Think Anew

God said:

Crowded thinking is like a closet. You have crammed too much into your mind. You don't want to give up anything. You want to keep it all in case.

And so your mind is crammed with isolated thoughts that you have no use for but want to keep in case you do. Grudges are kept there. Every mistake you ever made. Every insult you ever had handed to you.

Your hands grope in the closet and you come upon things you had forgotten all about. Some or many you would be better off without. But it is hard for you to part with thoughts, even useless ones.

It is as if you think your thoughts are strings that connect one to the other and you to eternity. Or your thoughts are strung across a long clothesline. You may not have quite noticed that accumulated thoughts make the clothesline sag.

Who keeps all these vagrant thoughts in your mind? Who put them there? Who can go past them?

You do not keep all the clothes you once wore that no longer fit you. You certainly don't keep all your childhood clothes, and yet how fervently you pack all the worn-out thoughts from long ago and won't let them go.

You have had thoughts that fit into a certain groove. Even if the thoughts slump, you are comfortable lying on them. You resist emptying them and starting a new pattern.

What has served its usefulness has served its usefulness.

Dishes with cracks are best thrown out.

Thoughts, no matter what their condition, seem to be kept indefinitely. Some are restored. Some are in mothballs.

Although you will admit that thoughts come and go, you believe you are supposed to keep them all framed on your mantel.

Perhaps it is fitting to start a new family of thoughts. Maybe old thinking has to be undone. Recycled. Thrown out.

How many old thoughts do you need?

How many must you keep and rehash and rehash?

Consider that you are entering a palace. In the front hall, you take off old thoughts. There is a basket on the left to drop them in. Another basket on the right has new thoughts for you to pick up. You have your choices. There is a list posted, and you take a few.

Or you make your own list. What would you like to be thinking about? What thoughts would you savor?

Tell Me, how many thoughts do you have to have? Do they mellow like good wine or beer in a cask? Sometimes you have to throw the old dregs out and start over.

Those repeated thoughts that you hold fast to have clung to you. Let them be the first to go. They have kept you imprisoned. Have you not been cooped up in your thoughts? Free yourself from fomenting stale overworked thoughts. Say goodbye to them. Let them go. They have visited you long enough.

Worn-out thinking does not serve you well. It wears you out. Old patterns do not fit you any longer. They may never have been right for you. That thoughts have stood the test of time does not attest to their value. Some of your oldest thoughts are the least useful.

How do some of these old thoughts make you feel? They may be antiques handed down to you from generation to generation. They may never have been valuable. Perhaps they were mindlessly passed down and, mindlessly, you took them and pressed them like flowers for preservation.

Press your hand to your heart now and give old patterns and heartaches a chance to leave. Shoo them out. Beckon new ones in.

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Old thoughts for new

Why not select just a few really, really good thoughts to keep handy and pull out when a thought is needed?

Can we really do this?

I see a silly image of a dark, musty, cobwebbed cellar full of rusting and useless nuts and bolts, rotting cloth and warped wood I have been saving for many years, just in case. I haul it all out to the road to be hauled away by some huge trash truck. I see myself panelling, ventilating and furnishing the cellar as a lounge to entertain guests.

Do I have the courage?.......Chuck

Press your hand to your heart now

Have you not been cooped up in your thoughts?

Oh, You know how much I have felt cooped up in them! But they cling to me like nightmarish sucking monsters, it's not that I am holding on to them, it just never feels that way! They hijacked me before I was able to think or choose, they changed my brain physiology and even anatomy to fit their ugly purpose. If I were keeping them in a closet or cellar, I would immediately join Chuck and roll up my sleeves. But that's not the way it is. It's not I who owns them, it's them who have taken possession of me and there is nothing I can do!

Ha ha, still thinking in terms of psychological explanations and solutions, in terms of poor self-image and how to replace it with a better one.

Or trying to use Heavenletters to effect a complete emotional makeover. Trying to replace old thoughts with new ones, better ones, happier ones. Well, if you don't believe you can throw out old thoughts, it amounts to painting new ones over the old ones which are in relief and so remain visible. After some time, it's not too much fun to try out new thoughts and watch them peel off. Then you start to visualize throwing old thoughts in a waste basket and picking new ones from a different basket. And so on. It's no use.

What to do?

Intend it, desire it. And love.

Yes, dear God, but do You know how flimsy intention and love look opposite those hardened old thoughts? I would like a big canon to shoot them "to where the pepper grows" as we say where I live. Or is this about water that wears down stone?

Press your hand to your heart now and give old patterns and heartaches a chance to leave.

Just this? You know, it does sound possible today.

Yes, Jochen you are right

You are quite right, Jochen, our thoughts do change our brains physically. They change our world, too. They are the key to changing anything we want to change. We change our thoughts constantly as we change our focus from one topic or idea to another. We have complete freedom in this process. All it takes is to decide.

I agree with everything but

I agree with everything but the last sentence, Chuck. You have probably seen me dispute it many times. In my experience, it takes very much more than that, at least for some of us. I even think it's one of the most harmful sentences of New-Age thinking since it usually does not take into account that the road leading up to real freedom of decision or choice can be a long and arduous one. It's an unnecessary put-down to people who find themselves unable to exercise that freedom. If it were so simple, how could there be problems in the world? If it were so simple, why would pain and anguish have to go to such extremes as they have over the last one hundred years?

Of course we are free! But we have denied ourselves that freedom and winning it back is a real challenge, not just for the collective but for the individual as well, at least for some individuals.