Books are the training weights of the Mind.
-Epictetus The Art of Living.
How many workouts did you have last year? How many books did you read last year? How many times did you hold someone in a deep embrace and tell them you loved them from the core of your being last year?
We can choose to live as three dimensional whole human beings or we can live in an unbalanced way focusing on only one dimension of our existence. People throw about the terms body mind and soul with little respect to what they mean when they put it forth. It is remarkably easy to get caught up in a rut or a habit that causes us not to engage life with all of our being. In fact we are encouraged to fracture it. We have all heard the term, strong mind- strong body.
How much time are we putting into strengthening our mind and how much time into strengthening our body?
Do we really believe in the strong mind strong body concept or is it just lip service?
Do we really believe that if we strengthen our minds we can actually strengthen our bodies by doing so?
Is there a balance in the time we spend on each?
Furthermore, what about that third dimension, the spirit?
How does one develop that?
Would that make someone's body stronger?
The last question is difficult as to how to to develop one's spirit. But the body and mind are simple. The gym takes care of the body and Epictetus tells us that books take care of the Mind. We can at least go that far. There are deeper Mysteries I am sure, and they are important perhaps even Paramount. But if we begin a journey of balanced development with body and mind more Unified, by using books as weights for the mind , and iron in the gym as weights for the body, I have a suspicion that a more complete development of our Human Nature that includes the 3rd Dimension is not far behind and will come sneaking up on us as we grow.
Here are some books to begin with.
Try on for size one from the following...Voltaire's Candide, Orwell's 1984, both challenges to think for oneself, anything by Thich Nhat Hanh but a fav is Peace is Every Step, Hoff's The Tao of Pooh, Mc Kinnis' The Power of Optimism, any book about Zen, any book about Aikido, any book about Yoga.
Be sure the books are ABOUT the subject in the abstract philosophical, not a how-to style. It is the ideas BEHIND Yoga that are important.
You want to apply the IDEAS to your own endeavors, not learn Yoga. A good way to tell is if there are no pictures or illustrations...just text.
If you are super western oriented then try Garfield's Peak Performance and ease into things. I have recommended these books over and over. They are absolutely chock full of useful ideas. If you have trouble grasping the value, read it once and let a month pass. Pick it up again. Your sub conscious will help you bc its been brewing in there all that time. Don't be surprised at what happens. You will see what you need to see the second time ill bet.
