There is only one problem that affects everyone. And that is, you think. It's your thoughts that get you into trouble. You have an opinion on almost everything. If you would only learn to control your thoughts you would become absolutely free. Even now, while I'm talking to you, there are many thinking of something else. Your mind appears to have complete control over you. Now if your mind were real you would have a battle on your hands. But, since your mind doesn't even exist, you merely have to see the mind for what it really is, the self. There is no mind. There are no thoughts. There is only the self. All the scriptures of the world have tried to explain this. Be still and know that I am God. Focus your mind on God, and all will go well with you. They're saying the same thing.
Do not allow your mind to persuade you with all the different thoughts that come into your head. Your mind is not your friend. It appears that it wants to survive, so it's going to do everything in the book to cause it to survive. It will tell you all kinds of stories. It will bring up everything from the past. It will bring out doubts, apprehensions, suspicions, anger, greed. It will make you believe that you're right to act the way you do, and to feel the way you do. Great rishis, sages, since time immemorial have realized that the only problem you have to deal with is your mind. If you can only stop your mind from thinking, self-realization will come of itself.
How do you do that? Through self-inquiry, no matter what thoughts come to you. Makes no difference what they are. We're not talking about negative versus positive thoughts. We're talking about all thoughts, no matter how true they may appear. Even if your eyes show you, even if your brother is over to your house and while you're sleeping he takes $50 out of your pocket, your eyes are showing you something is wrong. It doesn't mean that you let him go away with the $50. You confront him, but you do not react. You simply take back your $50 and you forget it. It's finished. It doesn't even mean that you have to continue inviting your brother to your house. Yet nothing is done with malice. The secret is to forget and forgive as fast as you can. Remember your brother is going through his own karma, and this is what he was supposed to do, so how can you hate him? You have a vocabulary of different names. You are ready to call him thief, crook, no good and so on. All this has to be forgotten. Remember again, you do not become a doormat for him to step on. You merely take the right action that you will do, and you forget it. And that's the end of it.
Your body knows what to do by itself. It's your mind that makes up all these things, that holds grudges, that holds malice, day after day, week after week, that's hurt by words. Give it all up.
- ROBERT ADAMS
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