Control the Mind, Control the World, At Least My Own World

This could have just have easily been called Save the Mind, Save the World, but I thought it best to deviate from what has been lately one of those overused slogans or catch phrases stemming from the popular television series, Hero’s.  In actuality it’s more like saving our sanity or in the spiritual realm, saving our soul, when we save our mind or rather more realistically learn how to control our mind or what stems from our mind – our thoughts.  Our thoughts can be both our heaven and our hell – as Christ said, “as a man thinketh.”

Five hundred years before Christ, Buddha was teaching control of the mind to achieve detachment and enlightenment.  Even much earlier than Buddha, Krishna was handing down the same wisdom to Arjuna.

Our mind can be our biggest enslaver or our road to freedom.  The mind is a tool, and learning the proper use of any tool makes all the difference in the world.  The mind is that which builds our physical world or at a higher vibration detaches us from the illusion of the physical world.  In the majority of instances we are being controlled by our thoughts rather than being in charge of them.  Thoughts taking charge of us create all kinds of misery, sorrows, and hardships.  The thought patterns of most individuals would resemble pure chaos.  Our menagerie of thoughts if translated onto a movie screen could be seen as for every one moment of green fields and pure water, there would be ninety-nine moments of looting, brutal attacks and walking through a haunted house cowering in fear.   As our mind spins out of control from thoughts of the mundane, or the absurd, and mostly the dangerous, our ability to function seems haphazard at best.  To compound matters these wanderings of the mind like everything else in our materialistic world are based on quantity rather than quality.

Our bodies need rest.  Our minds also need rest, a longer gap between the thoughts.  The most profound solutions to our problems come not from the thoughts, but from the gap between the thoughts.  “Be still and know that I am God.” Psalms 46:10.  The stillness results in inspiration, which can be defined as divine influence, the true problem solver.  Whereas, thinking creates more thinking, as a dog chasing its tail, non-thinking provides the peace from whence solutions come.

“They themselves are makers of themselves” by virtue of the thoughts which they choose and encourage; that mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance, and that, as they may have hitherto woven in ignorance and pain they may now weave in enlightenment and happiness.

James Allen

Ilfracombe, England

As long as you do not subdue the mind, you cannot get rid of your desires, you cannot control your restless mind. Hence, knowledge of Truth, subjection of mind and abandonment of desires are the joint causes of spiritual bliss.

Yoga Vasishta, Sage Vasishta’s precepts to Sri Rama

I’m thankful for these great teachers and endeavor to do better in my though control issues.