Baby steps... Baby steps...

Focusing on a damn thing at time can be one of the most difficult things in the whole wide world. It makes me wish that I could be a robot with a remote control to turn off all sensory inputs and just focus on one single thing while I am at it, becoming only aware of it, knowing only it, up to the point you're done. I believe I am not a robot but I also believe there's a way of achieving something like that. Developing interests in a thing sometimes doesn't automatically guarantee that you don't think about other things when you're engaged in it, no matter how strong the interest might be. These thoughts that pop up when you're engaged in something that requires your undivided attention are mostly either irrelevant to the thing, or worse, irrelevant to your life as a whole. Achieving a state of oneness is something I desire so much in my life. I have read countless of books about living in the moment, not paying attention to thoughts and stuff like that but I have come to realise that as humans, we live more in our heads than we do with others. Our thoughts, feelings, emotions and perceptions are our main home. We're always with them. There's a continuous flux of electrical impulses carried from our five senses to our brain and we cannot just ignore those impulses even when we're completely immersed in stuff that need our full attention. Have you ever wondered how your brain manage to think up stuff on its own without you making any mental effort? It's more like a reflex action and who controls reflexes?

I am worried about this because as a person who's easily distracted, sometimes these thoughts win over me. I could be engrossed in reading some really important material this minute and the next minute, I find myself wondering about something that's totally unrelated to what I am doing. I can be a very focused person when I want to, but then focus requires effort, and sometimes being aware of the effort you're putting into focusing makes what you're doing less enjoyable for you. Focusing is more like splitting your energy into two: half for focusing on what you're doing and half for actually doing what it is you want to do. This is to say that you're aware of the fact that you're focusing making your awareness incomplete to the thing you're actually doing. Another thing about focusing is that if in the process of focusing on what you're doing, a thought impulse happen to surface, you'd try to shut it down or suppress it. That means you're aware of the thought and aren't really "focusing" in the realest sense of the word. I wonder how it would feel you immerse your whole awareness on what you're doing. It must makes even what seems unenjoyable enjoyable!

I believe that whoever seeks shall find, and as a seeker, I have made progress on this and also a lot of regressions. I remember a time when I read a book titled "the untethered soul". This book focuses mainly on the belief that your thoughts, emotions and perceptions influenced by thoughts and emotions are a separate entity from you, and the better you get at treating them as separate entities, the more your awareness increases. It stressed that you're beyond your thoughts and emotions, that you are something beyond all that. It sounded good to the ear and felt good to my soul so I decided to try it out. I succeeded in doing so for a whole week and the experience was more than I expected :peace, tranquillity, groundedness, connection with the universe, I even felt lighter! I even forgot to focus because I became focus itself! A Layla who could only read and assimilate 7 pages of a book could now down up to 15 pages and understand the hell out of them! I felt like a god! This didn't only help me in my academics but also in my relationships, with others, myself, and my surroundings.

Then after one week due to a tiny mistake I am not even sure of, I relapsed. Back to square one. I felt devastated, worthless, stupid. I decided not to dwell on my failure try it again. I have had countless failures apart from that one but I never dwell on any of them.

I recently deviced a method that might help me with this. I call it the baby step. Baby step is just like a controller and reminder at the same time. I find myself doing something and try to maintain focus on that thing, when it's time to move to the next, I say "baby steps" in my mind and then I move to the next task without any spacing. This way the focus on the first task is transferred into the second task and that from the second task into the third task, so it goes. It's just like a baby learning how to walk, one foot, then another, then another, then another until he gets the hang of it and walks freely. When a baby walks, it pays full attention, not to its surroundings, but on his foot because he's careful not to fall. That's how it works, you have to be careful not to fall but even when you do, you get back up and laugh it off just like a baby. A bruise means nothing to a baby who's trying to walk or crawl. It is fully concerned about learning how to do so so that he might walk freely and effortlessly someday.

I not only hope to walk effortlessly, I hope to run and maybe..... fly with the angels!

Thanks for reading.

To all my readers, commenters, up voters, and sponsors I say a big thank you to to you all.

Yours Layly,

❤❤😁😁