Do we live in a world, or in our thoughts?

Do we live in a world, or in our thoughts?

If you live in a Christian environment, you are familiar with the saying, “lead us not into temptation.” It is in The Lord’s Prayer. Temptation often refers to thinking the wrong thoughts. Thoughts lead to action, and action leads to real physical consequences. Before any accident happens, there is a period in which thoughts rule and later become actions that will cause the accident. Let me demonstrate.

I was being driven by an older relative on a dark highway. He was very sensitive to opposing traffic drivers forgetting to dim their headlights and blurring his vision. His solution to the problem was to do the same to them and switch his high beams on to blind them back, a solution that I considered dangerous, but I didn’t have a driver’s license yet.  The temptation was to “get” the other guys and teach them a lesson, but he didn’t consider that two blinded drivers heading towards each other at high speed may not survive the consequences regardless of who is right and who is wrong. His thought process was faulty and the action he took cost him dearly. That night we came so close to an oncoming vehicle that both side mirrors touched, and both vehicles were damaged. It could have been much worst.

My driver should have considered everyone’s safety to be a higher priority than revenge. However, the temptation of revenge was greater than the rational reasoning that should have been used. He didn’t realize that most of our life is spent in our minds and action is the result of what is happening in the mind. He didn’t realize that thoughts can be replaced with other thoughts and dictate a more beneficial course of action. If we want something to change, we must change it by changing ourselves, by changing our thoughts.

We have records of philosophical writings from the pre-Christian era, both from western teachings and the far orient, indicating that humans discovered this concept many thousands of years ago.  They were different creatures than we.

We are the first humans in history who simply don’t have time to think. A hundred years ago most people didn’t have electricity and all the conveniences and distraction it provides. No TV, efficient indoor lighting, recorded music, electric motors, pumped water, and very few radios to name but a few. 

Compare us to the people who fought the first World War. They lived life without any electronic devices or engines that did their work. Their world was darker and slower than ours, but they had most of their time available for thinking. Most of their communications were from person to person. It took them a long time to get places, time that they spent thinking. They were humans like us, but different altogether. If you or I enter a conversation with a person who just arrived from a primitive country we clearly notice the difference.

Now we are plugged in as you well know. My grandkids come home from school with earbuds on. They take it off to go on the computer. One of them installs a Virtual Reality goggles on his head and starts moving obliviously to the world around him. Their parents who used to watch TV that shaped their thoughts ruin their own lives by borrowing and chasing consumer goods and vacations, never having time to think.

People from our not so distant past lived in their thoughts, often imagining that the earth was flat, that God is a wise old bearded man who does magic and that people with large heads are smarter than those with smaller skulls, and we are the same. Millions of us believe theories that are published on social media or TV, often without a shred of evidence. We live and die in our thoughts, not realizing that there is a lot more that we don’t know than what we do.

We must learn to trust the force that brought us here and realize the importance of “balance.” Teach a child how to ride a bike. You tell them to go fast and look ahead to where they want to be. At some point you let go and scream, go, go, go, and they do. Once they learned to keep their balance, they can do it again and again. Something has changed in their mind allowing them to go without fear and they have a lifetime of enjoyment riding very fast or often very complicated trails. It is all in the mind and the physical part obeys the mind. The mind obeys what the person believes, not just say they believe, but really do.

When you ride a bike you eventually arrive at some point where there are things on both sides of the trail and you must go in between them. Happens to all of us. If you keep your gaze on the obstacles, you probably noticed you will run into one or the other. If you notice where you must go and keep your eyes ahead, you will sail right between them. You know that, but you refuse to do it with the important decisions in life. Why?

If a human knows that they are in the right, without a doubt, they should trust the force which tells the mind what to do and confidently go. If they feel that they are wrong, they should re-evaluate, make the change in the thoughts and go. Go without fear and keep pedaling. The one who directs thoughts will take over and get you to where you should be.

If you are going without selfish temptations, without manufactured fears, and forget the commercials that lead you astray, you will get to the destination. It’s in the Book.

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