They say what you do at midnight on New Year’s Eve sticks to you for the rest of the year. What if you’re snoring? What if you’re arguing with your spouse? What if you’re shouting at your kids on your cell because they are partying and have no plans to return home for the next few hours? Relax. Just enjoy the celebrations outside your window watching or hearing the sound of crackers going off or the razzle dazzle of the fireworks lighting up the night sky. Forget the party-poopers cry havoc, fire and brimstone, including damnation on anyone daring to welcome 2018.
Seniors like myself, will wonder how time flies by. It was only yesterday that we wished friends and family a very happy 2017 and now we have before us a brand new year. When we were young, yes, we too were young once upon a time, we would excitedly make New Year Resolutions, vowing to follow them to the dot. January witnessed us sticking religiously to our resolutions, but come February, our resolve would weaken and the passion pale with more urgent and exciting matters to attend. Resolutions were never a sexy thing that one wanted to latch on to indefinitely. Instead, one tended to turn to self-help books that promised nirvana, self-empowerment or secrets to a super healthy, prosperous and productive life. Many may remember Dr Wayne Dyer’s Your Erroneous Zones (1976) that first flooded the bookstores in Karachi. It sold 34 million copies worldwide. Called the ‘Father of Motivation’, Dyer went on to write 40 more such books. Dyer’s fans, yours truly, tried embracing the nuggets of joy that he scattered in all his books. But, as soon as the book was read and placed behind a glass bookshelf, the wisdom imbibed was permanently interred with the book.
But my undying faith in Dyer has persuaded me to compile his sayings in a document that I have on the desktop of my laptop. I rarely open it to go through it. Why? Who has the time when other mechanical chores turn us humans into robots in our day-to-day challenges of trying to keep our heads above water. But the bleak December days of New Jersey with snow and freezing rain as one’s constant companion can bring in the SAD (seasonal affective disorder) syndrome synonymous with winter depression. So, a caring nephew of mine living in Michigan advised I read Richard Hittleman’s Yoga: 28 day Exercise Plan. Along with this book, I ordered two more of his books on meditation. The books were written in the 80s but when read made it seem as if the author was writing for the audience of one — namely me!
Our minds, says Hittleman are divided into ‘ordinary mind’ and ‘universal mind.’ The former controls our thoughts and actions, making us a slave to its dictates: “twenty-four hours a day this ordinary mind operates, filling us with outrageous notions which require all of our energies and attention,” he writes, “we faithfully do everything it tells us because it has hypnotised us into believing that if we listen to it and follow… it will provide us with the happiness and peace we are seeking.” Comparing the ordinary mind to a machine, the writer says, the ordinary mind’s only use is conducting mechanical chores, nothing else. So, he warns us not to put our hopes, dreams, wishes, including our life in its hands. It’s the Universal Mind that we need to befriend.
Watch this space.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 31st, 2017.
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