(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be beneficial!)

How often have we heard “It’s the thought that counts”?

For example, if we couldn’t get someone the expensive gift that we would like to have given them, we can comfort ourselves with the belief that “it’s the thought that counts!”

That’s the use of the word “thought “as in “intention.”

But believing this phrase It’s the thought that counts is also how we can get ourselves into trouble.

If you have no interest in a thought, it has no power.
You oxygenate them with your beliefs and interests – Mooji

How?When we forget that thoughts are indeed just thoughts, not reality. In other words, we create problems for ourselves when we make  our thoughts  “count.”

If you don’t know it’s a thought it becomes your reality. <Anon>

Then we go further and become fixated. Obsessed. Grasping. Attached.

We don’t attach to things; we attach to our stories [thoughts] about them – Byron Katie, author of Loving What Is

and

The root cause of suffering is identification with our thoughts, the ‘stories’ that are continually running through our minds – Eckhart Tolle

This identification, clinging, attachment, leads to volitional action.

Which leads to the creation of our karma.

That’s the problem.

Now, here’s the promise! The very thing (confusing out thoughts with reality) that causes suffering is also the jump-off point  for going beyond our entrenched beliefs and habitual patterns that underlie every thought — mindfulness-awareness practice.

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