Sickness and Wandering Thoughts

I got sick. When I get sick, what goes through my mind is pretty interesting -

Everything around me smells differently (because I can't really smell when I'm sick)
Food taste differently since I can't really taste them.
The tempearature of the room feels different, it is either too warm or too cold.
My senses are slightly differnt as my whole body becomes a little more numb.
People treat me slightly differently because I am sick.
The world becomes a little more wobbly cos I feel dizzy.
Most of my time is spent sleeping, so the sense of time, of urgency is less.
I feel as though my mind is somewhat separated from my body.
I feel as though I am mind controlling my body - not quite the body that I am used to when I'm healthy, but because I am sick it really feels as though I am controlling someone else.
I feel as though I am somewhat less responsible for what I am doing because I am not me.

I start listening to emo songs that I would otherwise not listen to.
Walk slowly (since I cannot walk fast anyway) and notice my surroundings - how the pencil is on the table and how the cup is in the sink.
I say things in a more gentle way because I can't get as enthusiastic as I would like to be.

This whole "me" and "alter ego me" or whatever you would like to name it is not limited to the period when I get sick physically - but rather pretty much daily. When I face difficult situations in my life, I ask myself whether I should really treat it as "me" experiencing the tough things I am facing, or take them as something that is happening to the "body" I am experiencing. It is like, I am a steward of my body and of my life- I am the caretaker, the manager.

Some major religions and new age practices teach us to separate our body and our minds. They are 2 different entities, and we should deal with them as 2 different things. Whether it is partial separation or total separation - they might differ.

I attended a buddhist camp before, and they were teachng us how to do meditation. Something liek a 20 minute session I think. Of course, I am not like some big time guru, but the principle was to just focus our mind to be somewhat empty (but it isn't really empty because sometimes they teach you some chants, and I don't think it is possible to focus your mind on emptiness anyway - but well I don't know). Even if a mosquito is biting you, you are to focus on whatever you need to focus on, and shift your attention away from that tiny little thing. Focus on the mind, not on the body. Your leg might feel numb, but don't worry too much about it.

To me that is partial separation.

I haven't attend a Hindu camp before, but in Hinduism, this world is simply an "illusion" as they are merely temporal. I can't say more as to how the inner workings are, but some things I would like to note of perhaps (just perhaps) why this philosophy is appealing.

It is a mix of acceptance and denial of what is really happening. Pain does not become personal, rather pain happens to something you own - i.e. your body. Losses are much less personal. It is different from a more "personal" type of understanding.

For example:
With an impersonal philosophy, of you lose a pet dog, you tell yourself things like "I should be less attached to these things, pets are temporal, things come and go"
With a more personal type of philosophy, you would wonder if you would see your dog in heaven, and want to cherish the times you had together.

That is the impersonal philosophy, of course there is also the personal one. Loss is your loss. Pain is very real, such that you take it personally.

This personal philosophy is probably more natural to us. When we are cheated, we don't normally say that "The other person (who cheated) is not enlightened yet", we just simply feel betrayal. We feel hurt, we feel angry, and we feel sad - because the act commited against you was a personal act, and a relationship was severed.

People who takes things more personally generally feel more enthusiasm and sadness, while people who are less personal tend to feel less in every way.

People who takes things more personally are much more controlled and affected by the gains and losses of the present, while people who are less personal seem to set their minds of some ideal whether or not it is obtainable.

As you all would know me as a Christian, and perhaps you might be thinking I will be categorizing Christianity somewhere in the middle to make it looks very "balanced" to win it all by getting the best of both sides - I won't.

Firstly, I still struggle with this personal-impersonal thing, I wanted to brush it off as some mere personality issue. Much like how some people are task oriented and some people are more people-oriented. I don't think that the entire human understanding of the universe can be summed up in 2 simple categories.

Secondly, I don't think the Bible explains humans that way. While sometimes we are treated more like individuals, but because our bond with each other is somewhat so tightly knit and our fate has so much similarities, we are often addressed as a group. This is not some 50% personal 50% impersonal thing, but rather a 100% of both, which probably only makes sense philosophically and looks like nonsense mathematically.

