I’m doing a number of things these days. Work keeps me busy for a lot of time, most of all week days. But I am able to allot my free time to some interesting activities.
I have been meditating for ten minutes every morning for about 200+ days without a break. I have added a ten minute meditation session in the evening as well. I do this almost as soon as I come back from work. I really like the new avenues meditation has opened up for me. I will write more about this later but it has given me the most important realisation that the mind is not really who I am. What the mind thinks are not necessarily my thoughts. Intriguing? I couldn’t agree more.
These days, the most of what I write is for myself. This sort-of ties in to my meditation routine. I have started keeping a journal. That is why the number of my blog posts has gone down drastically of late. Journaling is said to be one of the best habits that can be developed for the mind. I am also working on another long-term writing ‘enterprise of honourable, dangerous consequence’. More details later.
About a year or so back, I happened to hear some conversations in Portuguese. This drew me closely to the language in an inexplicable way. I had a yearning to learn the language ever since then. I started learning it from January this year. I use an app called Babbel. I am almost through the Beginner’s courses and will soon move to the advanced level. Learning a new language is an excellent way to exercise your mind.
On Sundays, I leave home at 8 in the morning, go to Govind’s in Banjara Hills and have my fill of steaming hot Idlis and Vadas. I then go to the Secunderabad Jain Temple where I teach a bunch of about 30 kids from the age of around 12 to 16 about spirituality and the Jain religion. I try to keep my class free of dogma. I encourage the kids to ask questions and not accept things that don’t make sense. I also teach them not to disparage other religions and help them understand that hate in the name of religion is the worst possible insult to your own religion. I believe this is a golden opportunity to shape the thinking of these impressionable minds. Ordinarily, they would not be exposed to much other than the traditional views - if you do this, you go to hell, do that and you get rich kind of bullshit that is peddled in the name of religion these days. So I am glad I am giving them a slightly different, more universal concept of religion which may actually help them shape their worldview better.
Apart from this, I am swimming almost every day. I have also started doing some strength-training. I found myself struggling to get up from a chair without the help of my hands. I was advised on the Internet to start some strength training. I have a physiotherapist coming home 5 days a week in the morning for 30 minutes of flexibility and strength training. It has already shown remarkable results.
I have a lot to look forward to in my day. Now, the only itch that remains unfulfilled to some extent is that of travel. I really want to travel more. I am going to work hard on this aspect over the coming weeks.
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PS: Still using Headspace ?
Hi Bhanu, good to hear from you. I finished all the sessions in Headspace. I now use an app called Calm.