It is a warm spring day and you are sitting beside a very calm and still lake, you pick up a small stone that is lying beside you and throw it into the lake…Imagine that the world is like this lake and that you are like this small stone landing in the world and creating ripples.
What ripples are you making?
The first set of ripples we create are down to our thoughts. The next wave are created by our decisions and the third set by the roles we take on and how we play them.
Our thoughts
Right now are you creating a new ripple or reacting to one someone has created or to one that you made earlier? Would you say that what you are thinking right now is 100% your own original thinking, not influenced by your past, beliefs, conditioning, culture or education? Is what you are thinking right now a reaction to something that happened or is happening?
There are four varieties of thoughts: positive, negative, practical and wasteful (worry etc.) In fact any thought that I have more than once can be classified as wasteful! We do like to repeat a ripple! What qualities would a thought from the centre of you bring with it?
The intellect (our discerning and decision-making capability):
This acts like a reign on our thoughts and allows us to put things into perspective (discern). It is also our ability to control and direct our thoughts and so our actions.
We control our thoughts in one of two ways:
– we brake (suppress or repress) or accelerate (anger or react) = ping-pong ball living.
– we steer, i.e. we choose the way we want to think and our direction = I know who I am and then I act.
Sanskars (our personality traits, habits, characteristics, automatic ways of reacting/thinking):
Here we have repeated a ‘ripple’ so many times that it becomes an automatic reaction.
This may be:
-to perform a role, such as, a banker, a mother or a fireman.
– how we are, such as, aggressive, timid or joking.
These are so embedded that we don’t even ‘see’ them.
We are often rewarded in life for a strong sanskar we have created – it can save our life and the lives of others, e.g. the doctor – the problem arises when we identify ourselves with that sanskar and lose site of the actor playing the part. If we are not careful it can be as if we become a collection of sanskars, with no sense of who we are and feeling empty and unfulfilled.
-We think: there must be more to life than this.
-We try to fill this emptiness with more and more external attainments and doing. However this isn’t the answer, the only way is to re-find your centre once again. To journey back within.
Stand still and let the world settle and once again be in charge of you.
