![]() “Control yourself, else you’ll suffer the consequences.” This makes the statement seems an affirmation of journey of a derailed life towards its inevitable destruction. Well the fear that we’d become ‘bad’ probably comes from our childhood programming where the statement was made in a very negative and tragic sense. Like the spiral of a conch shell! So the statement also spirals outwards as a pointer to how things evolve – from within.īut what is the use of it, if all it asks us to do is to watch without doing anything to stop us from becoming ‘bad’ or undesirable individuals? See how the spiral of waves move from subtle to gross, from thoughts to words, from words to grosser actions, from actions to habitual patterns, habits to character, and character to something both fine and gross at the same time – destiny. Watch your words they become your actions… Watch your thoughts they become your words. To see them.Įvery second statement is a simple statement of truth. The statement simply asks us to know about our habits. No secondary meaning of holding your tongue or repressing your voice. Habits are so regular and ingrained into us that we hardly ever notice them. Just a plain statement on watching one’s thoughts. ![]() Nothing about good thought or a bad thought. Be aware of what you are saying.Īre you aware of your habits? Just be aware. Not to control, condition, claim, manipulate, organize, or meddle in any other way but to simply be aware of thoughts as they happen. Standing there in mindful awareness, the profound meaning of the statement hit me in the face.Īll that the statement ever asked of us was to simply watch. And on the wall right across was an A3 size poster with the same sentence again staring at me. As the man and the machine hummed away, I simply stood there aware of my being and thoughts. So during one of those days, I walked to a nearby stationary-cum-xerox store to photocopy some documents. I often used my walks and other routine activities to become mindful and present. By a quirk of chance, I had chanced upon Eckhart’s Power of Now and had begun a deep practice of mindfulness. I had then shifted back to Chennai with my wife and had set up my Hypnotherapy practice there. It was not until many many years later that I discover the real meaning of the statement and that too by accident. But the inner guilt and self-hatred were quietly weaving away their garbs. Finally I made some sort of temporary peace with my mind by accepting the thoughts and telling myself that this is how I was – different from others – and I simply needed to keep it a secret. Creative exploration of how many more bad thoughts could I come up with given a situation became a compulsive mental stance. As I delved to find out the bad, I ended up discovering more bad than I could think up of before. In desperation, I tried to investigate what bad thoughts were. To my despair, the more I tried to control the bad thoughts the more they seemed to pop like corn on stove. I vividly remember trying to control my thoughts and words. Regrettably, I didn’t understand the statement any better that day and the ‘ Moral Science’ class unwittingly sowed one of the early seeds of guilt and self-hatred in me. That meaning could not have been any farther from the real meaning of the statement. The phrase ‘negative thought’ wasn’t familiar to me back them just good thoughts and bad thoughts. So it all begins with controlling your bad thoughts. And finally our character will chart our destiny. We need to control our actions for otherwise they would become our habits and if we do not control our habits they will become our character. We need to keep our tongue in check else we would end up acting our statements out. The gist of the meaning (that our ‘ Moral’ teacher gave us that day) was that we need to keep our thoughts in control else we would end up speaking them. Unfortunately the influence was a negative one. Later, in one ‘ Moral Science’ period our teacher lectured us on the meaning of this statement. I fail to remember if I was formally introduced to it or I happened by it. My first brush with this profound statement was in my early school days. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.” Watch your habits, they become character
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