This Week’s Quotation:
“It can be frightening to think about the impact of the negative thoughts and words your emotions have been exposed to over the course of a lifetime–from you and other people. And the sad fact is that the emotional body of humanity as a whole has already been impacted for millennia by negative, self-shaming, self-accusing thoughts that have lodged in our collective feeling realm.”
—Becoming a Sun, p. 60
Who Told You That?
Most of us pay more attention to what we put into our bodies than what we allow into our minds. Yet the thoughts we think day after day have an enormous impact on the atmosphere we create within ourselves.
The challenge is that many of these thoughts have become so familiar that we hardly notice them. A self-critical comment. A fearful prediction. An old story about who we are or what we are capable of. Because these patterns have been repeated so many times, they can feel like truth.
But are they?
One of the most powerful things we can do is simply become aware. Noticing a thought creates a little space between us and it. Instead of automatically agreeing, we can pause and ask, “Is that true?” Sometimes we discover that the thought isn’t really ours at all. It’s old conditioning, a belief picked up somewhere along the way, or perhaps part of the larger atmosphere of fear and judgment that humanity has carried for generations.
Awareness gives us a choice. We don’t have to fight every thought that arises, but we don’t have to believe every thought either. In that space of awareness, a new pattern can begin.
What is one thought you’ve noticed repeating in your mind lately, and what truth would you rather give your attention to?
What does it mean to become a sun?
Every human being is already a sun on the inside—a being of intense love and light. The difference is that some people have the vision and courage to become a sun on the outside. This difference is our human destiny.
