Brooding is Feeding the Ego
- Notice directly how your thoughts are drawn from (the trash can of) the past.
- Can you have thoughts without a single shadow of the past? Try.
- When you brood over the past, you breathe fresh life into both pride and hurt.
- Judgments – she was wrong; I was right etc – get reinforced in brooding.
- Blame is like a smoke that covers the flame of attention.
- Brighten the flame; drop gently all blaming – others or yourself.
- Do not suppress thoughts either.
- Intelligent living requires rising above habit. Moment by moment, pay attention to actuality.
- For example, be gently aware of your entire room – of its beauty and its disorder.
- Be aware of the whole of your thought structure – its pretty and ugly dimensions.
- Do not add fuel to any attachment or to any aversion.
- Just do it and see how, without your engineering it, the mind goes through a transformation.
Swami Chidananda
Monday, May 13, 2003