What are you feeding your mind?
What are you feeding your mind?
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Matthew 5:6)
Hi friends and readers,
Today I want to ask two simple questions.
What are you feeding your mind?
What do you thirst for?
We live in a society of “addictions” or “thirsts.” However, these addictions can never satisfy us. If it’s addiction to money, when we get a lot, we are not satisfied, we thirst for more money. If we are addicted to bad food, we will be caught in an unhealthy diet cycle. If we are addicted to sexual immorality, there will never be a stop to it, never a satisfaction.
When we thirst for worldly things, there will never be a point of satisfaction.
The other question we are asking, about what we feed our mind, perfectly ties in with these thirsts and addictions. Just as we can be feeding our body bad food, conditioning it to get used to it, and repeating the cycle, we can also be feeding our mind with all sorts of negativity.
Have you seen the news networks lately? It is all focused on making you angry, stuck in flight or fight mode, to make you depressed. How about many films and series today? They seem either obsessed on pumping up your ego to levels of absolute selfishness, or they do more of the same as the news and bring you down to ultimate lows.
What is the answer to these two questions that’s helpful?
It’s feeding your mind spiritual messages of God. Watching uplifting things, reading things that enrich your soul, fill you with love for God and your fellow humans. We must thirst for this, that’s the answer. We must thirst to know God better and to hear his message for us.
It’s just like diet with food. If you eat healthy, your body responds in a healthy way. Your mind needs this as well. Let’s feed it in the proper way.
Blessings.
It’s easy to get lazy with what goes into your mind if you’re burned out from working long and/or stressful hours.
Great question and an excellent challenge.
Ten years ago I heard a friend lament about the worlding being "full of rampant violence and hatred." I thought to test that assertion, because if something is "rampant" then I should see it everywhere. So, I began to observe life as I encountered it directly, through my own eyes. Since then, I've crossed paths with millions of people--in airports, sporting events, a number of large cities around the US and globally, out on the roads (a years' worth of RV travel). This includes being in Egypt shortly after the Israel-Gaza war broke out (which no one seemed bothered by), and being in Bucharest the day after a horrific nightclub fire that generated many heartfelt (not violent or hateful) protests. But I have yet to witness a *single* bit of evidence that backs the assertion of rampant violence and hatred--EXCEPT what's thrown in my face via news and social media.
Yes, I know that there is violence and hatred in the world, but it's truly the exception rather than the norm. The news media, however, makes it the norm. After all, how do they make a big portion of their revenue? Through advertising. How do they demand the highest rates for advertising? By commanding eyeballs, which means holding people's attention. What is the best emotion to exploit for holding people's attention? Fear, because when you fear something you don't want to take your eyes off of it. Consequently, the business model for news is based on the exploitation of fear, and thus news is heavily skewed toward that emotion.
In reality--in the reality I've observed in so many places--people are kind, generous, accommodating, happy to share in the joy of being alive. But we train ourselves to not notice those virtues and concentrate instead on the darknesses.
I like to think of my mind/heart/soul as a radio receiver: there are any number of programs to which I can attune, so I must always be making choices according to what I want to be and become.