“Watch your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your character. So watch your thoughts. “- Buddha
Marc that was the message at church today, verbatim. Look unto me in every thought; doubt not. Fear not.
There is a physical law that two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time, (that’s why we have car accidents) but I am constantly being bombarded with unwholesome and unsavory, thoughts that do not elevate but degrades, it’s in the music, movies commercial advertisements, internet as naked women jump up with little or no intent of effort, a misplaced key stroke can start a snow ball of addiction.
There in the very air we breathe, and there is no avoiding them, so what can I do? First I have agreed not to dwell in unsavory neighborhoods, to linger too long as this gives more feed to the beast, as well as it makes them more difficult to dismiss, it is much easier to shut the door at the threshold as you would to a vacuum salesman bent on sucking out the hard won spirit of love and service, and secondly replace the tune in my head (turn your mind to someone you can help) and or replace the thought with a wholesome foundation and not with the distractions of Immediate gratification
I can’t think my way into right action, but I can act my way into right thinking.
By my very nature and experience I started repeating in my mind the 23rd psalm (it is the most known as it is spoken at every funeral both Jew and gentile) and it worked for me, but you can use the third Step prayer, the set aside prayer a favorite passage in the Big Book or from the Bigger Book, (scriptures) whatever works for you.
When first doing this it was quite the struggle and had to do it almost constantly (that gives you an idea of where mind seems to go when left to its own devices) and there came a day when my mind finally let go, and I could barely here an audible voice saying “that’s enough” and my mind let go, I realized that all this time it had been running the show and that I had been just along for the ride.
I now took the wheel, but I have discovered that it remains poised in the passenger seat always trying to regain its all too familiar control as soon as I let up on my vigorous course of action.
Consider the Boy Scout motto,” Be Prepared” find something you can latch on to before the storm starts to bear, a phrase, a jingle, an uplifting sound bite, and for the over achiever the Gettysburg address.
Thoughts are like birds, some take wings and soar, some are content with last season’s ready made nest, and most from the common perch crap on anything shiny.
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