Tag: thoughts

So, what are you?

Today, I share something I received yet again in the e-mail for yesterday.  I love the quote in it, and something similar lives always within me in my everyday life.  I say and have said for years, “We are what we eat, and we are what we think about all day long.”  And I ask myself, “So, what am I?  What are my thoughts?  What am I thinking about all day?”

I now ask you the same.  Who and what are you?  What do you eat, and what do you think about all day long?  What words do you think (even if you do not say them)?  And what would you like to think?

I do a regular cleansing, so to speak, of my own thought patterns and language.  I evaluate what words and thoughts I have been using and entertaining, but which do not suit the self that I want to be.  And I make a conscious, daily, minute-to-minute effort to think the thoughts and use the words that I want myself to think and to use.

And I always feel so – for lack of any other way of describing it – clean afterward.  It almost feels like bathing, slowly but surely.

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JANUARY 9

We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.

– SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

The ancestor of every destructive action, every destructive decision, is a negative thought. We do not have to be afraid of negative thoughts as long as we do not welcome them. They are in the air, and they may knock at anyone’s door; but if we do not embrace them, ask them in, and make them our own, they can have no power over us.

We can think of thoughts as hitchhikers. At the entrance to the freeway, we used to see a lot of hitchhikers carrying signs: “Vancouver,” “Mexico,” “L.A.” One said in simple desperation, “Anywhere!” Thoughts are a lot like those hitchhikers. We can pick them up or pass them by. Negative thoughts carry signs, but usually we see only one side, the side with all the promises. The back of the sign tells us their true destination: sickness and sorrow.

Nobody is obliged to pick up these passengers. If we do not stop and let them in, they cannot go anywhere, because they are not real until we support them. There is sympathy in the world: pick it up. There is antipathy in the world: don’t pick it up. Hatred destroys. Love heals.

 

The Thought for the Day is today’s entry from Eknath Easwaran’s Words to Live By.
You can view the Thought for the Day on our website

 

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Post-a-day 2018

the body

Do you ever feel betrayed by your own body?  Where you believe in something intensely, and then clarity suddenly sets in, bringing reality along with it, and you see easily and perfectly that things are not as they had seemed… perhaps this betrayal is the worst of all betrayal, because the body has no conscience nor malice, nor does it have an ability to love or to hate you… it just betrays you.

 

Post-a-day 2017

Bathroom thoughts

I have developed a new concept regarding bathroom sinks lately.  I have resisted the idea for the past few months, I guess, and rather regularly.  However, I think I have somewhat resisted the idea for the past several years, off and on.  And now, obviously, I am acknowledging the idea.  The idea is this: Why do we use the same sink for washing our hands after using the toilet as we do to brush our teeth?

This could seem harmless at first glance, so I explain.  We use the bathroom, and then wash our hands.  We do this to remove the ghastly germs that come from our own wastes.  In the process, we touch the knobs of the faucet.  As we wash our hands, some of the germs likely splash around on the sink basin, and possibly even onto the edges or countertop around the basin.  Fast-forward to another, say, twenty minutes later, when it is time to brush out teeth.  We touch the same knobs on the faucet.  We rub the bristles of the toothbrush with the fingers that grabbed the faucet knob.  We bang our toothbrush on the edge of the sink, possibly even set it there.  And we put our face quite close to the sink to rinse out our mouth.

Recall that this is the same sink that might or might not be splattered with poo germs.

 

Anyway, that is a thought I aim to remove from my brain whenever I am using the bathroom sink.  It sometimes goes away, but has recently taken what seems to be a semi-permanent residence over to the side in my mind, not quite bothering me, but watching carefully, as though for an opportunity to jump in and WHAM! get me.  Fun thoughts, huh?  😛

 

Post-a-day 2017