Thoughts

"Indeed, you need to govern your thoughts, feelings and activities so that they may be directed according to a deeper experience."

"99% of your thoughts you have absorbed from your environment or have adopted from your family or other significant figures to meet social conventions, to meet other people’s expectations, to meet the requirements and demands of your family and so forth. Really, you have very little freedom in your thinking mind because it has been so conditioned into you. You think you are free, but you are not really free in this regard."

"If you look, you will see. But if all you can see are your own thoughts, then that is all you will see. If you are not thinking, you will see what is there. If you are preoccupied with your own thinking, you will see your own thoughts.We want to stimulate people to look without thinking so that they may see what is there and respond to it directly, like your animals do.They do not have the burden of reckless thinking."

"What separates you from life but your own thoughts? What dominates your attention but your own thoughts? Creating new and better thoughts might seem to open new doorways of experience, but in fact it is the relationship with your mind itself that has to be changed. Better thoughts will not release you. Better thoughts will not free you. Better thoughts will not open your life. It is true that you will need new thoughts to think, and your mind will need to open new pathways so that new experiences can come to you. But having new thoughts is not enough. You must gain an entirely new foundation within your life. Stand within your mind and it will seem to engulf you. Stand outside your mind and you will be able to see through it, direct it and use it."

See also

Belief

Images

Intelligence

Intellectual Thinking

Further study

• Wisdom from the Greater Community, Book 2, Chapter 5: Working with the Mind