Lydia" post_id=473316 time=1700402173 user_id=57]
It’s very common these days to get caught up in busy lives, cell phone notifications, emails, and so on; and to neglect or procrastinate spirituality. This forms the habit of not paying attention to priorities.
Cell phone notifications, youtube videos, scrolling through social media, playing video/phone games, and the like, all create dopamine rushes leading to the need for more quick actions that give more dopamine rushes. This can cause a form of addiction for many people, and causes people to neglect other priorities.
This also causes mild depression for people when they are away from their phones, internet, or games for long, as their brain is accustomed to quick dopamine rushes.
These quick dopamine rushes prevent people from the ability to sit down for extended periods of time for spiritual practices, and makes it difficult for people to enjoy normal things in life. Exercise is a healthy way to get a healthy dopamine rush, but as it requires more time and effort than scrolling through phones, a lot of people are unwilling to do this. Most people want the quick and easy, anything instant.
It isn’t just dopamine. Endless scrolling activates the part of the brain that enjoys learning new information, and endless scrolling keeps us hooked to see “just one more… just 5 more….” Humans enjoy learning new information, so it is easy to trick ourselves into thinking it’s good to “be caught up”, not realizing that there are more important and satisfying things that can be done instead.
A lot of people upon waking check their cell phones for notifications, which can then lead to the distraction of scrolling through social media, which then leads to rushing to get ready to go to work. Time wasted, on things that are actually not even important. And if the first thing you see or hear about is bad news, or something that annoys you in any way, it sets a bad tone to start your day with.
Humans are creatures of habit, as the saying goes; it can be very difficult to begin to prioritize spiritual practices. A lot of people want to add more spirituality into their day, but get overwhelmed thinking about how to start doing it on a daily basis.
One thing that will help, for when you are caught up in notifications and neglecting your spiritual practices, is to do a full-on “spiritual reset day”. Take a day (or just a section of a day), any day that works for you, and focus purely on spiritual practices.
By telling yourself that it’s only for one day, you will be more likely to succeed for that day.
-No scrolling or checking notifications. Log out of social media, turn off notifications. Even better if you do this the night before, so when you wake up, you won't have a bunch of notifications calling for your attention. If you’re a parent you might need your phone for your children to contact you, but ignore unrelated texts. All unnecessary texts and other notifications can wait. Tell yourself that you will make replies tomorrow instead.
Something to consider is that many things are
urgent, but not actually
important. Texts and emails have a sense of urgency to reply, but the vast majority are not actually important. Think about that for a moment.
-No internet or video games. If you go online, you will be tempted to check your usual internet stuff, and then you’ll be sucked down the rabbit hole and have a difficult time escaping.
-Optional, you can combine this with doing a caffeine-free day to help your body recover from dependency on caffeine. The previous points will help you recover from overloading your brain with dopamine rushes, so you can combine this day with no caffeine too.
-If you start to feel in a slump from the lack of dopamine rush and caffeine, you can do those Tibetan Breaths you’ve heard about but have not yet made the time to do. These will give you a rush of energy that you can then program for healing or whatever goal you are working towards.
-For a healthy dopamine boost, exercise! Even just 10 minutes will give a boost for those of you who are more sedentary. Get your heart rate up and work your muscles. Taking care of the physical body helps the mind and spiritual body, too.
-Now is the day to sit for a longer period of time to get guidance from your GD or contact any Demon you’ve been meaning to. You have saved extra time from not going online, so do the summoning, and sit and wait without rushing off to do something else. Meditate on the Demon’s sigil for longer, this will also help your mind and improve your visualization skills.
-You can combine the above with practicing
trance, or trancing for longer than you normally do. And then, you can add a new meditation you have been meaning to do, or practice with different
Color energy, as an example.
-Since you have more time in the day, do extra-long hatha yoga. Do those asanas you’ve been meaning to try, do the ones you’ve been neglecting or forgot about because they’re not in your habitual routine. Focus more fully while in each pose, don’t let yourself daydream or think about work or friends. Make sure your phone is set to silent (only if this is a reasonable option).
-This is also a good day to read books you have heard mentioned here but have not made the time for yet. Nietzsche or Marcus Aurelius, for example. Feel your mind improve and strengthen, in ways that watching tv and youtube never will.
-At the end of the day, review your day with High Priest HoodedCobra’s
Introspective Meditation: Increasing Conscious Awareness meditation. See how your mind feels from the effects of changing your usual day to one focused more on spirituality.
Now that you have done this, you can do a spiritual reset day / dopamine detox day on a weekly/monthly basis, or whenever you feel the need to do it. And, you will be more able to incorporate one or more additional spiritual practices on a daily basis now. You’ve had the success of doing one day, that feeling can be carried forward
Further reading, for effects on the brain from infinite scrolling, “doomscrolling”, etc:
https://www.bustle.com/wellness/what-happens-to-your-brain-when-you-scroll-through-social-media-for-hours
https://freedom.to/blog/infinite-scroll/
