Unwanted thoughts

Getting rid of unwanted things may sometimes be necessary. When an unwanted call comes do you go on talking over the phone?.  No. You would cut off the phone saying that some mistake has happened. Just like that we should learn the art of not entertaining unnecessary thoughts in our mind. However in order to know that the call is unwanted you have to listen to it. Just like that if we want to know that a thought is unnecessary, we need to watch the mind producing the thought and compounding it. The more you brush off these unwanted thoughts the better it becomes. Most of the time you are thinking unnecessary blah blah thoughts which have absolutely no value and has no relation to reality.

Have you ever watched a football match without commentary. It is so boring to watch. It is the commentary that adds zip to the excitement of the match. The match itself is just movement of lot of people. It is the stories of the talent of people , the skill they are exhibiting , the country they are playing for , its history etc that makes the match exciting. This is an attribute of our mind too. Just as it perceives various incidents , it creates a running commentary for you. Unknowingly you are listening to it. That is why you sometimes say " I know what he is thinking. See what he said the other day. I know he would say that ." and so on. All these unwanted thinking and emoting is one of the reasons for your misery. This commentary is personal to you. Another person might not be the having the same perception of the same incident to which you would say " You don't know anything!!".

Our mind is nothing but a collection of different things like form, feeling , perception, concept and labeling. It is much like a crowd which has no meaning of association. Some individuals come together in a market place. They don't have any collective purpose or anything lofty. They just happened to be there. It is  a coincidence. Now if you try to make meaning out of this crowd you would have to use imaginary constructs and stories which need belief to support it. All the people in the market are actually belonging to a certain belief that if you come to the market at a certain time it is good. This is why all these people are here or some such theory about the crowd. Just like that the mind is a jumble of all such mental constructs just happening to be there due to odd coincidences like conditioning , our environment, our own beliefs and so on.

Suppose you want to go on a journey to some remote place. What would you try to do. To carry less luggage as possible so that you can enjoy the trip . Isn't it ?. Otherwise most of the time you would be struggling to carry the burden. Similarly carrying unwanted thoughts is a burden for our spiritual journey. We would become worried about our pain of carrying these rather than the exploration of the way.
Nisargatta Maharaj used to say, reject all thoughts except the pure knowledge "I am". All thoughts , emotions and every thing about the world comes only after the " I am". All add-ons are not required . Even if they are there, we need to grasp that there is something prior to all these add-ons.
All our incidents in life are nothing but  happenings to the pure "I am".  From that "I am" ,all things are just watched not experienced. "I am " is the sun, and everything else are rays from it.

The reason for all our suffering in life is only a perspective change. Instead of seeing that from the pure "I am", we see it from our mind which has created lot of blah blah thoughts in us. Let us see the happening of an incident. Suppose you are seeing the rain in front of you. Do you feel any happiness or sadness?. We experience rain as a seer. We appreciate it , revel in it. The reason for this is simple. In your mind there is no "I " connected with it. It is sort of experience which you can describe as "There is rain happening and i am becoming aware of it...". So when i see the rain , i know i am not the rain and hence i am the viewer of the rain. Just like that when you get rid of unwanted thoughts and start seeing from the perspective of "I am", then all incidents in life would be perceived as happenings in front of you.


So to summarize , we should be constantly aware of our mind and get rid of unwanted frivolous thoughts and emotions Ego needs maintenance to support it,  as it is fictitious. Unwanted thoughts and emotions are one way of maintaining it . Avoiding them we are stepping closer to our fundamental true nature. The lesser these thoughts become, the easier it is to see through the deceit of the mind which creates beautiful stories of our life .