You are in the prison of your mind ,but you have the keys to get out.
Initially you use your intellect to help you find the golden key. However, your mind and your thoughts can only take you so far. Thought is incapable of recognizing reality, because, by its very nature, thought is not real.
You can ask yourself for a thousand years what life is all about, but what you are asking, the mind is incapable of answering.
It is like sticking a credit card into a washing machine and expecting to get money out. It won't happen.
Your thoughts will give you elusive glimpses, snatches of a refrain you seem to vaguely remember, but that is all.
The true mind, the Godhead, Goddess, Buddha, Christ, Krishna , call it what you will, knows the answer.
The true mind is the real you.
When your thinking is totally exhausted and you surrender, give up and stop playing intellectual games, the truth appears. You have to go beyond the intellect to escape.
Zen realizes this and that is why one branch of it employs an exercise that asks your mind a question that it is impossible for the intellect to answer. It is called a Koan. Here are some examples:
You must beat the drum, but there is no drum to beat, so how do you beat it?
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Everything is reduced to the one-what is the one reduced to?
What is your original face-before you were born?
The intellect eventually exhausts itself in trying to find the answer, until it comes to a brick wall. This brick wall has to be broken through to enter a thoughtless realm where the truth abides.
Some say that to try this exercise by itself is dangerous if you don't have a teacher.
I don't think it can harm you, if you do ask yourself impossible questions for short periods of time The proper way is to concentrate on the Koan all the time and never think of anything else, but as stated above, it is sensible to have a teacher if you want to do this. If though, you try the koan exercise for short periods, I think it stimulates the mind and prepares it for a breakthrough.
That is why the reading of Sacred texts is good. Such books make bells ring in your head,and point you the way to the end of thought.
The fact to remember is that you are living in illusion, and living in this illusion, although you might well experience pleasure, it is impossible for you to be at peace all the time in this state.Your natural state is to be at peace and have joy in your life.
Why should you continue living out a lie?
While living in this illusion though, you can do many things to make the illusion a lot better, and at the same time get you closer to reality.
Be careful what you let enter your mind, but be more careful of how you react to any event or experience you have.
The perfect way is to have no reaction at all. If someone swears at you, you are unmoved; the same if someone praises you, you are unmoved.
Every time you react to what is happening by feeling in a certain way, or thinking certain thoughts you are creating a whole new situation which is like having another rope tied round you.
As stated earlier thoughts plant seeds.
Look at these quotes on thought;
"What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of mind" The Buddha.
"A man is but a product of his thoughts, what he thinks he becomes". Gandhi
"There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so". Shakespeare.
"Every person creates his own World according to that which he fears and that which he loves". Jesus.Gospel of St. Thomas chapter one, verse eleven.
"A man is what he thinks all day long".Emerson.
"Make not your thoughts your prison".Shakespeare.
I think you will agree that the above people who said those quotes all had an incredible transforming effect on Mankind. They knew what they were talking about. What they said were truthful sayings.
Think about it for a moment. If our thoughts make our life, doesn't it seem the right course of action is to make sure we think right thoughts all the time?
Banish negative thinking and change negativity into positive thinking. I know it's not easy in the World as it is today, as we are surrounded by pessimism, almost drowning in it. Watching the news is enough to send you flying down a flight of steps to misery, even if you felt good before you turned the news on.
The whole World is going through a massive change- a change for the better. We just have to get through the painful changeover period we are now in.
Maybe the ego was needed up to now, but now it is hindering our progress, and we have to leave the self behind to grow up to become what our destiny is.
"Folks,it's time to evolve. That's why we're troubled. You know why our institutions are failing us, the Church, the State, everything failing. It's because they are no longer relevant". The late, great Bill Hicks
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