This is a revised and updated version of a post I made and then deleted.
Sometimes I listen to the Xtian radio stations, and not in a totally ironic way. There is a combined sociological, historical, and educational aspect that I sort of enjoy. Not just the Bible stories and stuff, which is neat to learn about, but also culturally, to know the substance of what so many people are apparently almost wholly influenced and guided by these days. The music blows, like fer shur, but the conversation pieces are sort of interesting. And I like batting around this stuff a lot - I love advice columns. Carolyn Hax and Dan Savage are my favorite since they are really entertaining and well-reasoned. But I also like Dr. Laura and Dave Ramsey. I like the full circumference of points of view; there is something to be gained from all of them. The benefit can be in either in challenging your biases, or finding commonality where you thought there might be none, or reaffirming your own positions in your mind in spite of contrary points of view.
Okay so that faux-intellectual meta-analysis of pop culture talking heads was a disclaimer made entirely for the benefit of my vanity because I know it's totally square to listen to Christian radio, but I do it anyway, so there's that.
Anyway last week I was listening to some Xtian radio in the car, and the pastor (minister? reverend? chaplain?) guy was describing some confessions of sins of teen lust, and how they go something like this: "I dunno pastor, we were down a dark and private lane at 2 in the morning and gosh, it just . . . it just happened." And of course the point of this is that the lapse into sinful behavior took place waaaaaaay before it supposedly "just happened," and, really, lots and lots of decision lead up to a person's giving into temptation.
So the pastor recommended giving your weaknesses wide berth. Avoid situations that give rise to opportunities to make bad choices. At first I thought this was a little silly - it's a bad idea to hide from temptation as your means of dealing with life. Um, hello, virtue untested isn't virtue at all, it's like a totally famous quote. But the observation he made that really appealed to me was this question: why do we rub up so close against our weaknesses and then ask ourselves to resist? Why do we walk the edge, thinking we can have just one bite of a sundae, or one sip of wine, or anything else like that? It's a lie of our own desires. We want to do the thing we are trying not to do. According to the pastor the feeling of want is the devil trying to get us to cave in, and that's where I fall off the train, but I'm still on board with the idea that the state of mind that makes bad decisions unfolds long before the undesired behavior takes place. You know in your heart, way ahead of time, even though you may say the opposite to yourself, that you are going to create permission for yourself to do something you claim not to want to do. Anyway I like this because when I am thinking about my own bad habits, I like the idea that I can exercise my resistance or disciplined state of mind long before the moment of temptation. I can give my weaknesses wide berth in my mind, and without having to literally stay home to avoid temptation, I can stay "home" in my head. And even when temptation is right in front of you, turning away and waiting for ten minutes, or distracting yourself from it can be effective for letting a wave of weakness pass over you. Like deciding not to have candy - if you just keep walking, ten minutes later the impulse is usually gone.
Ah, all this is just to say that yoga was so awesome this morning. I went to class taught by one of the teacher trainers and it was so great. The whole time I just kept thinking to myself, "yes, this is how I feel best, and most myself, I want this feeling, I want to hold this state in my heart all day, every day." And I can have this state of being all I want - but I have to work at it, keeping all my triggers for weakness at a distance, fomenting the state of being I really want to be anchored to. I imagine that in this positive state of self, former temptations will lose their luster anyway, and I will have to deal less with waiting out waves of weakness.
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