I have an office. The table is full of files. Communications come from many sources. One by one I deal with them. Some are immediately attended to. Some are noted for a higher office authority or authority. Some are kept pending.
My mind's office is the same.
Communications come from different sources:
- By the things one sees, one hears; through letters and telephone calls - but all ultimately through one or the other of the senses.
- Memories of places, persons, things, and times.
- Thoughts of persons, things, places and times.
- Feelings about this or that.
- Sensations.
Now all these individual routes bring something to awareness: and each one of them provokes responses in the others zones; and an end result may or may not appear in action through muscles etc. A sensation of heat might provoke memories of certain places; a depressive thought may provoke a depressive feeling; and a depressive feeling might call in depressive thoughts; by chance word heard in the market leads to some chain of thought and so on. Thus the office of the mind is cluttered with this ceaseless input of information almost chaotic in its complexity. Somewhere all this jumble of input currents may result in an action for which our reasoning supplies a justification, or none, or starts contradictory impulses of action. Since the instrument has not been trained for some method of dealing with this vast input, and the machine has been designed to receive such fast inputs from different sources, lot of inner friction and inertia develops and leads to considerable ineffectiveness, as also wear and tear.
It is obvious that I have little control over the inputs. I seem to have some sort of control over the action or output; and I can pay attention to things I can somewhat control.
It seems to me that ultimately action is back by some strength of feeling. I also observe that negative emotions like anger and disgust etc. contribute quite a lot to the resulting action. Anyway, I must adopt some simple and effective method of dealing with information that is pouring into my awareness.
Knowing that information is neither good nor bad excepting by the significances induced into us by our environment, I shall protect my instrument from damage of conflict, by taking a firm decision to meet each item of information with positive good well and as much joy as my body can show.
If this is difficult apply the master-switch; The master of all action to whom all matters must be referred and wait a while.
Do not wish you the things that come to your mind; they do not go away, for they come to your address and seek your attention.
Submit them to positive goodwill - the persons; places, things, times, whatever they maybe; backup your goodwill by a positive creative imagination. If the thought of the health of someone dear to you, and who is at a distance, comes to you, you look at the person in your mind and see him in your mind getting better and better and getting the necessary attention. Change the negative imagery into a positive one. Do not forget that your negative forebodings play a part in precipitating the very things you fear. Also when you have no accurate knowledge of the future, why do you allow your mind to predict negative results only and suffer the consequences of such thoughts first of all in your body?
Where the clamour is from information from sources that provoke negative emotions detrimental to your own behavior and health, submit them to the master or love comma, and meantime control all impulsive action in retort, at whatever point you can control it, thought, speech or action.
Do not encourage disturbance in your office by increasing disorderly elements by supplying them with lawyers and goondas. Someone writes you an angry and insulting letter. You remember him with anger. This spreads - then you recall the number of good things you have done to him, and his present ingratitude; you fill yourself with hatred and your day is ruined. Then you spread this disturbance by talking about this to family and friends. You write back an angry letter and reinforce the vicious circle. Surely you have succeeded in harming yourself more than the mere verbal content of that man’s letter; and you yourself are supplying the energy for the evil intent of your opponent.
But if you spent a few minutes on the good the other person might have done you, and feel a little of the pain that might justly or unjustly be at the basis of the other person’s letter, and you simply kept quiet tell you have dissolved your own hate and anger, at least you would have protected your own system; and quite possibly helped in changing the other man’s attitude. You will learn by practice that this silent goodwill is much more powerful than pages of explanatory letters, each word of which leads to further bundle of emotion.
When in doubt SHUT UP!
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