Do you believe everything you think?

When I first saw the book I thought the tittle kind of gave everything away but after reading a few pages it was not quite what I thought the book was all about. The idea I had was that we all have some weired thoughts that are derived for some questionable inclinations and motives so it is essential that we examine these thoughts before actually taking them for truth or something that can guide us. The book on the other hand starts by making a bold claim that it will change my life(????. Let us see how it went )

1. Thoughts and Thinking

Though it is quite obvious that one word is a noun and the other is a verb, just that reminder is enough to show that thoughts are spontaneous while thinking is a doing word hence it requires resources for it to take place. Though we can control our trains of thought it is quite difficult to take hold of that because they just pop into our minds and we then take time to think about those thoughts.

According to the author thinking is the source of all suffering especially psychological suffering( here we assume that you are not a life or death situation ). This is because when we start thinking that is when we realise how unrealistic our dreams are, how futile our reasoning can be and all the inadequacies we have which ends up robbing us of peace, love and joy.

When you ask people what they were thinking in the happiest moment of their lives you discover that a large proportion actually thought about nothing in particular or were simply in the moment in harmony with whatever had managed to make them so happy. Same goes with what we call “flow” which is simply a feeling of being one with the activity at hand. It is kind of the goal of Hieros Gamos(Read THE DA VINCI CODE).

In a fundamental sense thoughts are divine which come from a universal consciousness( Is it that hard to just say God? Will it hurt that much?) while thinking is the work of men and they mostly contrast one another.

So the key to love peace and joy(happiness ?)is finding a way to minimize this state of constant thinking or at least make it’s duration as short as possible.

2.Goals and Creation

They are basically two sources of dreams inspiration and desperation and it is quite obvious which dreams are better. Dreams born out of desperation are always a means to and end and they usually accompany these feelings of trying to prove something to yourself, your pears, your family or the world and that is why sometimes people end up selling their souls in the process as they can be willing to do anything for that dream in order to satisfy these inner needs that sometimes they are nor even aware of( For further reading: THE MOUNTAIN IS YOU). On the other hand dreams drawn from inspiration are just from of desire to share and create and though a lot of challenges are equally met but the adaptation is better and satisfaction levels are high.

3.Unconditional Love

The idea is love is supposed to be unconditional the author’s girlfriend for example says he just loves him and for sometime he found it troubling that she had no reasons but later on came to the realisation that it is supposed this way and himself now has tried to detach from the reasons he had earlier reason being that if the situation changes( any change in the things that make him love the girlfriend) he could no longer be in love and it is not how it is supposed to be. ( Further reading: The Metamorphosis......after we can discuss about unconditional love)

4.Then what?

Like all knowledge it does not work unless you apply it in your day to day life and incorporate these ideas in your principles. In this case you’ll mostly live by your intuition and your instincts as this is a self sufficiency model with proclamations like "what you need to know is already inside you"( To what extent that goes I really don’t know). So you let the thoughts pop up in your mind and you minimise thinking about them as much as possible and off you go ! Living a life of love Peace and Joy.

MY thoughts and Critique

The idea of separating thoughts from thinking is very insightful and I found that sometimes I do confuse the two but if you want to remain upright I think thinking does have a lot to contribute because the mind can spit out all kinds of thoughts and it is up to you to separate the wheat from the chaff. Sometimes an idea comes to your mind but it has to be refined if it is to come into existence but as the author says more times than often during the process we tend to eliminate bright ideas at times. I think if we can fine-tune our reasoning methods we will get more efficient but demonising thinking is not the way unless the goal is happiness out of desperation.

On goals I agree mostly with the author , goals set out of desperation can destroy peoples lives as sometimes they never reach them. Sometimes it is alright to take a detour or stay at a station for sometime the essential thing is not to forget where you want to go or get to comfortable living in a tent.

Unconditional love is divine. But is there unconditional love even in the universe? what of agape love ? It too has nature that defines it which I doubt if it is unconditional in the final analysis.

The book is alright but of late these books seem a bit psychic to me of late as in most cases people are just trying to express a facet of religious thought stripped of its mysticism. How can the material universe surely incite your thoughts?

@Chungamu