Thursday 14 August 2008

Choicest Thoughts of Them All

A while ago, on one of my blogs I had put a quote up, “It is not what you think, it is how you think that matters.” And what captured more of my attention was that I heard two different people say this, in different contexts.

I am not sure of the sequence, but one of them was this lady who had crossed the Australian deserts in, I think, the 1980s. She wrote a book on her experiences, which has a cult following; not unlike a following of the “Into the Wild.” When I came across an interview of hers, I was living by myself, choosing not to get myself a television or an internet connection, and trying to figure out for myself, “what would I do, if the (all-evil) media didn’t tell me what to do.” It didn’t work quite that well and surprisingly, for me, it was a difficult experience. I later found that it wasn’t such a unique experience either, and most people who try it reach the same conclusion. I also, since then, read up more on the history of solitary confinement. Anyway, I was living by myself at that time, and was rather unsure of what I was experiencing, so when I read of this woman, who for months together just walked the desert with camels without any human company, I was obviously interested. When asked about, what is was like being completely by her own self, she replied, “it is not what you think, it is how you think that matters.” This might have made sense to the interviewer, but it made no sense to me. It was food for thought, but I couldn’t really tell what was the difference between the “what” and “how “of thinking.


A week or so later, I was reading something that, if I remember right, Guruji had written, where he said it in exactly the same words, “it is not what you think, it is how you think that matters.”


I think I ended up calling G-ji from the CM to ask him to explain, and he tried explaining in a lot of ways, none of which I remember, till he came up with an explanation that made sense to me, and which I remember, “What you think”, he said, “means what exactly your thought is; however, how you think means how when one thought arises, what do you do with that thought.” “What kind of a thought is likely to follow it; what kinds of patterns do your thoughts follow.” You know some people thoughts get more powerful and they quickly act on them; other people thought tend to end with them feeling sorry for themselves; and so on. (I am not sure if I have been able to explain it clearly enough, but do think about it – it is not what you think, it is how you think that matters.)


And that was such an ahha moment for me, that it has taken me a while to be able to pen it.


And now yesterday I came across another rather brilliant piece of information, and I’ll just paste my scribbled notes on it below, “According to it, there is a thought, "let’s go to the pictures"; and it is only a random thought, till "I" take ownership of that thought - "I go to the pictures"; once I take ownership of that, I may then decide to follow it up with action.... and go to the pictures - but till then, (and this is so so important), it is just a thought, and "I" can let it go. A thought came and a thought went away, because I did not own it - follow it up with anything!!”

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