This world is not operating by sheer chance, it has been manifested by god and the circumstances are orchestrated for our spiritual growth and evolution. So today let us contemplate how we will attract a great destiny by working on purifying our thoughts.
We discussed the importance of our Mind in determining the quality of our Life. This mind is like a subtle machine fitted within us and one of its primary functions is to generate thoughts. Estimates vary between scientists regarding how many thoughts come to us in a day, some say it's 20,000 some say it is 60,000.
Each thought has its associated feeling or emotions with it. Suppose one person is sitting dejected with his head down you go up to him and say something that creates a thought and the man breaks into a smile. How did he experience happiness? A proper thought got created and its accompanying sentiment of happiness made him experience that joyous state.
Another lady is sitting happily go up to her and say something that creates a miserable thought. Her face gets fallen, she is unhappy. How did this experience of unhappiness come about? It all started with a thought and its accompanying feelings.
So happiness and misery are both the consequences of our thoughts. More importantly thoughts are the seeds and the actions we perform are the plants and trees that spring from them. Just like no tree can come about except from a seed, similarly every action we perform voluntarily involuntarily is preceded by a thought in our mind.
Good thoughts lead to good actions, bad thoughts lead to bad actions. It's a very simple cause and effect chain in the factory of our mind. We can either create the thoughts that will lift us up to sublime heights
or those weapons that will practically kill our soul and ruin us. The mind can also be likened to a garden and the thoughts are the seeds that fall in it.
In life we are called upon to be the gardeners of our mind. We must constantly tend to the thoughts that fall or that arise in our mind and diligently throw away useless unproductive and harmful thoughts while cultivating the beneficial, profitable, helpful and sublime ones.
When we take up this task of tending to the garden of our mind, we will realize the link between our thoughts and the circumstances that come in our life. This world is not operating by sheer chance it has been manifested by God and the circumstances are orchestrated for our spiritual growth and evolution. That is why circumstances come to us as teachers that enable us to learn, grow and evolve.
Let us say one person has this defect of impatience, anger, intolerance .Now he may blame the neighbor my neighbor always makes me angry. He changes the neighborhood, again he finds a neighbor who incites anger within him.
He keeps on changing the circumstances but the experience repeats itself and when he decides, let me change my insight and is able to manage the anger issue. Now he finds that he's got good neighbors around. The circumstances have changed, they had come as a teacher and when they were no longer required they fell away to give rise to new circumstances to teach us new lessons and grow in this manner.
So when people say that we are victims of circumstances, they are making a mistake. We attract those circumstances to us by the thoughts that we harbor. People are focused on fighting with their situations they keep on grappling to make the outside more comfortable, but this is like putting the cart before the horse.
Instead if they had grappled with their inner thoughts, if they had made it a priority to enhance the quality of their thoughts they would have discovered that the external circumstances are taking care of themselves.
Consider this one boy who is born in the slums of Dharavi, poor child living in a shanty, going to the slum school but this boy starts cultivating noble and sublime thoughts - I wish! I could do something purposeful in my life. I wish! I could help others. These sublime thoughts they have their consequences and slowly he lands up with a scholarship in high school.
Again because of noble thoughts he is full of inspiration and purpose and is able to get an even better scholarship in college. There as he takes internship in a company he attracts the attention of a big industrialist and if you see him 20 years later, he is a major captain of the industry giving employment to 10 000 people.
Those who don't understand the connection between the cause and effect may say you know lady luck shone upon him. He just happened to get lucky but the laws of the universe they don't emphasize luck
he created his destiny by working upon the inner workshop of his mind.
Two brahmacharis celebrate students they had gone to town from their ashram. The town was across a river in the evening. When they were returning as they reached the riverside, which was a desolate spot
they found there a beautiful young girl. She pleaded before these students sir's I need to go across my home is there and there is no boat around. I will get stranded here in the dark can you please carry me across.
One of the students was Indignant, how dare she suggest that we brahmacharis carry this young beautiful girl. He waded into the water. Now the other brahmachari had a soft heart and he said you know, as a part of our rules we are not supposed to touch girls but nevertheless this girl is stranded here and it is my human duty to help.
So he said please sit down on my shoulder I will take you across. The girl sat on his shoulders and he was carrying her over the stream. The first student looked behind and was aliased, my classmate what in the world is he doing? The second student carried the lady across put her down. She thanked him profusely and was off on her way.
The two students again together continued to the ashram but the first one was in a terrible mood. They had walked for two kilometers and finally he could not control, he said this is terrible. The second student said what is terrible I am just walking left right, left right with you. No no not what you are doing now, what you did two kilometers ago.
What did I do? You carried the girl on your shoulders. The second student said - you know, I carried her on my shoulders but I put her down and you're still carrying her in your mind. You still have the girl in your mind.
So this mind of us, we put it into unproductive states of resentment, anxiety, fear, hatred. Why? our inability to control the thoughts that we create. So today let us contemplate on the power and importance of thoughts. How good health requires management of our thoughts. How the thoughts are important to our facial appearance and how thoughts are so connected with our experience of happiness and distress.
Most importantly how we will attract a great destiny by working on purifying our thoughts and as we go through this mind management challenge, every day we shall be discussing some important tool for improving the quality of our thoughts and the machine that creates it, which is the mind.
The power of Positive Thoughts - Overcome Negative Thoughts
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