We All Have Time To Meditate, But We Fill It With The Wrong Noise
Have you ever looked up from your smart phone and realised you've just spent the last 90 minutes scrolling through a social media feed and then feel an instant regret that you've wasted a huge amount of time? Or maybe not social media but Youtube or news articles?
We often say we don't have enough time to accomplish all our goals, yet many of us live in the most convenient and efficient societies in the whole of human history. Have a look at all the things around you designed to save time from smart phones to dishwashers to cars. None of this was easily available even just a few decades ago. So where is all our time going? Or a better question is, what is wrong with our perception of available time?
Where is all my time going?
In their book "Make Time", authors John Zeratsky and Jake Knapp refer to infinity pools - the programs and apps that you get easily sucked in to consuming and lose hours a week but don't feel any sense of productivity from them.
And infinity pools play such a huge part of our lives that we don't even notice them. And they take up headspace that for a very long time in humanity has been used for meditation and processing our thoughts.
Not only is our active brain space filled by all the content available to us, but any passive thinking capacity we have is filled by pondering over the content we've just consumed and wondering when we'll get the next dopamine fix from scrolling through Instagram.
Don't believe me? What is the first thing you do when you have even just a few seconds to spare? You open up your phone and are nearly immediately on an app with some sort of trending feed of uploaded content intended to capture your interest.
But is this really that bad?
The reality is that if your mind is consumed by all these other distractions, then you're really going to struggle to meditate on the word of God. And as a good Christian you know that meditating on the word of God is something that you should be doing (Josh 1:8, Psalm 1:2, Romans 10:17, 1 Timothy 4:15, Philippians 4:8, the list is pretty long)!
So what exactly does it mean to mediate on the Word of God?
One of the most profound lessons I’ve had about the bible is viewing it as a Jewish meditation literature. This BibleProject “Ancient Jewish Meditation Literature” explains it so well:
Meditation literature means you don’t read something to find the answer or to solve the puzzle, but to let the text read you and provoke thoughts and consideration on the depth of what you’re reading. As you reread it, more of what you’ve learnt will start to stack on top of each other.
There are tools and lessons that can help you along the way, but the act of just reading and thinking about what you've read can be incredibly beneficial. And its not even that hard!
But if only you had the time... oh wait you do! It's just filled with all the distractions mentioned earlier.
So what should I do?
Should you cut out all technology? No you shouldn’t, technology is one of the best tools to help you, you just need to have control over it.
Learn your infinity pools
You probably already know what you infinity pools are, and there are more documentaries arising that expose us to what is happening to our brains when we consume these apps (check out “The Social Dilemma”). Thankfully developers are responding to this and making options for us to hide these sources of attention
Start where you can
You don’t have to try be a scholar. Use the tools available to you, the free apps and the features they provide are a good start. Using an audio bible is a great option to get through it when you don't have the ability to stop and read it for consistent amounts of time.
Talk with others about what your learning
Remove the pride from your journey, if you don't know as much as you think you should that is ok! We're all on our journey of filling out our roadmap.
Learn to articulate what you’re learning
Write down what you're learning in your own words. Articulation is a great way for your brain to process.
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