Watch your thoughts...
Frank Outlaw wrote -
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Crawl up close the screen of your television set and see what you see. If you
press your face to the screen you see nothing but a pattern of colored dots.
Only when you back away from the screen do the dots merge into images and seem
to move on the screen. This method of composing a picture from a series of dots
was an essential technique of the Impressionist painters. One dot of paint was
added to the canvas at time. By themselves each of dot seems incidental and, at
best, only mildly interesting. But as a whole, the image of the painting comes
into meaning. The whole becomes greater than the mere sum of its parts.
The same is true of our thoughts, whether we are addicts are not. At any
moment we can choose our thoughts. We can choose the thinking condition that
occupies our awareness - our conscious minds. You can choose to think that you
are a good person, deserving of peace of mind, love, and the respect of others.
Or you can choose to think that you are a piece of cosmic junk who will always
suffer, never be truly loved, and whom must keep his true self secret just to
survive. Fill your thoughts with envy, resentment, self-deprecation, criticism,
and hostility, and see what picture emerges. Fill your thoughts with acceptance,
compassion, encouragement, hope, and openness, and see what picture then begins
to come clear.
As the accumulation of those thought-dots develops, the thoughts begin to be
reflected in our words. "Life is a good place", "I can achieve, love,
contribute", "I will try". And those word, in turn influence our actions. As
trust in the essential value of self and goodness of the universe develops, we
move toward people rather than away from people. We offer compassion, kindness,
honesty, and help in our actions. In time these offerings become part of our
personal style - our habits of living - habits of thought, word, and action.
In a fundamental way, our habits are the parts of ourselves we can control.
Of course there are parts we can't control - the hardware if you will. But we
can write the software and override the garbage software installed by our
parents when we were hypnotized as children. And our habits determine our future
- our destiny.
This is simple guidance. Each thought - each dot - contributes incrementally
to who you become. When you choose to look at and sexually objectify a person
and have the accompanying X and R rated thoughts, you are affecting your future.
You put a dot on your canvas. When you choose instead to look into the beautiful
innocence of a child's face and to think that life is delightful, you place a
differently colored dot at a different point on the canvas of your mind - the
canvas of your life. This is the path and the way of recovery.
