Ownership of Thoughts

SWAMI SUKHABODHANANDA





Every one of us is preprogrammed, in accordance with the culture, family , society or religion we are born into and grow up with. Most of us are indifferent to the fact that we operate with little awareness. So, we end up living in a self-made prison.Once a philosopher asked a cobbler -himself a Sufi saint -to repair his shoe. The cobbler expressed his inability to do so as he was about to close his shop for the day . “Please, this is urgent,“ the philosopher pleaded. “You may please borrow my shoe for the other foot,“ said the cobbler. “But I don't wear another's shoes,“ said the philosopher. “If you can borrow someone's ideas, why not a shoe?“ asked the cobbler. Truly , our ideas are largely borrowed ones.Myths and disempowering words and thoughts have invaded our inner engineering.
Can we observe how we touch the outer world with our inner thoughts and attitudes? If our thoughts and attitudes are negative, a negative system gets created. Then the negative system takes control of our life and develops its own survival mechanism and we become its slaves.The art of wise living is to dismantle the negative system from our lives. We have to learn the art of inner separation: not allow negative thoughts and attitudes to eat into our lives.
Identifying with negative thoughts and emotions leads to chaos and conflict. Any thought or emotion that passes through us is not ours. The traffic on the pavement does not belong to us,... neither does the traffic of thoughts. We should learn to select and reject, only then we will not find ourselves in prison.