been bothering me.

Finally, we have to start using our mind rightly, and this we train our memories and imagination. The problem with most people is that memories are treated mainly as regrets and fears and sorrows. Our “bad” memories should never be used to determine what we should be doing, but how we should be doing things. In other words, memory should be our source not mainly of sorrow, regrets, nor fears, but wisdom .

Imagination, on the other hand, becomes for many people either a source of anxiety or a way to self indulgence, to escape reality. In fact, imagination is our faculty to peer onto the future, and thus it is our source of planning and initiative .

I love this idea as well. I’ve heard the phrase before “the past is depression, the future is anxiety, so might as well live in the moment” and at the time I thought “well that sounds just incredibly pessimistic” and after reading your comment, I love how the idea of the past being wisdom and the future being imagination (I think of it as hope) is almost exactly the opposite of the depression/anxiety phrase.

(cont. on next reply)

 

[bfree1216]

I wanted to bring up one point about contemplation and enjoyment. Your comment made me question how I’ve been thinking about “contemplation”. Contemplation for me has been questioning everything, and questioning it endlessly: you can see how this might lead to mental exhaustion. For instance, in the sunset example, I would have questions as ridiculous as “how should I be looking at this?”, which’s oils draw my attention away from just freaking LOOKING AT THE THING. Instead, and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, today I viewed contemplation in a much different way today. It was much more about definitive statements, rather than questions, that essentially drew me out of my head instead of into it, or maybe better put, it was an amazing blend of the two: thoughts inside my head and the world outside my head. I was thinking things as easy as “This is good.” “This is beautiful.” And even a few sporadic moments of “Thank you, God. I mean wow! It was amazing.

So I’m thinking I’ve been viewing contemplation wrongly. Contemplation might much more accurately viewed as the way I’ve been viewing “enjoyment”, which literally breaks down into “in the process of enjoying”, which contemplation would be, according to Aquinas. Thoughts on this?

I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on all of this. Thanks again for all of your help!

 

[Edwyn]

I am happy my words were able to help you!

I’ll admit I felt pretty skeptical about this, but whenever negative thoughts popped up throughout the day today, I decided I wasn’t going to “run away” (clear my head), or even to “fix them” (turn them into something positive), but simply replace them by introducing positive thoughts. It made the negative thoughts practically weightless and insignificant, at least in comparison to the positive ones.

That’s great! I would also advice, as I mentioned above, to supplement this with excellent thoughts and ideas you can get from great books. You can start with the books @TheLittleLady advised; I have those books and they are really good. The book I also mentioned above is excellent, and IMHO it’s probably better to start from that. Great classical literature such as those of Dostoevsky I also recommend. And of course who could forget the greatest books in the world, the Sacred Scripture?

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Philippians 4:8)

So I’m thinking I’ve been viewing contemplation wrongly. Contemplation might much more accurately viewed as the way I’ve been viewing “enjoyment”, which literally breaks down into “in the process of enjoying”, which contemplation would be, according to Aquinas. Thoughts on this?

I actually like how you think of contemplation currently. As how I understand St. Thomas Aquinas’ view on contemplation, I can define it as “understanding the truth, receiving it with gladness, and letting it change you.”

 

[Annie]

Going to the example of the sunset, according to the teachings of the Scholastics, those who understand why sunsets are so beautiful, why the sun and sky becomes red, contemplates the truth about sunsets and this gives them more joy than those who are ignorant of it. So if you are analyzing why sunsets are such, you are enjoying sunsets more properly than those who just bask in them.

Would you say that perhaps it is not only a scientific understanding which will help us, but an artistic understanding could help in a similar way?

I mention this because considering a sunset is enhanced for me by a consideration of the elements of the beauty. There may be silhouettes or reflections in the water, contrasts between colors, angles of light bringing out different aspects of the landscape… And I don’t look at these things analytically, ahhh, I see that the light is causing different colors to appear in the grass or anything like that, more like an appreciation of the elements: ahhh, see how this different green is brought out by the angle of the sun’s rays.

(This could be because I have more artistic training than scientific )

Anyway, your posts in this topic are incredible!