Adventures in Curry

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/
commons/d/da/3_types_of_lentil.jpg

Fear is like a pot of curry.

At the beginning of the dish, a mass of random ingredients sits on your counter.
The lentils are hard, each one has it's own story, and it's own journey.
The spices are strong, bright, vibrant, spicy, savory, bitter, or tart.
The pot is empty, waiting to be filled.

Our experiences are like each tiny lentil. Our experiences have all come together to create our reality. Who we are is unique--like each pot of curry, no two will ever have the same unique "lentils" that make it up. Each of us is perfectly uniquely designed to be who we are through the experiences we have, the people we meet, the parents we were born to, and the circumstances we live in.

Thoughts spice the flavor of our minds.  What we believe is an accumulation of each experience, each moment, each reaction, but more importantly our interpretation of these moments creates our truth. Some of our thoughts taste better than others--the sweetness of love, or the tartness of loss, or the bitterness that comes from repeated negative experience. Ironically, like curry, we have the ability to control the flavor of our lives. If we notice we tend to a bitter ingredient--a bitter thought-- we have the choice to observe it, experience it, but not let it simmer in the pot that day.

Setting our pots to simmer is like thinking the same thought over and over. We begin to break down the defenses of our conscious mind, and create a new truth--a new reality--but just to us. When we create a stew of negative thinking and fear, it gets stuck in our minds like the blackened soot of a burned dinner residue on the bottom of the pan. That residual poisons every other dish that is ever prepared in that pot... unless you clean out the pot before you begin again.

Fear begins in the mind, in the chaos of ingredients we face on the counters of everyday life. Each of us has our own lentil experiences to work with. Each of us has the choice of what spices to think with. And each of our minds is a pot waiting to be filled.
Cook carefully.