Faith Venture

I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts.

Anger visits me, but I am not my anger.

I heard a story once about an elderly woman who was found by neighbors lying on her floor non responsive. They called the rescue squad to help her. As they loaded her into the ambulance, they noticed she was clutching tightly to something. Eventually they were able to pry open her hand and found a small coin. It was as if she needed something to cling to and could not let go.

We are that way. A thought, an emotion enter us. We cling to it. It is so easy to identify with our anger, fear, insecurity, hate, tension. Sometimes they are much like toxic friends that we feel we just can’t live without.

But that is what prayer and meditation are for. They are tools developed over thousands of years that help bring us back to ourselves. To the realization we are not our thoughts. We are not our emotions. We have them. They come and they can go.

If they don’t go, then they have us in prison. We may think we are free, but we are not. But we ourselves are the jail master. And we can decide to let go. When we let go, then we are free.

This entry was posted on August 18, 2020 at 7:38 am and is filed under Disciplines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.