The Mind That Constantly Speaks To Us—

If there is one thing in life that we cannot escape, it’s ourselves.

Dreams, conscience, and anxieties of life make us real. I don’t know about you, and speaking strictly for myself and from my perspective; if anyone says they lived their life without regret—they have either a very poor, or a very selective memory.

Well, I guess another option is being mildly psychopathic, if ‘mildly’ is possible!

In any case we all make mistakes; say things we didn’t mean, doing things we didn’t want to do or mean to do! As the Gen-Z kids put it, “Sh** happens!” So over a lifetime, that “Sh**” builds up, and for some of us old folks it may trouble our sleep, slow us down, take away our joy in living.

The point is: IT HAPPENS TO EVERYONE. A certain Biblical character who claimed himself to be very strong in faith and devotion, said in a letter to a congregation of fellow believers:

“For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.” (Romans 7:18)

Regardless of your faith, or lack thereof, the point is that no matter how much effort we put into doing things the right way, something within our lives allows us to fail: things go wrong. Ergo: Dreams, conscience, and anxieties of life make us real, in other words, we are all human, and we all deal with our humanity. Nobody can avoid such things entirely.

Where I find the greatest revelation of this fact is when I lay down in bed, prop my head on the pillow, and start talking to God to clear a pathway to calmness and sleep.  It goes something like this:

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It’s not ‘just‘ the issues of our past, but the worries and concerns for today, tomorrow and beyond!

Settling down to sleep can be a tricky ordeal. Health, income, relationship concerns, among too many others, cause everyday strain and anxiety. All of them capable of capable of disturbing our sleep, and derailing our daily lives.

So what can we actually do about it? A few simple things may help:

• Empty the mind before bed: Write down the worries, regrets, and “don’t forget” items, or deliver them to your god and consciously hand them over for the night. (One of the reasons that I love to write.)
• Make a small, repeatable wind-down: The same 20–30 minutes every night: dim lights, reading, stretching, prayer, soft music. We have to teach our bodies to slow down.
• Protect the bed: Keep the bed for sleep (and sex if you’re that lucky), not for scrolling the web, reading and responding to email. There’s and old Biblical adage: “Do not go to bed in an agitated state.”
• Tame the easy saboteurs: Remove late caffeine, late alcohol, make the room cooler, darker, quieter. None of that fixes the soul, but it stops the body from fighting against sleep.
• Get help when the body won’t cooperate: If pain, breathing issues, or constant exhaustion are dogging you, that’s medical, not moral. Seek some help.

We may never silence “the mind that constantly speaks” to us, but we can learn to lay it down for the night—one honest prayer, one small habit, one act of mercy toward ourselves at a time.

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