*** Empty Your Cup

By Keith A. Shaw, President, Mind Body Spirit Central.com and SelfGrowth.com Official Guide To Motivation

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Bruce Lee, the legendary martial artist, once told a story about a highly-educated man who went to a Zen teacher to ask and acquire knowledge about Zen. As the Zen teacher began to explain things, the man would frequently interrupt with remarks like, "Oh, yes, we have that too…”

Finally the Zen teacher stopped talking. He began to serve tea to the man. He poured tea into the cup until it was full, and then kept pouring until the cup overflowed. "Enough!" the man once more interrupted, "No more can go into the cup!"

“Indeed, I see," answered the Zen teacher, "If you do not first empty the cup, how can you taste my cup of tea?"

And this is exactly how many of us live our lives. We sometimes carry so many preconceived notions, “baggage”, prejudice and negative clutter in our minds from our past experiences that it makes it difficult to add any positive and empowering thoughts.

These could be things that happened years, months or even a few days ago. These are the negative messages and thoughts that you continue to replay when you are discouraged, disappointed or off track. Examples of these could be: not having enough money, your mental image of yourself, not having the support of others, my boyfriend / girlfriend / husband / wife left me, and so on.

You must remember that your mind is like a garden. You can either lovingly and intelligently cultivate and water it everyday or allow it to run wild. Whether you decide to cultivate it or neglect it something is going to grow in your mind. If you plant no useful seeds, i.e. thoughts, then an abundance of useless weeds will grow, and will continue to grow until your “garden” is overrun by them.

Just as a gardener cultivates his garden plot, keeping it free from weeds and growing flowers and fruits, you can begin to tend the garden of your mind; weeding out all the wrong, useless and negative thoughts, and cultivate toward perfection the flowers and fruits of proper, useful and positive thoughts.

I have always said that “Within your mind, you have the power to create your own heaven or hell.”

Empty your cup. Rid yourself of old outmoded thinking. Open your mind to the endless possibilities that can only be born of positive and empowering thoughts.

Copyright 2008 by Keith A. Shaw and Mind Body Spirit Central.com, LLC. All rights reserved. No portion of this article may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, audio or video recording or otherwise – without the written permission of the author and publisher.