Taming our overactive mind

Fr. Roy Cimagala .

TO have an active mind is, of course, a good thing. It facilitates many things: our thinking, our judging, assessing and reasoning. It fosters insights and intuition, allowing us to see and read more than what our eyes and other senses can perceive. It mitigates the effort to adapt to people and to the different situations in our life. It enhances a proper reaction to events. Indeed, to be gifted with an active mind is a great blessing.

It is when the mind becomes overactive that we will have a problem. And it can be a big problem, as in, people getting into mental or psychological disorders, obsessions, phobias and other overreactions to certain stimuli. And the problem does not stop with the person only. It affects the family and society in general.

An overactive mind usually does not know how to rest even if the body is already dead tired and is literally pleading for sleep. It seems that it goes on its own, unmindful of the conditions of the other parts of the body.

When it gets engaged with something interesting or intriguing, it tends to exaggerate things. It hardly knows restraint and moderation in its operations. It does not know when to stop. It goes into a kind of perpetual self-overstimulation.

The sense of order is overturned, and the proper priorities in life are dismissed. Even the most elementary physical hygiene is neglected. You can just imagine what happens with regard to his duties to his spiritual life of prayer and his relation with God and others.

Sad to say, many now are the cases of people with this kind of condition. There can be many factors to explain the phenomenon. Babies now are fed with super enriched milk and food, heavily packed with energy hormones. There are now more kids reported to have what is called ADHD—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Children are exposed to so many things—gadgets, Internet, etc.—such that very early on in their life, they would not know the values of discipline, order, focus, direction, so important in life.

They now are more prone to the dictates of their instincts and feelings, rather than to right reason. Said another way, their mind is driven more by their instincts and emotions alone. The capacity to think properly is weakened if not lost.

As to how to address this problem, there can be no other definitive way than to refer things always to God. Yes, some drugs can help, some exercise both physical and mental also can, some psychological therapy can offer certain relief.

But the definitive cure will always be when one goes or returns to God and follow his will, commandments and example as shown by Christ, the God who became man. It’s in his spiritual life that the disorder has to be remedied and cured. It’s in his genuine relation with God that the problem can be definitively solved. And it need not require a miracle, although a miracle can always be asked and is always welcome.

With prayer and being with God, one gets to know how to discipline his thoughts and direct them along the ways of charity and truth, always supported by an array of virtues—humility, prudence, temperance, etc.

With God, one realizes the importance of self-denial and a healthy sense of abandonment in the hands of God which is not an excuse for not exerting one’s due effort in any enterprise. He would have a clear picture of what he can do, and what he cannot, what are his strengths and assets, and what are his limitations and weaknesses, and behave according to those parameters.

It would be good that one exerts a strong will-power to say no to certain temptations and occasions that can trigger an over-active mind. Of course, it would be highly advisable that one has recourse to a good spiritual director who can guide him in today’s tricky world of the new developments.

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Don’t delay, just begin again. This is a good advice for those who are trapped in a predicament that tempts them to plunge into hopelessness and despair.

We should not delay in having to begin and begin again, no matter how many times we have to do it. We just have to move on. God is always merciful.

Whatever failures or sins we may have committed, no matter how grave and ugly they are, we just have to go to him, asking for forgiveness and he will forgive us. We just have to move on.

Remember the parable of the prodigal son. That spoiled brat finally came to his senses after suffering so much for his stupidity and decided to go back to his father even if he would not anymore be considered his son. The father welcomed him back with great joy and restored him to his dignity.

The important thing is just to come home. We may have strayed from the right way and have done it knowingly and freely, and therefore with guilt. But God is always a father. He will never reject his son.

In other words, we should just come home. It’s understandable that we can present ourselves to God with shame and fear, but let’s be reassured that God will always take us back most happy with our return.

This piece of advice is most relevant to those who suffer from some persistent weakness and misery that tempt them to fall sad and depressed. And many people nowadays find themselves in this predicament. They try their best to be and do good, but somehow one day they fall again into the same weakness or sin.

At the beginning, they manage to go back to God asking for forgiveness without difficulty. But since they seem to be falling to the same predicament in spite of their resolutions and effort, they feel that they are already hopeless, that they are already abusing God’s goodness, that they are insincere and are hypocrites.

These thoughts and reactions usually are the ones suggested by the devil who take advantage of our sadness and sorrow to inflict a greater harm on us. He will do everything to convince us that we are a hopeless case. We should be forewarned of this possibility.

There is no denying that while we are here on earth, we will always be hounded by all kinds of trials coming from our weaknesses, the allurements of the world and the wiles of the devil.

With our weaknesses alone, we already have a lot of load, and they can be very disgusting. Something in us will always push us to be and to do good, and we try to follow that urge. Yet, for one reason or another, we would just fail. This can happen even in the most unlikely moment when we are in the middle of sacred act.

We have to remind ourselves that our condition here on earth is always precarious and tenuous. We may be highly gifted, and yet we know that we have feet of clay. We should not be surprised and too worried about this condition of ours. We know that God is always around. The important thing is always to go back to him, no matter what happens. He will always receive us with open arms.

In this regard, it would be good that we develop a deep sense of sportsmanship in our spiritual and moral life. We may commit a mistake often, we may also be fouled by others many times, but we should just get up and move on with the game of life whose end is surely a victory as long as we go back to God.

We have to have that attitude of having to begin and begin again, without delay and without tiring as much possible. Let’s never pay attention to the devil’s whisper that we are already a hopeless case. We are not. We never will be, with God.

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com