Sunday, January 16, 2011

It's in the Mind

One of the strange capability of our mind is what I call as being selective.

Let's say, we are planning to buy a red dress, and we begin to focus our thought into finding a nice red dress.
All of the sudden we would begin to notice the red dress that our friend is wearing. Then we also notice the red dress worn by that cute girl in the TV commercial, the red suit worn by the news presenter, the red dress in the newspaper advertisement... we begin to notice red dresses everywhere. And not only red dresses, but red car, red pencil, red shoes, red books...
Our mind has the ability to form and grow the thoughts that creates awareness to our surrounding that we had never realized before.

Another issue is about our first impression. Our mind has the ability to recognize certain situation within a split second and immediately make up our mind about it, and sometimes an instantaneous action would follow.

Unfortunately, there are times when we make mistake. Our instinct betray us. Our snap judgement is wrong. That usually happen when we have prejudice, or having a negative perspective.
Sometimes the look, or the skin colour, or the dressing of a person can lead us to being prejudice. We could be right or could be gravely wrong in making our judgment about the person. There are many cases involving death of innocent victims of prejudice, such as the death of Amadou Diallo in 1999. A young black man, he was shot to death 41 times simply because he seemed to 'look' dangerous. The police mistakenly thought that he was reaching for a gun in his pocket when he was actually trying to take his wallet.

Speed of thoughts is as fast if not faster than the speed of light. Our thoughts can instantly go very far, deep and intense, if we do not establish some control. Thoughts lead to intention, intention lead to action, and repeated action will turn into a habit.
Hence, we cannot afford to have negative thoughts.
If we begin our day by having negative thoughts, soon enough everything will BE negative.
Everything looks bad. And it could lead us into making a deadly mistake.

These past few weeks, I have been very judgmental. Somebody had warned me about being careful and watchful about certain people. But I've discovered that the line between being 'careful' and being prejudice is very thin. And my whole world had been surrounded by negativity.

And I realized that my judgement had been distorted by the 'negative eyeglasses' that I've been wearing. I only saw the negatives. Problems after problems came.
It's like the red dress. I've been thinking so much about the red dress, and I've been seeing red everywhere ever since.
I've become so frustrated and the frustration turned into anger. And the anger has weaken me.
Alhamdulillah...praise be to Allah...He had release me from the burdening anger. Alhamdulillah...
My problems are still there, and I have no idea how to solve it.
But my anger is gone, by the mercy and blessings from Allah, the cloud has been lifted.

My mind, my thoughts need guidance, a divine guidance.

"Alif laam miim. This is the Book, in it is guidance sure, without doubt, to those who fear God..."
(Al Baqarah: 1-2)

Ya Allah, Ya Hadi, Ya Nuur,
Guide me to your light
Guide my heart, my thoughts, my mind...
Guide me in every single steps that I take
Please guide me Ya Allah..
Amiin...Ya Rabbal Aalamiin.

2 comments:

Halimatussaadiah said...

salam Rahimah,

sebenarnya tak tahu macamana nak sampaikan message pada Rahimah sebab akak tak ada nombor untuk dihubungi..Mungkin rahimah dah dengar berita ni..ingat tak Kak alang @ Jawa Megat Ngah sebilik dengan akak dan kak ami dulu...dia baru meninggal dunia disebabkan kanser..

mawar said...

salam kak atun
Kak Alang adalah jiran saya. masa pergi ziarah, jenazah telah selamat dikebumikan, saya cuma sempat berjumpa keluarganya sahaja, suami dan anak2 arwah masih di perkuburan masa tu.
Semuga ruhnya dirahmati Allah.
Kita pun akan menyusul nanti.