Thoughts and Action

By Matsyavatara Dasa

According to Yoga Tradition, a thought can so strongly stimulate and influence willpower, to enable us to pursue the targets we aim at without efforts, within a short period of time. For this reason it is important to use well such source of energy, available to all of us. If used improperly, it may dangerously increase destructive and self-destructive processes.

Each thought – in a higher or lower degree depending on the desire at its roots - can potentially affect events. Thoughts are more powerful than actions, which are limited by space and time, whilst thoughts can work their powerful influence even at far away distances.

A person can make a significant advancement in evolution through the understanding that desires and thoughts are more important than actions. Acting depends on the quality of thought, but the power of thinking can produce results ever more important, ‘unexplained’ and unpredictable than those produced without it.

Every day is an opportunity to direction our will-power, desires and thoughts, to achieve full knowledge and comprehension, most of all to have realizations and experiences which teach us how to choose and select.

It is a good attitude always to enquire in which direction we want to invest our energies. Let’s listen carefully to the voices whispering from within, let’s see if we can rely on them on the basis of consolidated high values. Cautiousness will help us avoid mistakes which unfortunately, in most cases, force us to spend most of our life trying to adjust the negative consequences of our wrong doings. Working on the “ruins” produced by our own faults is time and energy consuming.

There are mental attitudes and behaviours that obstruct our evolution and produce some weakness in the structures of our personality, leading to perdition and physical collapse; different attitudes and behaviour instead trigger syntropic processes: harmony, evolution, creativity, enthusiasm, vitality.

The main feature of life is enthusiasm (utsavah).

Enthusiasm is another word for will and vitality; it becomes a negative energy (lethargy and depression) when it is induced by effusive euphoria. Its positive energy is made of: joy, enduring confidence and determination and its effects are the sign of an enlightened conscience which is progressing on a path of self-realization.

Fear, bahyam, produces the results opposite to enthusiasm; it can paralyze and obstruct creativity, proving to be a major entropy component. Fears become alive because their energy is very powerful and influential too. In the end we lose all that we fear losing because our own negative attitude makes it all happen; it always all depends on the way we look at ourselves, the others and life.

The ability of the mind to judge reality is limited in relation to the quality and quantity of the experiences made, and by the limits of sensorial perception.

The senses can observe reality only partially and compare it with previous experiences, which are then judged and classified in relation to our mental patterns.

Success or failure depend on the mental patterns we use. The secret of all those who are happy, besides having flexible mental patterns, is never to have expectations, as their fulfillment relies on what the others are able or have to do.

Not having expectations is different from being a loser. On the contrary it means releasing fear, that is the real obstacle!

Acting should be based on the ground that we succeed only if we act well for our own sake and that of others, to our satisfaction and joy.