A delightful letter which I received from someone very close to me

Today has been an awesome day already in terms of my inner practice. Yesterday and the day before (jan 9&10) were marked with tumultuous emotions and rapid reactions, mostly because Aphinya left on that monday night (jan 8). My mind became a dangerous twister and I could not step away from my emotions and reactions to those emotions. This unsteadiness distorted my perception, giving me only a dim view of life, full of sadness, doubt and discontent. I also had plenty of questions like, “why is my happiness so dependent on Aphinya’s love and what if she does not really love me?”, but no answers were forthcoming. Quite fortunately for me, my practice up to this point has begun to take root deep inside my mind. My past effort to enlighten myself is laying a powerful foundation. Although it felt so distant and foreign at the time of despair, I knew that I had choices in my thoughts and that somehow I could “think better”. I also remembered some basic truths such as, we always have choices, my happiness must come from within, and that I could measure my self-worth in terms of connections to my heart and my spiritual beauty rather than by physical or mental accomplishments.

Today started out in much the same way as those two days before. I have to thank God today too, because I was given a turning point. During the course of normal morning work, I began to explore a problem that has been affecting my coworkers. Very soon a solution became clear, making myself and the others happy. Soon afterward, I became aware that my own mood had shifted from that dreadful sadness into a much lighter happiness. Now this is where my practice helped me to identify the exact moment of change, the surrounding environment and my own thoughts at the time. By being aware of such a drastic change in my own perception, I gave myself the opportunity to choose the perception to use. Of course, I chose to stick with the happiness. In the past, the happiness always faded because I had never made a conscious choice to be with it… the unhappy sadness would come creeping back. By being open to the possibilities during a time of darkness, I was able to create a better place for myself.

To my great astonishment, I also had another somewhat subtle insight today. While finding a parking spot after my lunchtime yoga workout, I felt a judgmental thought pass through my mind concerning the action of another driver in the lot. Actually, what I felt was the slight drop in my happiness just an instant after that judgment was passed. My awareness was fast enough that I could follow the judgmental thought with another thought that I did not believe in the previous judgment. My happiness miraculously moved back up a notch, and I felt that judgmental thought became groundless. My mind’s eye saw the negative thought vanish without making an impact. What a wonderful experience!

I quickly realized that it would not take too many of such tiny but continuous negativities before any state of happiness I had entered would be completely wiped away. This is very important to me, so I decided to follow through with an analysis. With quick reflection into the whole event, I observed that we actually have a choice as to how we treat each individual thought that occurs in the mind. If we choose to be unaware of the thought itself (not the content of the thought), then that thought will be automatically accepted by the mind. It is essential to note here that the awareness must envelope the thought itself and be entirely unconcerned with the matter of the thought. Now, at the time of acceptance, we are adding that latest thought to a vast collection of thoughts that we believe. Each one of those collected thoughts can act like concrete once the mind believes them. This causes the mind steadily to become stiff, inflexible, unchanging, and yet it is moving very rapidly! The effect of such a rigidity in the mind is that a great momentum is built up because the mind is always moving very rapidly. Each additional belief increases the momentum, decreases the chance that the direction of the mind will change, and makes it a little bit more difficult to be aware of the next thought. It’s like riding a bicycle down a hill that is so steep, the bicycles brakes have no effect; you cannot stop or turn into a new course or even look at anything that is not immediately in front of you! However, when we examine our thoughts before we accept them, we gain the ability to believe or disbelieve those thoughts.

I was able to make a choice about my particular judgment based on the way that it impacted on my happiness in the moment; it had nothing to do with whether the content of the thought was good or bad, valuable or detrimental. How incredible!!! Oh, this vision is absolutely beautiful! Many thanks to everyone and everything out there that has supported and nourished my practice, that I could come to this amazing place in my own mind!