Harmony Quote

Mind is consciousness which has put on limitations. You are originally unlimited and perfect. 

Later you take on limitations and become the mind 

 – Ramana Maharshi

Much of our daily behaviour is conditioned by forces deep below the conscious level of our minds. This means that we are limited to a conditioned automatic way of thinking and responding to the events of life around us. When such a conditioned behaviour is strong, we think of it as a fixed part of the personality. Othello is jealous. Hamlet indecisive. Macbeth is ambitious; that we say is their nature. To many biologists, this is something that is built into our very genes.

I do not agree. Jealously, vacillation, competition, and the rest are not permanent mental furniture; they are a process. A mental trait is a thought repeated over and over a thousand times, leading to words repeated a thousand times, resulting in action repeated a thousand times.

At the beginning it is only a burgeoning habit of thought; you do not necessarily act on it. But once it becomes rigid, it dictates behaviour. It is possible through the practice of meditation and the other disciplines, to go against these coordinated ways of thinking and actually change ourselves from the inside out.   

(From ‘Words To Live By’ by Eknath Easwaran, founder of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, copyright 2005; reprinted by permission of Nilgiri Press, P.O. Box 256, Tomales, Ca 94971, www.bmcm.org.)