Some say that love makes the world go ‘round. I’m not so sure. I think it’s habits. They get us up in the mornings or whatever passes for mornings; they help us dress and prepare for the day; they guide our actions during our waking period, and they get us ready for sleeping, and all this usually takes place at fairly prescribed times during a 24-hour period. Of course we can slip the traces and do some crazy things, and we do, but mostly it’s habits that have us moving along a recognizable path. Habits are those helpful, little subconscious switches in us that turn off and on, regulating our physical activities and also the ways our minds tend to work.
Running on automatic pilot...
Some days we are pretty much running on automatic pilot, sometimes going through entire days without the need to “take thought” for anything. It’s really only when we are called upon to think original thoughts that we switch over to manual power and probe the mind for what it has for us.
Some habits are time savers...
It’s not a question that habitual thinking is bad for us. Some habits are time savers. Who needs to have to learn to dress or feed ourselves all over again every day? It’s a question of how much of ourselves we are giving over to automatic processes that move us along without the need for us to check in regularly. Spiritual practices are one of these checking procedures. They help us examine whether our mental habits are healthy. Are they affirming our life energies? Are they keeping us from being curious about discovery?
...habits are not open ended...
By their natures habits are not open ended, and they are not discerning. They go down the road they were programmed…consciously or subconsciously…to take and nothing more. Habits are comfortable, even if they are not healthy, and they are scary. What if we don’t look into them to see if they still serve us? What if we are serving them? Bears thinking about, especially if we want to be up for real, self discovery on a regular basis.
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