Conquest of Mind

This week we will look at the five key ideas in this great book called “Conquest of Mind” by Eknath Easwaran; a powerful guide to spiritual and psychological freedom through disciplined training of the mind.

We start with a really big important idea.

You are not your thoughts.  Your mind is a tool – not your identity.  You can observe and direct it with practice.

(The italicized words are from the book.  The rest is my commentary.)

Imagine someone letting their dark thoughts take them over.  They think their mind is them.  They go insane.  I think we are all a little insane.  We have thoughts of jealousy, envy, negativity, unfairness, difficulty and suffering.  These thoughts make our life hard.  

If we understand that our thoughts are not us, but seperate from us, and that we can control our mind and eliminate suffering and use it as a tool, we can break free of it’s negative influence on us.

Idea #2 tomorrow!

The greatest risk this year.

The greatest risk this year is that you get a year older and closer to the end of your time, and you did not –

Love someone deeply.

Stay true to you.

Make great memories with people you love.

Make peace with the past.

Forgive.

Use more of your potential.

Next year the greatest risk will be the same.

You can eliminate all the risk.

Be Brave

“She never felt ready,

but she was brave.

And the universe responds to the brave.”

Fear is not the enemy. This is –

Fear is not the enemy.  

Waiting to stop being afraid is.  

When you keep thinking about your fear, the wolf gets bigger.  

You can use the energy in fear to marshall your resources – and go!

All growth is outside your comfort zone.

Real growth feels scary at first – and that is what can make it feel so rewarding when you act anyway.

Who is influencing you right now?

Who (what) are you paying attention to lately?

Who are you hanging around with lately?

Has this made you better?

“Stricken by expired years”

Hopefully, you’ll get old.  When you do, hopefully you have taken care of yourself and aren’t afflicted with too many ailments – but they are sure to come.

If you have lived well, you have learned many things, and your wisdom is useful and gladly shared.

Hopefully, you had a long-term time horizon as you “grew up” and made good decisions that will make tomorrow better.

Getting old is an extension of being younger – a flowering of who you are today.  

It can be a great time of life.

This is why we have kids…

Today we have a guest writer.  It’s my son Tanner.  He writes articles on Substack called “Energy Resource Dynamics”, and they are thorough and informative.  He writes about energy and the environment and all kinds of related subjects.  

Recently he wrote an article called “Conditional Existence – not good, not bad”.

In this link you can read the article or Tanner can read it to you.  It will take 19 minutes.  

Substack is a platform where independent writers can publish their work, and you can access it for free.  If readers want to support the author, they can pledge some money to the writer, but you don’t have to.

If you like his writing, I’d encourage you to subscribe to Tanner’s work for free.  Here is the link – 

“Conditional Existence”

What’s next for you?

How are you going to play the next ten years?

Most people spend more time planning the weekend than their lives.  

What are you going to do in the next chapter of your life?

Who are you going to become?

There is only one person who can decide….

Don’t lose yourself in a crowd.

People that abandon themselves to fit in will feel lost and empty.

You can’t belong to any crowd if you forget, ignore or surrender who you really are.

Stay true to you while you expand and explore.

What happens next is up to you.

Right?