I even gotten to a stage where i thought about a line in the movie The Last Samurai. Tom Cruise is an American soldier captured by the Samurai warriors and they happen to develop a relationship which leads to them teaching him the way of the Samurai. In a duel as he learns this way of fighting with swords he get's defeated and one of the Japanese proteges says to him, "to many minds". Its a funny line but what he's implying is that he has a lot in his mind and until he can master that fact he won't master his fighting skills. In a nut shell he was telling him to zone his mind to a place where he can only think and concentrate on what he's doing and nothing else.
Quieting the mind is not an easy thing to do because the mind is a factory reason; rational; sense and logic. We all know that we need those things because those are the things that keep us safe. It would be utterly stupid to act without reason or any of the things that show that you've taken time to think before you act. Here's the thing, the mind's duty is really to caution us not to take unmeasured risks or do anything you might regret at the end of the day. But sometimes it can stand in the way of great things because without risk there is little reward. Just think about the moment where Madiba was to make the most important speech of his life binding his fellow comrades in it as well.
Can you imagine the kind of noise & turbulence that engulfed his mind at the time, worse even the line where he says "if needs be this is an ideal for which am prepared to die". Those words don't come without the presence of great adversity in oneself. It's like he didn't understand what he was saying and someone needed to wake him up & tell him that you are asking for a death sentence here. This speech was not made in the absence of the mind i believe, but in the quietness of the mind. Quieting the mind is about identifying that life or history defining moment and plunge yourself into it. That moment is where all of us have been to or are faced with everyday of our lives. This is so huge such that it determines whether or not you'll be wearing the crown or you'll be watching someone else wearing it.
Another example in the bible is David. This boy at the time must have been outside his mind. What was he thinking? Going against Goliath in the presence of great men of war who saw this giant & were paled with fear at the site of him. David with no armor, no sword and no war experience decides that this is his moment. With just one shot from his sling, he defeats him and that moment would define his life forever. Nothing makes sense from this story, logic cannot define it, reason will fall short & intellect will always fail but the truth of the story is that David's life was different from that moment. People stopped seeing a shepherd boy but they saw a king.
I have some turbulence of my own on a daily basis and the truth is that we all have our own. It's all about safety you see, we want to be safe. We don't want to go against the tide. A quote I like from the Julius Caesar book by William Shakespeare goes like this "there is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows & misery. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures." Ladies & gentlemen, we all understand these moments that Brutus is talking about. Moments where when you look back in hind sight; you know that you allowed the noise in your mind to steal from you the crown. Am posing a challenge to all of us. For once move out of the safety zone and live cause you might just change your life forever.
Work-shopped by Lungelo Madubela
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