Thirdly, I have read how some Christians who are in the "personality test" business try to fit Jesus into all the categories - and make him some uber-balanced man. In the DISC profiling, Jesus is All D, all I, all S, and all C. In the Carl Jung's test, Jesus is the "middle" perfect man - as though Jesus answered some personality test questions, and the scores show Him as some superman. God is Love, God is Holy, God is righteous. If Christians are to measure themselves, it should be along these lines. In the Bible, Paul is more argumentative, John is gentle, James is harsh, Luke goes into details, Peter is too blunt - Yet God's plan for them is not to make them into all robots, but rather making themselves who they fully are - just like Jesus.

I sometimes entertain ideas that all Christian should look like some finished product that is 23% gentle, 30% argumentative, 50% this and 12% that. This type of understanding which seems to prove as though we already know so much about humanity, categorizing them into nice compartments - I think it is a simplistic understanding of humanity at best.

But surely I must think a certain way to function - I can't just refuse to commit to belief and live. I don't quite think I will achieve some "divine balance" anytime soon, but I know I will be like Jesus one day, holy, righteous, and loving - and all these things will fade away, or perhaps they will fall into place.

There will be variety in heaven, and whatever that variety looks like, God will make sure it is a variety of perfection and goodness. Until then, my heart is not over troubled to search for answers as such, although me in the current illness of my mind has suddenly taken a greater interest in pointless blogging.

Struggling Thoughts

This post is not designed with some persuasive flow of argument in mind. It is just that i have been thinking about this issue for a long while, and I will lay down the basic inference. It is designed mainly to just vent out some anger in a non-complaining way, a jotting down of thoughts, personal in nature, and written with a heavy heart. Here goes:

A Christian should value things differently from the world, and have little interest in things that are worldly. The interest that he/she should have in worldly things is only for the sake of being culturally relevant such that the gospel can be preached. While some of us are brought up and are fed with likings for certain things - like football, cars, computer games, shopping (which means a whole list of things like shoes, clothes, etc) - a Christian should not nurture these desires.

Now I think this is a hard one to defend.

1. Because there are just so many people who like obsessively the things I just typed about.
2. Because the things are meant to be neutral in nature.
3. Because it seems that if you have little desire for these things you are going to be like some hermit who should really be living in a cave or some mountain peak where people climb miles up to see you for zen-like one liner wisdom
4. Because there will be a struggle to draw the line between legalism and genuine sincere desires
5. Because humans are generally sinful, we tend to take neutral things and use it self-centeredly

Laying down those ideas, add to the list if you like in the comments - but what I am not saying is that:
1. Things are bad and it is wicked to enjoy a good meal
2. We should detach ourselves from the world like many religious figures do
3. We should follow rules for the sake of feeling superior to others
4. We will become perfect by our own effort if we just "tried hard enough"

I will share with you why I am thinking about this in the first place:

Many Christians look exactly like non-Christians. Spend money like non-Christians, stay up late to watch football and miss church the next day, greatest goal in life is to get healthy-wealthy-rich and somehow donate enough money or do enough charity work such that they feel that they have contributed their part to society + silenced their conscience. Christians not knowing their Bible just like an average non-Christian, not sharing their faith since they don't know what it is anyway, etc.

I will tell why it matters:

Because this earth is not our home - we have heaven as our aim. We are meant to be responsible stewards of resources: time, energy, money, desires, things. When my priorities do not reflect heaven as my aim, then I am not being loving to others and will deny the gospel with my behaviour however vehemently I may proclaim it with my lips (which is also pretty hard to do when we know we are bad testimony).

2 results of that is:

1. God is not No.1 and honored in our lives as seen in our priorities.
2. We are giving a bad name to Jesus when we call ourselves Christians - tell others that God is Glorious when we spend everything to make ourselves glorious

If you can connect the points, yes I am saying that:

Our practice reveals our priorities, and our priorities reveal our beliefs. If we claim to believe 1 thing, and we practice another, we are just being hypocrites. The damage is not limited to ourselves - it says something about God, and it is told to many people who already have no fear of God in their lives.

Compared to another Christian, I tend to take it to the extreme. I do not think it is the extreme, but I think I can agree with them to disagree on this point. I really do think that the major portion of time that a Christian have should be used to extend the gospel.

Being contented with just getting a "ticket to heaven" is terribly misleading and misses the whole point of being a Christian. I just gotta do my part in following Jesus and encouraging other brothers in the journey, while drawing the rest of the crowd to the attention of their ugly fate - in hope that they may realize that we are all wicked sinners, who don't deserve heaven and have a judgment waiting for us.