Beyond and within Routine
Chaos and order, cognition and spirituality must all be part of the mix
1. Must routine be an exhausting and dreary affair?
What is the point of having a routine? If we understand routine as the rote repetition of certain activities at certain times of day, then there is little value in it. If routine is all about discipline, duty - what you ‘ought’ to do (not what you want to do), then it is a very draining activity. But there is another way of thinking about routine. A way of thinking about routine that transcends mere duty and mechanic repetition. Instead, routine can be thought of in terms of chaos and order.
2. Confronting chaos with order
Routine is a process of sharpening our tools, putting on our armour, greasing our inner machinery. Without it we are unprepared and unfortunately incompetent. This is because the world is full of chaos. When managed well chaos takes us on a meaningful adventure. When chaos is not managed well, it overwhelms us, makes us feel trapped, victimised, and without control. Routine comes in as the antidote to destructive chaos. It provides us the means to confront the chaos of the world constructively.
3. The experience of chaos
What does chaos look like? How does one confront it? If we see the world as consisting of chaos and order, then chaos is all that which is not deeply understood, which is not integrated into a higher order, which is not related to wisely.
Although chaos can also be analysed on a social and supernatural level, here we will explore chaos on a personal, that is individual level. Psychologically, chaos manifests itself as any emotion that has become so strong that it has disrupted the inner balance. Wild rage, overwhelming anxiety, and paralysing fear are all examples of inner chaos. Whenever we are no longer informed by our emotions, but controlled by them, then chaos has taken the drivers seat, and some kind of road accident becomes very likely.
4. The training of the heart-mind
In our daily lives our most direct and frequent way of experiencing chaos is through overwhelming emotions (and their associated thoughts - in combination compromising the heart-mind). Let’s take a step further and ask: where do these super-charged emotions and thoughts come from? I suggest that how we automatically perceive things and react to them on emotional (and mental) levels is responsible. This being the case, the purpose of routine is to change how we perceive and relate to things.
Routine is not just there to provide external order - a schedule, a morning and evening routine, a more balanced diet. The deeper purpose of routine is to provide inner order, which remains even when the external activities comprising the ‘routine’ aren’t there. Good routine does this by changing how we perceive and relate to the world. The purpose of routine is to change our cognition (heart-mind).
As long as routine remains on the outside, we remain vulnerable to changing circumstances. The routine also becomes more likely to turn into a rote and empty set of activities. Routine that stays on the outside has a short shelf life, and as soon as it expires it takes up space (time) and makes the surrounding space (our whole day) less pleasant.
By this point it should become clear that when I speak of routine, I am referring to the renewing of one’s mind. Renewing one’s mind so that it becomes less likely to become controlled by strong emotions, and becomes less likely to fall into cyclical negative thinking (both examples of inner chaos). The renewed mind can have strong emotions and negative thoughts, but it is not controlled by them. It is able to engage with them without attachment. This is the highest level of order: ‘chaos’ isn’t removed, but the way it is perceived and related to - with compassionate, yet detached openness - brings goodness out of it.
5. The spiritual component
A routine that creates inner order is more than just a random set of activities performed with some consistency. A routine that creates inner order trains one’s heart-mind (cognition), and therefore invariably contains a spiritual component. Meditation, deep prayer, explorative journalling, mindful yet intuitive reading are all example activities. Many spiritual disciplines generally fit the bill. The more we come to practice these activities, the deeper they take us, the more they change, and the more they enable us to wrestle with chaos. In other words with time the content of the routine and the reason we still do it changes entirely just as our relationship with chaos changes entirely.