Joy can come in feeling mentally and physically fit. Although joy is intimately tied to notions of self-worth addressed in our scriptures, there is joy with each improvement in overall fitness. The right exercises, appropriately viewed, and consistently executed are key. Although these three issues have been addressed throughout the ages, their rewarding resolution is highly personal. The following eight-minute physical and take-my-time mental exercises brighten my days.
How you enjoyed the tour. You’re welcome to come and visit, and feel free to repeat the tour.
Equipment-Free, Spiritually Optimized, Physical-Fitness Exercises
As noted in Our Truth Galaxies, the neural relational webs of our minds are linked into the world relational web that connects us. These neural webs are also linked into the cellular relational webs comprising the essence of our bodies. A healthy balance in those linkages can add joy to one’s life. The exercises in this download may be of help in both regards. Rather crude demonstrations are available on at https://youtu.be/7_fz6NPvMnI and
Setting Aside Time for Mental Fitness
The understandings stored in one’s mind play an important role in birthing an enduring personal truth galaxy. Our understandings are vast, and we are variously gifted in having the better ones come to mind when the need arises. A mental-fitness routine can help out. Here’s one that works me.
After completing my physical-fitness routine, I like to brew a cup of coffee, put together a snack, and head to a comfortable chair surrounded by some chosen books. There I sit down and shed all the distractive details of life by closing my eyes and shutting down my thoughts so that I’m only aware of the creative spirit of the universe residing in me. This is analogous to saving and closing all of the open files on a computer, returning the operating system to its original state by rebooting it, and letting it do whatever it does until reactivated by the stroke of a key.
After sitting with the presence of that spirit for a while, I reactivate my mind by asking if all sits right with me. Should it not, I briefly think about it, but I won’t dwell on it. I know that whatever it is will somehow be resolved. It will keep resurfacing until it is. Instead, I “open my first file of spiritual radiations for the day” coming from the galaxy of religious truth.
Within that vast galaxy, I usually read a page or two from one of our scriptures. I do this until I’ve read the entire text. It can take a few years. There is no rush. I’m currently half-way through the Chronological Study Bible. As with all of our scriptures, it is filled with gems of truth that can unexpectedly strike home at concerning times and circumstances that their originating authors could not possibly have known about.
(The experience of one of these gems striking home is like “an answer that comes out of nowhere.” That sounds good, but it’s nonsensical. It’s an “I have no idea” explanation of the origination of that gem’s relevance. It’s like my saying that the revelatory experience that totally changed my life had no recognizable source, that it was a random consequence of nothing. I like to think of those unexpected insights as answers to unconscious questions and prayers that have been stirring beneath the radar of my mind. There must be an inner something interacting with an outer something. For me, that something is the creative spirit of the universe that fashioned the complex interactions between the neural relational web of my mind and the world relational web of which I am an integral part.)
For my “next files of radiations for the day,” I turn to texts and books of selected writings from one or two of the other three institutional galaxies. I’m currently systematically reading a small amount each day from the Great Treasury of Western Thought edited by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren and the Concise History of the World: An Illustrated Time Line published by National Geographic. I like to top off this enjoyable half-hour or so by glancing through the day’s offerings in The Free Dictionary and BBC News apps.
This idiosyncratic routine for enhancing mental fitness suits my interests, involvements, and timeframes. It centers and frees my mind so I can enjoy contemplating and looking forward to the day. Hopefully, you already have or will find an analogous moment that works for you.
