Monastic Lessons for living

Notebook for

Finding Sanctuary: Monastic steps for Everyday Life

Jamison, Christopher

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PART ONE - Everyday Life

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In simple terms, the consumerist lifestyle forces people to work too hard in order to fulfil their consumer ambitions.

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Benedictine Order: this is the Latin word for peace, ‘PAX’, surrounded by a crown of thorns. There is no peace without sacrifice and there is no peace without justice.

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Virtue is the true door into the sanctuary of infinite space.

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It is unique because the sanctuary-dweller is also the sanctuary-builder.

PART TWO - Monastic Steps

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you should try omitting vulgarity, gossip and ‘just for a laugh’ from your conversation and see what happens.

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‘Because of the turbulence of life, the one who lives in the midst of activity does not see his sins. But when he is quiet, especially in solitude, then he sees the real state of things.’

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For Benedict, distractions inside my head are actually noises inside my heart: they are the result of the natural human condition - the condition of not having a pure heart.

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To pray is to address God as a familiar friend - to speak to ‘you’ rather than to think about ‘him’.

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a virtuous circle of awareness to help us do this: pray constantly, in order to have a pure heart, in order to see God everywhere, in order to pray constantly.

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To base a spirituality on a technique for meditation, or a technique for anything, is to reduce what should be a way of life - spiritual living - to a system.

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There is nothing wrong with obeying good rules and there is nothing wrong with exercising free choice. The danger lies in claiming to be doing the one while actually doing the other.

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A powerful question to ask at this point is: who sets your agenda? Who sets your agenda minute by minute, from day to day? Who sets your agenda in the long run?

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People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular - and too lazy to think of anything better.’

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Keeping busy is a way of avoiding being true to oneself, so the desire to stop being busy has met the desire to be true to oneself.

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Somebody with humility must have learned how to handle their own emotions and how to touch the goodwill of other people in order to involve others in the project of building greatness.

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family and community life people can waste a huge amount of time and energy complaining about ‘the management’, grumbling about the conditions and gossiping maliciously. Benedict hates grumbling and forbids it above all other vices: ‘Above all, let them not grumble,’

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The fellowship of the Church has been overtaken by the individual desire for spiritual comfort. The literal love of neighbour has been replaced by local conciliation services to resolve neighbourhood disputes.

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They observed that, after polite preliminaries, the first emotion to break out in the group was hate. Through family life, people had learned how to behave one-to-one and in a small

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group, but nobody had the skill of working in a large group.

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the participants felt disempowered by the presence of large numbers of people and they translated this frustration into hatred for particular people and for the group in general.

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Grumbling is the opposite of good conversation; it is the denial of the vow of conversatio morum and so is prohibited in the strongest terms.

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in the modern view, true spirituality is psychological well-being combined with the moral golden rule.

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modern spirituality is short-sighted and accommodating, religion is prophetic and challenging.

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‘Their law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy. Anything they believe in and choose they call holy; anything they dislike they consider forbidden.

Work and Mental Health

Notebook for

Autopilot: The Art and Science of Doing Nothing

Smart, Andrew

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1: That Loathsome Monster Idleness

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emerging from modern neuroscience, it may be no accident that as our working hours increase, our mental well-being and physical health decrease.

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Why does study after study show that we are more stressed, have worse family relationships, weigh more, and are less happy because we are working too much? Does it seem odd that as the time management industry sells more books, the number of hours we work increases? To quote Bertrand Russell, “can anything more insane be imagined?”

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What this means is that multitaskers cannot filter out irrelevant information because their attention is overloaded with whatever tasks they are not doing. In other words, a multitasker cannot actually distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information because the multitasker does not really know what they are doing at any given moment.

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Multitasking is compulsive behavior that actually leads to a condition very similar to adult ADHD.

2: Someone Else’s Noise

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Yet we feel obliged to risk our long-term health in order to work extremely hard at jobs we don’t particularly enjoy in order to buy things we don’t particularly want.

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The precuneous seems to be involved in self-reflection. One of the best ways to get to know yourself is to find a quiet or comfortably noisy place, stare at the sky, space out for a

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while and see what the precuneous gets up to.

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The ability to reflect on your current situation, your past, and your future are all intimately related. People who have the luxury to spend time doing this by being idle tend to be more creative, and to have better mental health in general.

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The butterflies only come out to play when all is still and quiet. Any sudden movements and they scatter.

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Fortunately, the only way to attain this optimal level of default mode activity is to put your feet up, find a nice pillow, lie back, and let go of task-oriented activity. Looking at great art, listening to your favorite music, and doodling may help facilitate this process.

3: Aha! moments and Self-Knowledge

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All the clocks struck at the same time because the clocks were not being wound.

