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How to attain the right mental tone?

 

Stoicism's first principle goes like this :


Stimulus => Judgment/Opinion=> Reaction

In yoga philosophy, they call the judgment/opinion as Vrtti - the chatter-it is the perturbations of manas (mind), buddhi (intellect, ahamkara (ego), and Chitta (shuttle that links mind to memory);
it is the Vrtti (Chatter) that leads to the mental tone;

Vrtti is of 5 types:
  1. Right Knowledge of Reality
  2. False knowledge of Reality
  3. Imagination (No reality at all )
  4. Memory (Impressions of indriyas -senses on Manas)
  5. Sleep

In this post, I am going to focus on Vrtti called Sleep

Sleep throws me into a disturbance; Why?  While the body gets to rest, my mental tone is disturbed;
So the first thing I need to do in the morning is to Tone it up! through Practice 
Like body needs to be done through physical exercise, I need to tone my mind through the right notes
by Reading inspirational books

Books Like - Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - Letters from a Stoic by Seneca - golden sayings of epictetus are my morning tonic to set my mental framework right

And so when I do that reading and taking notes day in my notebook day after day, I am able to sync out - the false knowledge - Imagination

By this way, of mental toning, I shall reduce the friction in the 'system,' 'environment' and stay engaged