On Thoughts and Feelings

On Thoughts and Feelings

Unconscious feelings of the body and thoughts of the mind result from habits, memories and desires. 

We have little control over these involuntary feelings and thoughts. And paradoxically, the more we try to control these emotions the more vehement they become. 

Three apt analogies of the mind come to mind. The sky, the sea and the street. The sky and the sea are vast and deep. And emotions are as few as the waves and the clouds. 

Unfortunately, we get lost in this tiny trap and mostly fail to transcend it in a whole lifetime. We are like a perpetual passerby stuck across the street, jitterily waiting, but unable to cross it. The street is like an asteroid belt and how we totter intimidated by the traffic hurtling left to right or right to left! 

Alas! Eventually we board a random taxi that whisks us away and abandons us anywhere. From there we end up boarding another uncharted taxi, and like this, we move around viciously like a lost passenger. 

What we are actually doing is pushing away or pulling in the emotions. And how vainly! What we should do is to be neutral and let them be. Like an observer. As if they are somebody else's baggage lying unattended in the mind's cloakroom. Look at it and leave it. But don't love or loathe it. May be label it literally - this is anger, this is envy. This is this. This is that. Whatever it is, it is neither good nor bad. It is just it. We are not to feel ashamed or guilty about them. Because underlying these minor mental turmoil, we are all essentially good.