As I mentioned in a few previous episodes, from the age of six through thirteen, I was given a rather extensive religious education, primarily in Judaism, with a focus on the Orthodox version.  During those years, I was averaging about ten hours of training a week and as you can imagine, I got exposed to quite a bit of material.           It was long ago and as you can also imagine; I've forgotten most of it. But among the ones I remember, there was one story that has stayed with me simply because of the way it ended. I always thought it was a Jewish story because we studied it in a class on rabbinical commentary, but I found out later that the story is also told in a lot of Christian traditions as well. Of course, the Jewish one is about a rabbi and the Christian one is about a priest.           Anyway, according to the version I heard, it was the late Middle Ages and there was a rabbi in a bustling city who never had any money, ever. Absolutely none. He was married with a family and he was so poor that he could barely put food on the table. One night, during hisprayers before bed, with deep sincerity, he begged God for financial help.           The next morning when he woke up, there was something that looked like the leg of a table, lying on the floor of his room. When he examined it, to his amazement, it seemed like it was made from solid gold. He was overwhelmed by what seemed to be the abundant answer to his prayer and was sure he could sell it for enough money that would support him and his family for quite some time.            That day, he found a gold dealer in town who was very interested in buying it. They made an appointment for him to bring it in the following day. When he returned home, he hid the leg in a remote closet in his home. He was overwhelmingly pleased, but that night when he went to sleep, he had a dream that was more vivid than any he had ever had before.           He was in a magnificent building and was told that he had reached a rarified level of religious understanding and was being admitted to a special class of students where he would be taught some of the most important understandings that would lead him to the state where he would be able to behold and realize the beatific glory of God.           The class was held in a special room where each student was given a solid gold, three-legged table to be able to write down the arcane understandings from the teachings. Each leg was symbolic. One represented the teacher; another represented the student and the third represented the knowledge to be taught. When he was escorted to his place, to his shock, his writing table was lying on its side on the floor because it was missing one leg. He was told that the leg on his table had been removed and sent to him on earth in response to his prayer for financial help. It was the leg of knowledge and he could stay and listen to the teachings, but he would not be able to retain any of it because he had no writing surface to work with.           In an immediate flash of clarity, he prayed to have the leg removed from his home on earth and put back onto his writing table so that he would be able to retain the knowledge that was about to be taught.           He closed his eyes and felt a powerful sense of connection to the Higher Power and everything dissolved into a comforting, all-encompassing white light. He then opened his eyes and realized that he had been asleep and having a dream. It was morning and he immediately rushed to the closet where he had hidden the golden table leg. To his shock, as well as his profound relief, the leg was gone. It had unexplainably disappeared during the night.           As our teacher ended the story, he gave a rabbinical explanation that whether you're rich or poor, all the happenstances of earth life are meaningless compared to the value of gaining true knowledge of the higher dimensions. This was a fairly standard idea that I had heard many times before, but then he added an additional concept that I had never heard before. He said that according to the rabbis, the disappearance of the golden leg was more miraculous than its appearance because it is more difficult to undo something than it is to do it.           Now I was pretty young then, but something about that idea really got to me and slipped into a "for future use" file in my mind. Then, about twenty years later, as I was studying the evolution of consciousness, I came upon a concept that opened that file up again. I was starting to understand the idea that as human beings, there are basically only three things that we can do. We have three spheres of activity open to us. We can think. We can speak. And we can act. And although they may all be manifestations of the same inner feeling; they produce very different results. Let's take a quick look at all three of them, but in the light of the idea that it is more difficult to undo something than it is to do it.             In this regard, thinking is the easiest to undo because we each inhabit our own mental world completely by ourselves. You can think anything you want and the only person who ever knows about it is you, unless and until you tell someone else. Now, we each think about fifty thousand thoughts a day, with a vast majority of them being negative and repetitive. Even though we may not be aware that we're doing it, we just keep repeating the same negative thought patterns over and over again.           Still, we all have some great thoughts, noble sentiments of higher understandings, but speaking just for myself, a lot of them are pretty terrible. I mean some can be revolutionary, but many are just plain revolting. I used to feel pretty bad about it, but Bob Dylan made me feel a little better when he finished his 1965 classic song, "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" with the line, "If my thought dreams could be seen, they'd probably put my head in a guillotine." I guess we're all in the same boat on this, but what's nice is that we never have to give outward expression to our thoughts unless we choose to. So, it isn't difficult to undo a bad thought because as long as they stay in our own thought world, they have no outward effect.   But then, we come to the activity of speaking, which is an entirely different matter. It usually takes some maturity before we start to understand that we have the power to choose whether or not to speak. It's completely our choice. You don't have to say anything, but once you do, it's important to understand that you can't unsay it. You can apologize for what you said and make an effort to make amends. You can try a million different things, but the truth is, once the words have been spoken, they can't be unspoken. It's not like water, where you can freeze it into ice and then melt it back into water. No, what you've said can never be unsaid. The impression has been made and the results will fall where they may.           Here's an example that makes the point. Suppose you are speaking with someone and they say something that really makes you angry. The thought arises in your mind, "How dare you talk to me like that! I ought to slap your face!" Now if you keep the thought to yourself, no harm done. But suppose you blurt it out. The thought becomes the spoken word. It has left the confines of your own mind and gone into the mind of the one who has heard you. Now, one way or another, big or small, major or minor, you have to deal with what you've done.           It's not to say it can't be rectified, but after a lot of experience with this, you learn to be more conscious of what you allow to come out of your mouth. Here are two quick thoughts about it. While an ancient text was discussing what kind of food you should eat it added, "Remember, it isn't what goes into your mouth, but what come out of it that will defile you."           And the second is the famous quote that is attributed to both Lincoln and Mark Twain, that sums it up this way. "It's better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you are a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt."           Now let's take it one step further and go from the world of speech to the world of action. Ancient Wisdom always cautions us that this is a truly major step.             Let's look at the previous example, but take it to the next level. Suppose you get angry and think the same thought – "How dare you talk to me like that."  But instead of thinking or even saying, "I ought to slap your face," you actually do slap the other person's face. Now you're in a completely different world. We all know this and it's really not necessary here to go into all the horrible things that can happen. But wars have been fought and millions of people have died from negative thoughts and feelings that have become words and deeds.           So, in closing, this all points to a very simple, but powerful point. Our thoughts and our feelings are entirely our own until we choose to express them. And once they are expressed, they can never be unexpressed. We can do what we can with the results of the expression, but we can't un-express it. And in retrospect we often see that it is our words and our deeds that are not rooted in our higher intelligence that are the roots of all our problems in the world. So, it's always a better course to consider them carefully and consciously before we let them out.  So much trouble can be avoided by doing this. Indeed, the great teachers of all times have taught that there is no need for us to let our doing become our undoing. And common sense says that the best way to solve a problem is to not create it in the first place.           Well, that will be the end of this episode. Again, these podcasts don't present teachings, they're just designed to offer you points of view for your consideration. If they work for you, then work with them. And if not, no harm, no foul. Once again, keep your eyes mind and heart opened, and let's get together in the next one.

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