YOUR MIND IS LIKE A HORSE YOU'RE RIDING

If you don't take the reins, it will go wherever it wants, regardless of what you want. You could be in for a rough ride—under low branches, across cold muddy streams, and through thorny thickets.

When it's doing this, it isn't you; and it doesn't represent you or what you want.

As soon as you take the reins and control it, you suddenly can guide it to do what you want. It will take you wherever you want to go, at the speed you desire, and stop or turn when you command it.

In this sense your mind is also like fire: a terrific servant but a terrible master.