Who is your role model? I was asked this question a few years ago as a part of a corporate leadership training program. At that time the question took me by surprise and my response was that I had multiple role models for different facets of life – my parents, Gandhi, Sachin, etc, etc
This question made me think about the subject more deeply. It is good to have role models, even multiple role models given that we play many roles in our lives. But my view is that there is a need for a key role model against which you should benchmark your life and work towards being like. This role model is the ultimate arbitrator for you in the event of difficult and conflicting thoughts. If there is one person that embodies this then he or she should be your key role model. If not you may need to look beyond real life persons to mystical, mythical or animistic personality types that better fit your needs. Given that your role model could be a real or mythical person who embodies all the thoughts, attributes and actions that you would like to emulate , I would like to use the term key thought pattern to define this rather than the term role model. This key thought pattern or personality type that you decide to mould yourself to be like can be called your guru or god or religion. What you chose here will decide your life experiences.
Some of the advanced gurus say that it is better if you think for yourself and not follow anybody, to have an empty mind is the best approach. An empty mind is ideal when no action is required. No thought, no action – ultimate bliss.
Our minds are however filled with constant thoughts. Some of them require conscious action, some of them result in unconscious action by our bodies and brain, some of them result in other thoughts. In each of our lifetimes, we go through infinite thoughts and actions. We are the result of what we think, how our brains and bodies react to the thoughts and what actions we subsequently take as a result of it. As the Buddha says – as you think so you are. Typically in our lives we have no control over our thoughts or most of our conscious and unconscious actions. Most thoughts and actions nullify or contradict each other or lead to inappropriate long term results for the individual. This results in what could be called a wasted or unfulfilled life.
If you become conscious and aware and exercise a degree of control over the kinds of thoughts you have and its subsequent actions, you can eliminate a lot of energy which is negative to you. Now how do you do something like this? How do you control the nature of thoughts and type of actions you perform? The food you eat, the kind of people you spend time with, everything that you experience with your senses determines what you are. This subsequently forms the soil in your mind from which the seeds of thought sprout. How do you select and filter from the flood that hits your senses everyday what is appropriate for you and what isn’t?
This is where an appropriate thought pattern for you can help you. Having a pattern like this serves as a sieve for your senses so that from all that you experience you select those experiences that are good for you and these experiences then settle in your mind as the soil for thoughts that are ideal for you and actions that subsequently result from these thoughts.
How to find a thought pattern or personality that is appropriate for your life and how to incorporate it into your daily thoughts and actions? This is definitely not an easy task. Your thoughts at any point of time are typically influenced by your most prominent desires at that moment. Most of us go through various personalities or thought patterns as we are tossed about by our desires till we finally settle on a confused composite which makes up our personalities if at all. Some of the thought patterns that we go through are typically our parents and teachers in our childhood, followed subsequently by a romantic hero or deity and subsequently by a person who is successful in a career we are interested in pursuing such as a sports person or corporate leader (invariably in today’s world it is somebody who has made a lot of money)
The ideal thought pattern is not a passing fancy but something that you try to embed in the core of your personality or being. It is a seed that you are trying to plant into the depths of your being which will determine who you will be for the rest of your life. It is the criteria based on which you process the experiences that your senses flood you with. It is the sieve that provides the soil for your mind and also the creator of your thoughts and actions. It is effectively your god, your guru, your personality.
Seeding the thought pattern into yourself involves studying the nature of the thought pattern, how the thought pattern affects the clothes you wear, the food you eat, the way you interact with others and everything about you. In a new experience, you try to apply the thought pattern to see how you should react. In ancient times, native people tattooed on themselves the symbol representing the spirit which they believed they embodied so as to concentrate these energies
If the thought pattern you have chosen is appropriate for you, it starts to obsess you and take control of every aspect of your life. If such a thing happens and you start finding that you are much more happier and experiencing life in a way that you have never done before then you have probably found your guru.
Once you successfully seed your thought pattern, then you need to look at your body as a vessel or vehicle that will be driven by the energy associated with this thought pattern. The pattern drives you and you feed the pattern to energise it. The food you feed your body, the clothes you wear, thoughts you think, actions you perform all fuel the flame that energises the being within you making it more concentrated, pure and effective. This flame gradually concentrates until a point where like the external sun it ignites to become a self sustaining fusion reactor within you, your sun, the source of all your life. You will then find yourself achieving things that you could barely dream about before. You have then found your god, your religion, your source of limitless energy. All your thoughts and actions are focussed and aligned and you find yourself achieving goals effortlessly without complications and hurdles
J Krishnamurti used his body as a vessel that could be filled with the energies of Lord Maitreya so that it could be directed according to the nature of Lord Maitreya. Jesus believed that his body was the temple of god and devoted his entire life in this direction.
My thought pattern is Shiva. What is yours?
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