April 11
|
Today's
quotation:
When
you are offended or annoyed by others, do not allow your thoughts to dwell
on them
or on anything relating to them. For
example, don't think that they ought not
to have treated you so, being who they are, or whom they think themselves
to be,
or the like. All this is fuel
and kindling of wrath, anger, and hatred.
Lorenzo
Scupoli
|
Today's
Meditation:
It's kind of funny, kind of sad to see how our
thoughts can take perfectly benign-- or even joyful--
experiences and turn them into something
negative. Our minds often seem to have a life of
their own, taking us places that are not only unjustified
considering circumstances, but downright silly. When
someone doesn't show up for a meeting or a date, for
example, many of us spend much time coming up with
extremely negative reasons for what happened, and our
thoughts lead us to feel stressed, angry, and possibly
even unloved and depressed.
I've learned to tell myself to wait until I know more to
react. Perhaps that person didn't show up because
their car broke down, or their daughter needed to be taken
to an emergency room. These things may not be so,
but when I tell myself to wait, I don't engage in all
sorts of hypothetical thinking that makes me
miserable. I don't get more and more angry at
someone when I don't even know the cause of what happened.
An episode of a television show illustrated this very
clearly when a man cut off another man for a parking space
at a mall. The second man was extremely angry for a
long time until they met the other driver in a store and
started to tell him off, only to find out that the man's
dog had just died, and that he didn't even remember
parking. All of the time that the angry man spent
with his negative thoughts had been completely useless,
and had prevented him from spending some very positive
moments with his son.
We can't let our thoughts get away from us and take over
our lives. It's important that we do our best to
keep our thoughts balanced and not let them take us down
paths that we don't wish to travel. We can always
redirect them by thinking of other things, by distracting
ourselves from the negative thoughts until we learn more
about situations, so that we can let go of the hurt and
the anger and move on with our lives in positive ways.
|
Questions to
consider:
How often do your thoughts seem to take over, without any
effort from you?
How can we keep our thoughts positive, even in the midst
of negative things?
Why do so many people seem to be slaves to their thoughts,
rather than masters of them? |
For further
thought:
The
sea reflects the sun perfectly if the water is still. But if
it is agitated
by the wind the light fragments into a million
mirrored suns. It is like this
with the mind. If the
mind is disturbed by thoughts, the Light of Oneness
is fragmented
and we perceive only the manyness of things. When thoughts
are still, however, the One Light is perfectly reflected in the
mind.
Issa Das
|
more
thoughts on thoughts
|
|
|
|
|
quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
our
current e-zine
-
the
people behind the words
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three - Year Four
Sign up
for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign
up for your free daily meditation
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
|
tm |
|
All contents © Living Life
Fully, all rights reserved. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
We
have some
inspiring and motivational books that may interest you. Our main way of supporting this site is
through the sale of books, either physical copies
or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the
online reader). All of the money that we earn
through them comes back to the site
in one way or another. Just click on the picture
to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and
non-fiction! |
|
|
|