“You may control a mad elephant; You may shut the mouth of the bear and the tiger; Ride the lion and play with the cobra; By alchemy you may earn your livelihood; You may wander through the universe incognito; Make vassals of the gods; be ever youthful; You may walk on water and live in fire: But control of the mind is better and more difficult.” Thayumanavar

If controlling your thoughts is the one success that brings all other success, then why keep trying to find success in any other way? Learn how to properly focus and concentrate your mind to attract what you imagine is best and push aside all the barriers to having the life you have always imagined.

Maybe it’s Time to Wake Up!

I’m sure we can all agree that no intelligent, conscious man or woman would ever intentionally hurt him- or herself. No one would choose to ache. Yet the fact remains that all of us do hurt ourselves every day with bursts of anger or fits of depression or anxiety. Even at the simplest level, there can be no doubt: fear and worry take an immeasurable toll on our health and well-being. So, then, knowing intelligent people would never intentionally hurt themselves, but also admitting that we do just that one way or another, almost every day, how do we reconcile this contradiction? There is only one possible conclusion that we can draw from these facts, as startling as it may seem at first glimpse.

We must have been unconscious while thinking that we were awake! In other words, during those times of self-betrayal when we are hurting others or ourselves with negative inner states — even though our eyes were open and all kinds of sensations were coursing through us — we must have been asleep to what we were doing. We could not act against ourselves otherwise. Somehow we have become separated from the real intelligence within us that knows better than to punish itself. There is never, I repeat, never any intelligent reason to feel bad. If you will only let these truthful ideas prove this astonishing fact to you, one day this new understanding will go before you and defeat all that has been defeating you.

Now comes an important moment in our self-questioning. This is what we have been working toward. We are about to win the prize that always follows when we persist with our inner lessons. If real intelligence is incapable of hurting itself, then how can we call any thinking that leads to a stressful state intelligent? Obviously we can no longer continue to call such thinking intelligent unless we want to go on sinking from this present level of thinking.

Let’s review briefly. Intelligence does not cause itself to suffer. Yet, as proven, we suffer. This can only mean that a counterfeit intelligence has been passed off on us and its thinking accepted as our very own. There is only one way that such a sinister switch could take place within us and go undetected. During those all-too-familiar worry-packed moments, we are asleep to ourselves. In this strange psychic slumber we only dream we are awake, so can you see the solution to this sorry state? Since unawareness of ourselves is the only problem, then awareness is the only answer. A sting operation can only work as long as the victim believes that one of the players who is secretly in on the sting is trying to help him.

Looking For the Good in Others – a short story

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After 2 years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream “I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.”

The old woman smiled, “Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side? That’s because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.”

“For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.”

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it’s the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding.

You’ve just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.

One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. Which life are you living?