Practical Implications of Oneness

I've been realizing something in the last few months regarding my continual efforts to improve my self discipline. The concept of Oneness, I think, has helped.

It used to be that I considered each of the things I should be doing (exercising, eating right, getting my work done, etc) as separate things. I would try to build each habit, one at a time and it was like juggling.

I thought that if I tried to tackle them all at once it would be overwhelming. But I've realized that when I think of all these seemingly unconnected things as one interconnected lifestyle, and I try to do everything right at once, each reinforces the other in some way. It actually becomes easier when I think of all these behaviors as interconnected.

There was another instance of Oneness-thinking that helped me this morning in a somewhat different way. Sometimes, I think depending on what portion of the sleep cycle I'm in when it's time to wake up, I find it very easy to wake up, and other times it is very difficult. This morning was difficult. But, given my new interconnected view, I knew that what I did or didn't do this morning would affect the way I approached my whole day.

Normally when I'm trying to wake up, I'm thinking to myself, "ok, move your legs, you have to get up. Here we go... about to move now..." In other words, I'm thinking of myself as my mind and my body is this thing I'm controlling like a vehicle that won't start. My mind is fully awake and it's trying to get this lumbering body to do something. I'm thinking in terms of separate entities.

But then I started to think of my mind and my body as being one integrated whole. Instead of the whole thought process of convincing myself to move going on in just my mind, I started to imagine that this process should take place simultaneously throughout my body. What I found was that by conceiving of my mind and body as one integrated entity - by thinking of my fingers and arms and legs as "me" too, I was able to have greater control.

This process is somewhat hard to explain but hopefully some will catch my drift. Of course, this worked for me but different methods may or may not work for others.