DAILY DEVOTIONAL ✝️ 

Emotions

A monk decides to meditate alone, away from his monastery.

 

He takes his boat out to the middle of the lake, moors it there, closes his eyes and begins his meditation.

 

After a few hours of undisturbed silence, he suddenly feels the bump of another boat colliding with his own.

 

With his eyes still closed, he senses his anger rising, and by the time he opens his eyes, he is ready to scream at the boatman who dared to disturb his meditation.

 

But when he opens his eyes, he sees it’s an empty boat that had probably got untethered and floated to the middle of the lake.

 

At that moment, the monk achieves self-realization. He understands that the anger is within him — it merely needed the bump of an external object to provoke it out of him.

 

From then on, whenever he came across someone who irritated him or provoked him to anger, he reminded himself, “The other person is merely an empty boat. The anger is within me.”

 

This is so true, if you really think deeply about it, not only is the anger within, the sadness is within as well. So is the jealousy, the guilt, the hatred, the fear, etc.

 

On the other hand, the joy is within you. The happiness is within you too. So is the love, the peace, the fulfillment, excitement, etc.

 

And the best part? We get to choose which emotions we feed. You won’t be surprised to know that the ones we feed are the ones that thrive.

 

Say someone cuts you off in traffic, you can choose to be angry at the “idiot” driver. Sometimes people are still talking about that idiot driver for weeks.

 

Or you can choose to say “I sure hope that guy gets to where he needs to be in such hurry. I know I’ve been there before.” Which creates a feeling of love and caring for another human being.   -terrafresh

🤔THOUGHT OF THE DAY: God bless all who serve or have served our country. ~Chuck Norris