Blog-a-thon Day 23... whoo, hoo!

Random thoughts on thoughts....

This came into my email box a few days ago. I subscribe to Andrea Beauileu's daily Ah-Ha's.

"What ideas do you carry about yourself, or someone else, that are truly not true? Have you ever really questioned what your mind says?

P.S. So many of our thoughts have no basis in reality. None whatsoever. Be skeptical of your thoughts, and you just might find your authentic voice -- moi!!" For more about "your authentic voice", check out http://www.yourauthenticvoice.com/.

This led me to some thoughts about thoughts.

Thoughts are constant and yes, often extremely inaccurate. I mean, where do we get some of this junk our mind makes up all day? A lot of it has no basis in reality yet we often give tremendous power to our thoughts. We actually believe them and then maybe even act on them and then sometimes wonder how we manage to mess things up. Hmmm....

I've decided it is very important to be skeptical of our thoughts and mindful before we act on them.  Personally, I have gotten myself into trouble in the past by acting too quickly on some of my thoughts.

Here's what Sally Kempton, writer for Yoga Journal says about thoughts. (http://www.yogajournal.com/practice/1106)

"Everything that appears in your mind is made of consciousness, or, if you like, mind energy. Your thoughts and feelings--the difficult, negative, passionate ones as well as the peaceful and clever ones--are all made of the same subtle, invisible, highly dynamic "stuff." Mind energy is so evanescent that it can dissolve in a moment, yet so powerful that it can create an inner reality that runs you for a lifetime.

The fact is that most of us never pay attention to the substance of our thoughts. We are much too caught up in their content, which we implicitly believe is important and real. In fact, thought content is simply the passing form that thought energy happens to be taking at any given moment. There's an energetic dance going on inside everyone's mind, but rather than seeing the dance itself, we get caught up in its story line."

I guess it's the mind's job to have thoughts. That's what it does. However, we can make it our job to spend some time (yoga class, meditation, LIFE) just being an observer. We can watch the thoughts without becoming actively engaged with them. I practice this regularly and yes, it is often very challenging. However, just the act of trying even for a couple of minutes, can be powerful.

Today in yoga class I got some help with this.  We practiced using the mantra "let it be". As we did our breathing we repeated "let it be". When we noticed we were getting caught up in our thoughts again during class, "let it be" helped settle the mind back down.

"Not doing a very good job in this yoga pose. Let it be. Grocery list? Let it be. Hope I get to my next appointment on time. Let it be. Nervous about an important meeting I have later in the day. Let it be." You get the idea.

"Let it be."  Short, simple and to the point.  I kinda like that mantra. How about you?

PS Yesterday's post had an issue with the link. Some of you may have received it in your email box before it was corrected. Scroll down and you will find it is now working and well worth the view.