When I sat onto the driver’s seat, I noticed that there were still specks of dust around the interior of the car despite having promised that the car would been thoroughly cleaned for my collection. I wasn’t displeased, but I wasn’t pleased either; but it did keep me wondering, why is it that we could not do anything perfectly for anybody? What is enough for me may not be enough for another; likewise what is enough for another may not be enough for me.
So since whatever I do may never be good enough for another, and vice versa; why do I go on pleasing others, or strive to live up to others’ expectations – it is as if we don’t have a mind of our own or more true, not sure of what to do with our minds that we so easily accept others’ ideas without pondering the beneficial straits that follow if we were to allow such programming in our minds.
Since all of our experiences are in the mind, of the mind; wouldn’t it be helpful to at least evaluate what ideas are churning at the back of the mind? If we were to go through our lives mindlessly, that is, not ever knowing what is coming through us, to us, from us, of us or whatever; that is how our life is – dead with much quality of mindlessness; or in other words, ignorance.
One of the functions of the mind is that it perceives and it does that with ideas. A Course in Miracles says that a miracle is a shift in perception. If we each could perceive anything from a beneficial point of view, from the space of love and truth for the well-being of others and ourselves – can you imagine what this community would be like?
It is important to take care of our minds, for when our minds are taken care of – our lives and experiences are taken care of. If we do not safe guard the mind and simply allow whatever that comes to our senses became ingrained ideas in the mind, we live our lives ignorantly, always blaming and complaining about how life is always attacking us in some ways or another; without ever questioning how it is so, and how we could be ‘released’.
My teacher once shared with me what his teacher shared with him, “The mind is not yours, but your responsibility.” Just as we would prefer to clean our own homes, our own cars to our own level of satisfaction, it is vital to always ‘clean’ up the mess in the mind, by undoing the multiple layers of ignorance that we had never bothered to question. And this process always starts with mindfulness, self awareness, accompanied with proper techniques of inquiry. Through the inward journey, can there be the possibility of going back to the root idea which projects itself in our experiences. With that possibility, comes the opportunity to choose again. Would you have yourself that prospect?
The followers said to J, “Tell us how our end will be.”
He said, “Have you discovered the beginning, then, so that you are seeking the end?
For where the beginning is, the end will be. Fortunate is the one who stands at the beginning;
That one will know the end and will not taste death.”
– Pursah’s Gospel of Thomas –
Welcoming you into the journey of self awareness, our ticket back Home.