Thought for the Day

Wednesday 31 July

Wherever you go, you will always bear yourself about with you, and so you will always find yourself.

— Thomas à Kempis

Eknath Easwaran's Commentary

There is only one way to get a real vacation: get as far away from the ego as possible.

Worrying about your problems all the time makes for misery with a capital M. For getting away from misery, I recommend this “economy plan”: do not feed your ego and your problems with your attention. They will slowly lose weight.

When we feed them, constantly begging them to have one more helping even when they are gorged, we acquire obese problems that hug us tightly and weight us down. So if you really want a vacation, do not brood on your troubles. Do not let yourself get jealous or say uncharitable things about anyone. In other words, do not give the ego breakfast in bed; do not pack it a bag lunch; do not fix its dinner; do not give it pocket money for buying snacks; do not even give it a glass of water. Slowly, surely, the ego will lose weight, until one fine day it will be nothing but a thin ghost of its former self.

You will be able to see right through it, to the divine presence that shines in each of us.

The Thought for the Day is today's entry from Eknath Easwaran's Words to Live By.