4: Rilke and the Idle Examined Life

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“The lazy man does not stand in the way of progress. When he sees progress roaring down upon him he steps nimbly out of the way.” —Christopher Morley, “On Laziness”

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The common sense notion about “workaholics” is that they find idleness and inactivity to be unbearable because they are escaping emotional pain through constant work.

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We start to identify more with the phone in our pockets than the mind in our heads.

6: Revolution or Suicide

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An underlying assumption of productivity and time management is that the natural way human beings work must be suppressed for the sake of organization and productivity.

7: The Signal Is the Noise

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We do not know at this point what the long-term effects of ADHD medication are, especially on healthy young brains. It is entirely possible that some form of adaption could occur, and less natural dopamine would be produced, which could lead to problems such as depression later in life.

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I suspect that there is a strong cultural and economic component to the increasing rates of ADHD.

I have a right to:

I f we suffer from emotional black mail or bullying it can be useful to remember that everybody deserves respect: Below is a list of what an individual should reasonably expect:

I have the right to...

1. State my own needs and set my own priorities independent of any roles I may have in life.

2. To be treated with respect as an intelligent, capable and equal human being.

3. To express my feelings.

4. To express my opinions.

5. To say Yes or No for myself.

6. To make mistakes.

7. To change my mind.

8. To say 'I don't understand.'

9. To ask for what I want.

10. To decline responsibility for other people.

11. To deal with other people without being dependant on them for approval.

This list is useful as a rule of thumb for those who suffer from others taking advantage of them.

Our Needs (Maslow)

Maslow came up with a hierarchy of needs starting with the most basic and working his way up to the nice to haves.  His point was that we can exist on very little but that is all it will be existence but to have a full life we need other things as well.  Those things though alter in their importance.  Below is his diagram:

An interesting exercise is to have a look at your life and see where the different bits of it fit in.  For example; do I have enough to eat?  The you have fulfilled one to the basic requirements of life.  The point is it gives a person a process to discover what is missing in their lives.  Once that is done the much much harder task of putting that right begins.

The following link leads to a test to see what areas of your life may need attention:

http://www.businessballs.com/maslow5quicktest.pdf

If you are wondering what Maslow's perfect person would look like here is his list.

• keen sense of reality - aware of real situations - objective judgement, rather than subjective
• see problems in terms of challenges and situations requiring solutions, rather than see problems as personal complaints or excuses
• need for privacy and comfortable being alone
• reliant on own experiences and judgement - independent - not reliant on culture and environment to form opinions and views
• not susceptible to social pressures - non-conformist
• democratic, fair and non-discriminating - embracing and enjoying all cultures, races and individual styles
• socially compassionate - possessing humanity
• accepting others as they are and not trying to change people
• comfortable with oneself - despite any unconventional tendencies
• a few close intimate friends rather than many surface relationships
• sense of humour directed at oneself or the human condition, rather than at the expense of others
• spontaneous and natural - true to oneself, rather than being how others want
• excited and interested in everything, even ordinary things
• creative, inventive and original
• seek peak experiences that leave a lasting impression

Rules for life

This section is inspired by a good friend, who, because of her upbringing had difficulties with the rules of life. Those things which we tend to pick up unconsciously from our parents, friends and school for better or worse mean we react in certain ways to life around us.  The following are just lists in which different people have tried to lay down guide lines which will help them in life.  I suppose the most famous of these would be the Ten Commandments found in the Bible (Exodus 20).  This idea has been taken and used by all sorts of people.  In the 18th Century every 'important' person would have his list to refer too, the idea has also been taken up by modern day management  guru's who use the list to maintain a persons focus on what the want from life.  Mine are below and although I continually revise them they are the basic guidelines I try to follow in my life.  The key word here being try.

The lists usually start with 'I will and usually contain 10-12 statements.

I Will...

1. Before God take responsibility for my future.  I will not seek to blame others for not falling in with my plans. Family will be the most important consideration in my decisions.

2. Be positive and encouraging to all I meet, regardless of their frame of mind.

3. Endeavour to give 100% in all I do.

4. Not be swayed to take the easy way in order to be liked.  I will be intellectually and emotionally strong.

5. Make sure I am fit enough to enjoy the things I love.

6. Find goodness in life everyday and celebrate it.

7. Learn from those much wiser than myself.  Endeavouring to learn a new skill every year.

8. I will give respect to those who deserve it and none to those who don’t.

9. Make mistakes because I am trying and learn from mistakes.

10. Endeavour not to hurt others, but when I do to seek forgiveness.

The important thing is they must be things which you want to do.  Write them everywhere so where ever you are they can always be looked at pondered upon.