Tonight, I had dinner with a few friends of mine. I was surprised at the result of playing this Game during the meal. Surprised, because I am slowly realizing the peace and satisfaction that comes from experiencing the fruits of the initially hard labour of building up this habit of keeping God on my mind throughout the day through everything I do.
As a result of researching methods on how to train myself to pick up this habit, I've been reading about different accounts of people who have mastered this art of practicing God's presence, and reading their thoughts/experiences on it. One of these masters suggested trying to keep God on the "fringes" of our consciousness while attending to very mind-consuming tasks, another talked about trying to keep a thought of God's presence "just below our consciousness". Well, I've been experimenting with this method during times of arduous tasks, and although it seemed a little weird at first, it is starting to become natural.
As well, the frequency of keeping God on my mind has also improved overall. A big reason of this is that my mind (or spirit?) has started to make semi-automatic habits of returning to God. Much like after one learns the (originally weird) grammar structures of a new language and is habitualized to them, they start to become semi-automatic when one speaks. Something analogous has happened to the "grammar of my mind".
What did this result in tonight's dinner? For the first 20 minutes or so (I didn't keep perfect track of how long it lasted), I had success in keeping God in my mind almost every minute while talking to my 3 friends! I remembered to pray for them while talking to them, as well as remember God being present during the conversation! It was awesome! The coolest part of it all, was that these 2 things were semi-automatic during the whole time! The first being keeping God on the "fringes" of my consciousness or just "below" it. The second being my mind exercising it's semi-automatic habit of returning to God by itself without "me telling it to do it". It was an awesome experience. I think I even ventured into the territory of "multitasking" my attention to God and to my friends at the same time! It was awesome! I remember trying to "multitask" doing this about a year and a half ago when I first started. It was like trying to speak fluent Russian in a week. I also thought that multitasking attending to God and others was cognitively impossible. Now, it is starting to become a reality through increased understanding, experimentation, and habituation!
I am getting a taste of 1 John 5:3. God's commands really aren't burdensome. That is, after through grace, discipline, and perseverance, we master them. They are in the beginning, but for the person full of faith, unwavering perseverance, and sacrifice, after a while one realizes that these commands are like grammar rules of a language. They are cumbersome to learn in the beginning, but after a while, becoming more fluent in that language, one realizes the value of those grammar structures and how they actually help one communication, rather than burdening the speakers and listeners of that language. After a while, it would seem strange not to obey the commands, or "rules" of the language, and it would actually take effort NOT to obey them. Just ask any native speaker to make a grammar error in their own language. It actually takes effort for him to consciously come up with a sentence with grammar errors.
It's almost been a year and a half since I started this game. Praise God for His commandments to practice His presence!
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