“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” ~ Buddha
Happy Sunday!
One morning this week I was driving into work and had a yellow VW Beetle (one of the newer ones) turned in front of me. It is a car that I am familiar with as I notice it parked regularly in the parking garage of my office. I think the car is cute. This morning was the first opportunity to get a look at the driver. It was an older woman. My mind developed a judgment that the driver was not cute enough for the car. As quickly as my mind was expressing the thought the I within me exclaimed “What is that!” There seemed to be a third party present within that joined the conversation and said, “Whoa! There is something big here to work through.” Somewhere within me I hold a belief that only beautiful people should drive nice cars.”
I saw pass before me a lifetime of commercials and advertisements that conditioned me to believe nice cars are for beautiful people as only they are worthy of ownership.
Now that I think about this I shake my head and wonder how we fall for such nonsense. And yet, am I still thinking about this incorrectly. Right now I am placing blame on advertising for causing me to judge people, my mind playing the judgment game, constantly describing what I like and dislike and who I think is worthy or unworthy.
I am responsible. It is my mind that created the interpretations of the car commercials. If I try to look at the ads differently I could speculate that the advertisers wanted the people in the ads to express happiness at owning their cars – I’m the one who made it about beauty and worthiness.

This month I am signed up to take the Inner Engineering course that Sadhguru gives online. It is worth taking. It is giving me new ways to look at things and to understand the workings of my mind.
In a lesson this week which was about the mind Sadhguru explained four processes of the mind: cognition, recognition, sensation, and reaction. His example of this explained when we hear a noise we experience cognition that we have heard a noise; next comes recognition of what the noise is from our library of noises we know; next we may get a sensation as everything in our history has a story attached to it. Therefore, if the noise is music it may sooth us or disturb us based on our past history and decision of music genres we like or dislike. The fourth step is if we react to the sensation such a getting angry if we choose to let the noise upset us.
Sadhguru said that between the third step of sensation and the fourth step of reaction, this is where we build karma. If we can be equanimous, accept and release thoughts of like and dislike, to the sensations experienced then karma collapses.
Through this lesson Sadhguru made me see that the mind is a tool with a certain process to perform. He also made me understand that karma can be viewed as a gift. Within the processes of the mind we are given a decision point of reacting or accepting the experience Life provides. Karma is the feedback to the decisions we make to help in our evolution. Understanding karma is seeing that my life is my doing – it is a way of taking control of Life (the Life that I am experiencing).
This lesson makes me appreciate the work I have been doing over the last few years of trying to clear away the reactions and judgments that arise within my mind – so much silliness. It’s a whole lot of nonsense to just make comparisons of myself to others or to sort Life between what I like or dislike – all of it coming from a personality that lacked little understanding of what is real and true.
I had a thought following the taking in of this lesson. By my acceptance of my own reactions, am I now freeing others to just be what they choose for themselves?
I say yes as the burden of my judgment will not weigh them down either in the physical by their not having to work around my disapproval or in the spiritual as the energy between us will be clear.
I am beginning to see more clearly. The mind within that raced way ahead me, leaving behind a trail of nonsense for me to pick up and try to make sense of, is now idling peacefully. I now know how to tune it to be sweet when it misfires and coughs occasionally.
So it is.
“I am calmly active. I am actively calm. I am a Prince of Peace sitting on the throne of poise, directing the kingdom of activity.” ~ Paramahansa Yogananda