Negotiating the Supermarket of the Mind

June 5, 2014 — San Ramon, California, USA

Extracted from Amma’s question-and-answer session in San Ramon

Question: I have a question about negative thoughts and emotions. I find myself wondering what the right attitude is and how to prevent negative thoughts and emotions from affecting my life and affecting others.

12sr

Amma: When you go into a supermarket, you see so many things—some you want and some you don’t. Regardless, you don’t hunt down the manager and interrogate him as to why he stocks things you’re not interested in buying. You just focus on what you came to buy. Similarly, when the various thoughts come, you need to be alert and aware and use your discrimination to decide which are helpful with respect to attaining your goal and which are not.

This effort, inquiry and discrimination must come from within. We must ask ourselves what is helpful and what is not. We cannot always ask the guru. If an egg is opened from the outside, it will be destroyed, but when it opens from within, new life is created.