The Pain of Unguarded Thoughts

One way The Buddha described personal suffering was, “You have made a private little movie, and you are the star. Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.” The contemplation is to notice that you are not your mind, but you merely have a mind to use and sometimes when you let it dwell on whatever it wants, it creates trouble.

But consider this, what if The Buddha was right? Our worst enemy cannot harm us as much as we harm ourselves with unguarded thoughts. Notice the bad thoughts you are carrying around. Also notice these bad thoughts suck energy from your daily life.  These bad thoughts are a waste of energy and are a result of not cleaning out the mind of old mental trash, and not taming the mind to work for you rather than work against you.

If this is true, perhaps there is something you need to let go of today. Consider what imaginary unguarded thought you wish to drop out of your life and then begin to let it go, let it clunk on the floor, let it go out of focus, or let it get smaller and smaller, whichever technique works best for you.