Lesson 4: Avoid Brain Dumb Downers
You could drink a cup of coffee to wake your brain, and then undo the awakening with lethargy and dumbness by drinking excessive alcohol.
You could practice mental, physical, and spiritual Laws of Health to Awaken–but still lose your best health if you simultaneously consume even one of these “brain dumb downers”:
1. Talking too much
Benjamin Franklin made “Silence” second only to “Temperance” as the virtue most needed to find the other virtues and your best life. Too much talking not only puts the brain to sleep but also poisons the emotions and wastes time.
His definition well defines the practice: “Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.”
Of course, there’s a time for lighthearted times between friends (this is not trifling but uplifting), but continuous trifling babble consumes time and energy that could have been used to find every type of health.
2. Other people who talk too much.
This one’s worth mentioning separately because the people who will talk non-stop and waste the days of others will find and latch to those who practice silence. Two people who both talk too much can enjoy each other’s company, but they clash so much from trying to talk over each other that they will be most happy with someone who will sit and listen.
So the more you practice silence, the more you will find that incessant talkers want your company. If you sit and listen to every word for as long as they want to numb your mind and waste your day, then you are consuming the narcotic of babble as much as if you were the one talking. It is not their vice but yours; you consume a narcotic to hide from your thoughts and alibi your coma when you sit with incessant talkers.
3. Detailed information about something beyond your control.
One of the reasons that the weather channel can relax (for any situation other than an approaching disaster) is that there is nothing that we can do about what we hear. The weather channel reports 100% upon conditions 100% beyond your control.
Even the news about foreign lands and wars can be important to know to be a good citizen, but a continued diet of such information can be an excuse for not thinking and not doing–a narcotic that blocks your best health.
Thoreau called all news “gossip”; the names of people and countries change with every age but the news stays the same.
4. Literal drugs and alcohol.
Interesting isn’t it–that cliche’: “drugs and alcohol” That tells the fact that some like to separate alcohol, “It’s not really a drug.” Drugs that put the mind and emotions to sleep (including alcohol) prevent the total waking of the mind.
Do not suddenly stop medicines given to you by your physician. But, if you want to work with your physician to decrease medications, or if you struggle with boredom or anxiety or depression or insomnia (mental ideas for which drugs with narcotic-like effects are often given), then here are ways to need less medicines so that you can awaken:
a. When worried, think of what’s the worst that can happen and prepare your mind for what you will do in that situation.
b. Think of what you can do to survive the worst possible scenario and what you can do to make the best possible scenario happen, then do those things. Action and prayer eventually slay worry.
c. Many painful emotions erupt from the poisonous chemical balance found in those who do not practice physical activity every day. Exercise one hour per day to stay sane. Exercise two hours per day to enjoy your best health. There may be those who seem to skirt these rules and do well, just like many seem to do well on 3 hours of sleep per night. But, most people find their most wakeful place by following these guides.
5. Mindless movies or television.
Stories can inspire and instruct. Good stories will always be the method of teaching of the prophets and poets. Stories can be verbal, theatre, movies, recorded audio–who knows what will come. Stories will always be enveloped in the form of the most entertaining way to communicate in every age.
Stories become narcotics when they do not instruct or inspire but simply evoke emotion to help the sleeping person think they are awake. The sleeping person feeling the emotion of a mind-numbing story simply feels the emotion of the dream, not the emotion of the present moment.
Watching those stuck in prison or in a hospital bed, I can see the usefulness of a mind-numbing story. But, even there, I have wondered, “Would this person be the next Boethius should the mindless stories go away?”
6. Mindless games
When I was young, I played chess and imagined a king and his court and soldiers there on the battlefield. Now, with electronic gaming, whole worlds continue to grow in cyberspace with people working to find recognition and power or love there in that space the way I looked for it on the chessboard.
I quit playing so much chess (though I still enjoy the occasional game to exercise my mind) when I read Franklin’s essay where the gout that plagued him spoke to him (in a humorous satire) about how he should have played less chess and pursued more physically active hobbies, leaving chess to the person who does physical labor as an occupation.
The real space around me holds enough people who would thwart my best efforts to keep my mind occupied. The strategies needed for this day become less clear if the narcotic of mindless games become my main focus.
7. Gods that do not inspire.
Only one G–.
Those who ignore that G– ignore the most powerful force–prayer or communion with that G–.
Those who approach that G– through a door of religion that puts the mind and body to sleep to the voice of G–, those who must look for G– through a lattice of man-made rules so thick that it muffles G–‘s voice and blocks the Light, those people cannot hear or connect. The rules that define their G– disconnected them from Awakening and from best health.
Religion should be a path that a child could follow to G–, not a narcotic that sleeps you to the universal mind in a coma of man-made dogma.
8. Music that dulls the mind.
Music has rhythm, words, melody, and volume.
All of these can be used to either awaken or to put to sleep. All of these components of music can be used to inspire or to evoke emotions and ideas that poison.
Music reflects the spirit of the composer and the performer. You will take on the spirit of both when you dive into a composition. Even without words, you can feel the spirit of the artist who performs and the artist who composed.
When you find an artist and a performer that lifts you (and it may not be at your church and again it may), then consume that music.
If music does for you something other than this, then what is it’s purpose?
The 5th Law of Health speaks of sex. Music that evokes ideas of sex is not a narcotic unless sex has become a narcotic (instead of inspiration and joy).
Music that tears down should be jettisoned and washed away with good music as quickly as you would evoke vomiting followed by the proper antidote should you swallow poison.
9. Mindless reading.
As with music, the mind of the reader takes on the state of mind of the writer. So the subject of what you read can be important and helpful, but the state of mind of the writer is just as important.
That idea explains why you can benefit from reading the ancient scriptures even if you do not understand every word of the subject. Because these scriptures came from pens of people who walked the deserts with G– talking through a much less developed lattice of distraction, these deep and pure waters clean the mind of the modern pollutants of overgrown religion and of unbelievers and of wisdom haters. The polluted hype of philosophy cakes that are all frosting with no wheat will wash away in the clean waters that spring from ancient scripture.
The builders of complicated man-made latices (the vampires) know the power of the cleansing waters of ancient scripture and would have you avoid them by keeping you always focused on their growing lattice, which walls you into their prison where they can drink your attention and put you to sleep in a nightmare of disease.
The ancient scriptures dissolve the lattice and fill your mind with the Breath and Words that awaken.
10. The emotions of anger, jealousy, worry, and hate.
The poison emotions can serve a purpose by pointing you toward your fear. Find the point from which comes the fear (what’s the worst event you’re afraid may happen) and do something to neutralize or combat that fear. Then you awaken back to the clear place of calm purpose.
These emotions are not “bad” any more than pain when you touch a fire is “bad.” These emotions point to a fire in your life that will incinerate your peace and your health unless you take action.
So, pay attention to the emotions, all of them. Then use these ideas (and what comes to you from practicing these ideas) to Awaken.
This is one of a series of lessons in the Law of Health: 10 Essential Steps to Glorious Health & Miraculous Healing
Peace & Health,
Charles Runels, MD
