How a little quality control of our thoughts and intentions can bring about positive speech and actions, and happier consequences.

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

When we have a bakery, we know that we need to do “Quality Control” of our products (cakes and bread) for the benefit of our customers before we ship out the goods.

 

We do the same whether we have a bakery or a factory, or a shirt factory. Because at one level, we know that’s self interest, we know that it will eventually harm us if we ship out “bad quality stuff”, and we also know it will eventually benefit us if we ship out “good quality stuff”.

 

At a higher level, when we do it for the benefit of others, we know that we benefit others when we do the quality control on their behalf.

 

If we know that all our thoughts will eventually expand and create our lives in the physical world, wouldn’t we be very careful what thoughts we create.

 

Hey, it’s not rocket science that whatever we say and do will eventually have consequences. That’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?

 

It’s also obvious that what we say and do start with a thought. Everything that has ever been created by humans in the world started with a thought.

 

If I stop typing now, and get up and walk out of the room to help someone (a positive action) , or get up and punch someone (a negative action), they all start with a thought in my mind. The thought is created by me.

 

So it’s kind of obvious that my positive thought leads to positive action, which necessarily will eventually lead to positive consequences. And my negative thought leads to negative action, which necessarily leads to negative consequences.

 

Since we generate our own thoughts, and until the time when we are able to consciously generate only positive thoughts, it follows that we can start with the junior school level of practice of at least controlling our behaviour of what we say and do, at the level of what we let out into the world, by first becoming aware of the thoughts that drive our speech and action.

 

That’s no different from the Quality Control department of our bakery. We stand back and check the quality of our goods before they are released for shipment. Likewise, we can slow down our autopilot, check the quality of our own thoughts before they are let out to drive our speech and action.

 

Wouldn’t we generate better quality speech and action, and be kinder and more generous to the recipient of our speech and action, if we are able to start with some quality control of our thoughts, before they are shipped out as goods to the world (in the form of our words and actions)?