If you keep drifting
off on your way home on the motorway, it may take longer than you expected.
(You may even end up at an unexpected destination sooner.)
 |
| 'The Tendency of the Mind to Drift '- Project picture comment. |
Forks in the road are presenting themselves all the time, big and small, and each one has its consequences for ourselves and others. Driving on motorways and byways (and no-go-ways) gives a clear visual image of the mechanics of this. Our movement through Life (Life is always moving) demands a response, even if it is only a frustrated attempt to stop moving.
There are three levels of location on which these forks in the road appear:
The physical, where our bodies are: longitude and latitide, in a town, a house, an aeroplane, a workplace, a school...
The mental, where our mind is: thoughts, mental images, points of view, a job, beliefs, memories, plans, emotions, relationships...
The spiritual, our ethics (or non-ethics).
They interact with each other, often are in conflict.
Our ethics (or non-ethics) is a (semi) invisible component in almost every single choice of direction we make. And its consequences. If it is non-ethics, i.e. incorrect ethics, our choices will be contaminated from the start and will always lead us astray, and, ultimately to disaster.
Check your past, present and future life and those of other beings and see if this is true...
Like a leaf, detached from the tree,
ReplyDeletefloating on the winds or borne
and tossed by the waves of the sea,
at the mercy of the storm,
so is the mind. It will drift,
the ego’s plaything, tossed and turned,
easily stimulated, easily miffed,
easily torn and easily burned.
Only if control is applied,
like the leaf tightly tied
to the tree or nestled deep
in the original soil, at original sleep,
from whence it came,
will the mind and its puppeteer be tamed.
"We're not humans on a spiritual journey, but spirits on a human journey." (Text written on a blackboard next to a narrow-boat on a canal near Oxford “as a gift to passers-by”.)
ReplyDeleteEthics acts as a safeguard while there is identification with the body/mind (egoic consciousness).When there is no identification with the body/mind there is no one (or place) to practice ethics. It is this de-egotising of consciousness which perfects ethics and the boundless Brahma Viharas in the human realm.
ReplyDeleteLettuces think lettuce thoughts
ReplyDeleteThistles think thistle thoughts.
Yet both feed in the self same soil.
How far back does one have to go
to see where their paths diverge?
How long has the crocodile had her scaly smile?
'There are significant questions.'
ReplyDelete- 'There may well be; yet, this is not the direct way.
Don't ask questions to the left, don't ask questions to the right.
Once you're here, every thing will be clear.'
The role you are playing often determines which forks in the road you take. The tiger will eat it rather than release it.
ReplyDeleteThe forks in the road you take, determine the the role you end up playing. Persistent and extreme self-separatism in evolution will end up with a tiger rather than a vegan.
Underlying it both ways: As you sow, so are you reaped.