If your mind is like a house with wide open windows and doors, with nothing to sort or filter out what comes in, all thoughts are free to enter, dwell there and disturb and affect your mind and life. In this situation there is lack of control over your mental house and over what goes inside it.

Under these conditions the mind allows free access to thoughts, ideas, words and suggestions coming from the outside, from people, the media or from other sources.

For most people, this is the natural state of affairs. However, some seek a way to close the doors and windows of your mind and prevent unnecessary, useless or negative thoughts from occupying their mind and robbing their time and energy.

Someone, who has the key to the doors and windows of his mind, can prevent unnecessary thoughts and worries from occupying his mind. Such a person can choose to think or stop thinking at will. Such a person can enjoy inner peace and be in a state free from worries and anxieties.

Read the article

Imagine yourself watching the same movie many times a day, day after day. After a while you know it by heart and it becomes boring. There are no surprises anymore. Watching it becomes a habit, and you accept it as a way of life. You cannot stop watching it. It becomes a part of your life. You forget that you can watch other movies.

Real life is like this. It is like a movie that we keep watching nonstop. We may not like the whole movie, or only some parts of it, but we keep watching it because it is in front of our eyes.

If we accept the premise that our thoughts are responsible for the kind of life we live, and what we call reality is the replica or projection of our thoughts, we discover a mighty secret.

Why limit our thinking? Why let circumstances dictate what we think? If we constantly think about our existing circumstances, we limit ourselves to experiencing these circumstances and situations over and over again in a variety of forms. We limit our life by not thinking beyond our circumferences. If we keep recreating in our minds the same kind of life, how can anything new happen?

Each person lives within a circle with a limited circumference. Small thoughts limit this circumference.

To widen the circumference of your life, think bigger thoughts. To widen the scope of your life, dare to think beyond your immediate circumstances. Dare to think big. You can think beyond the boundaries of your reality.

This is an excerpt from the book Visualize and Achieve.

From Who Am I?
The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi

What is called ‘mind’ is a wondrous power residing in the Self. It causes all thoughts to arise. Apart from thoughts, there is no such thing as mind. Therefore, thought is the nature of mind.

Apart from thoughts, there is no independent entity called the world. In deep sleep there are no thoughts, and there is no world. In the states of waking and dream, there are thoughts, and there is a world also.

(more…)