A little reward at a time

This one is related to the previous post. How to find the little rewards in life.

Every morning, I manage to wake up at 6:30 am. Quite a feat for me, considering my usual wakeup time for the past 3 years was 10:30 am. I exercise and make breakfast in the morning. This seemed an almost impossible task couple months ago. Now all seems so natural, and most interestingly, more rewarding.

From exercises, I flex my muscles, and feels more energy for the whole day. In the morning, I can even squeeze in a little time for reading. I find reading so much more interesting than TV. TV is a repeating cycle of mind numbness. Not only because alot of times, it just doing reruns over and over again, but also because it replies on man-made spectacles. I will write another post about this.

More importantly, I get more time working. Now I see as an exercise of the mind. The way I see it, the mind has two component, the consciousness and the operational component (for the lack of better words). Consciousness is like an computer-human interface, need it to access the brain and interpret the world. Operational part is like a cpu, doing all the contemplation and thinking. Usually, only the consciousness is working, whether you are watching TV or working. There is not much going on in the back of your mind. But consciousness is extremely finicky and fragile. It gets tired and easily overwhelmed. TV is targeting this consciousness. It's like a drug dulling all senses. For those few moments, you are not thinking, you are free of care of all things in life, how wonderful.

The operating part in the back of your mind is like a computer program. Once it starts, it never stops until some objective is finished. Then the routine goes back to consciousness again, deciding whether to start a new run or stop. The rewarding part of using the operating part is that it gets better the more one uses it. You don't get tired, or confused, or scared when you are using it. Only when the signals go back to consciousness, you feel tired, confused or scared. But most of the time, if the operating part is used properly, things will have a good outcome, and then there is nothing to be confused or scared.

A good example is public speaking. All of us have the experience that we feel scared and nervous anticipating speaking in front of a big crowd. Thoughts creep in about how people would think about what I talk about, how I looked, if I am going to make a fool of myself. But once 5 minutes into the talk, calmness sets in, we can focus and concentrate, a stream of energy fills one's body. And afterwards, and only afterwards you start to feel tired and even a sense of accomplishment.

So the consciousness makes all the decisions but is vulnerable. Operating part does all the works, and does not feel. Unfortunately, we are too often controlled by the vulnerable feeling of the consciousness, we are unable to move beyond the veil of the fragile consciousness. Hence we feel trapped, unmotivated, missing something in life. Only when we are willing to give up the control by consciousness can we regain a feeling of enjoyment. Maybe that's what they say give up control to gain control.


So I guess the trick is let consciousness dump all the work on the operating part, and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment afterwards. Once one command becomes routine, then it does not require effort for the consciousness to direct a job to the operating part, then it becomes a habit.

If gains nothing, my consciousness would be content to know that my operating part is exercised to be strong. Thinking like this, sometimes, I even have a strong urge to exercise the mind. Make it smarter, stronger. Only when exercising the mind, you are calm and alert. When one achieves full awareness and abandons the finicky feelings of consciousness, one achieves higher consciousness. I will work towards that. And that's my spirituality.