BY ROMMEL YNION
THE tomb of Hermes was, no doubt, the repository of ancient knowledge and wisdom; and legend has it that when it was opened by archeologists, people expected to find therein the secret of the ages.
True enough, they found it – and they were so awed by its simplicity. Carved in emerald tablet, it simply read: As within, so without; as above; so below.
Scientists have equated this principle with how the mind works.
According to this principle, the world – as we know it today – is just an outer creation of man’s inner vision.
At the risk of oversimplification, it simply means that before anything happens in the outside world, it “happens” first inside our minds.
In a nutshell, the mind is a factory that we, human beings, operate together, churning out everything that happens to us, from brushing our teeth to waging wars at home and abroad.
Man’s greatest folly – if we can call it such – is his propensity to blame his misery on the world instead of himself.
We are all what we think we are.
Let us start looking within us then to check what this factory – we call “mind” – is producing for all humanity.
There is only one mind; and, individually, we are all incipient minds of this omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent mind.
Thomas Edison, when asked, on his deathbed, what his secret was in discovering the application of the electrical principle that produced the incandescent lamp that lit the world, simply mumbled: “Ideas float in the air.”
Yes, ideas simply “float” on this vast ocean we call the “mind”, accessible to all of us who care to weigh and consider them.
If we, Filipinos, will only care to look within us, we will discover that the culture of corruption that has ravaged our nation has been our creation.
We belong to the me-first society – this is evident in the way we drive. More often than not, traffic crawls at a snail’s pace or simply gets snarled in a gridlock because drivers can’t give way to the others who could have eased the vehicular flow had they been allowed to move unimpeded.
But, no way, they can’t just be allowed to pass through without driving through the eye of the needle, so to speak – because every driver only lives for himself. It is him first, before anybody else.
And so, this is where the tragedy lies in our society.
Can we, for instance, imagine all the politicians at the helm of government simply thinking “me-first”?
Ah, there is money for calamities – before other Filipinos get hold of them, let me pocket them first.
There is pork barrel meant for the development of countrysides – but, hey, let me course them through fake foundations first so I can deposit them in my bank accounts.
There is money for El Niño – but, there is no El Niño.
It’s not really a problem because we can hire spin doctors to make it appear in media that there is El Niño so we can justify to the populace the release of billions of pesos for cloud-seeding; and once released, we pocket them.
If culture is just our collective way of thinking, our me-first culture is the reason why we are where we are now as a nation.
As it is in our collective way of thinking, so it is in our national life.
Thoughts are things – they are as real as the clothes in our closets, the furnitures in our living rooms, the cars in our garages.
We only become what we habitually think – as within, so without; as above so below.
Think of the mind as a garden and the thoughts that we think as the seeds we plant in that garden.
Yes, just like any garden, an idle mind is also fertile ground for “weeds” to grow.
And, in the same vein, the mind whose “gardener” is a disciplined custodian of the “seeds” planted in there will find his garden blossom with plants that will please him no end.
Why are we not pleased then with the way our country has turned out to be?
We are all the “gardeners” of this country – we only reap what we sow.
Do gardeners blame their gardens when weeds grow in place of plants they want to see? No, what they do is they uproot the unwanted weeds and replace them with plants that will satisfy them.
If we can dissect problems in our garden, why can’t we dissect our problems in life?
The time to understand the power of the mind is now.
This is a subject that needs to be taught in our schools as vigorously as any subject institutionalized in our educational system.
Human beings have explored everything, even splitting the atom out of which came the power to illumine cities, propel submarines, and even end all forms of life on this planet
But, why have they overlooked the most important thing they need to understand in their finite existence – the power of their own mind?
Indeed, an unexamined life is not worth living – for it is only worth living if we examine it deeply enough to understand the power of God within us./PN
