The mind was never intended to work by itself -- to move along, un-attended, whatever pathways it chooses anymore than a car is meant to drive down the road by itself without someone behind the wheel deciding where it goes. When we look at a picture of a loved one no longer with us, the first thing we feel is the comfort and contentment we once knew; but, as you know, it never stops right there! Immediately follows the unconscious action of a mind associating with whatever it decides to consider, and in no time we are troubled over what we are being given to see and experience.

How long would you spend in an art gallery where, as you walk through it, the pictures on the walls suddenly change themselves from something good and pleasant to look at into something unsettling? It wouldn't be long before you would realize that while the pictures may change by themselves -- something you have no control over -- you do control the fact that you're walking through that gallery and that, at any point, you may choose to walk right by that disquieting picture, or out of the gallery altogether.

Study these ideas, and then do your best the next time your mind starts to drag you into and through some painful memory to see the event through the truth these ideas reveal. If you will work to be watchful it won't be long before you are capable of experiencing a pleasing memory without the associated pain of having lost the one behind that recollection.