If you want your inner animal to stay kosher, chew your cud well.
Don't let the stuff growing on the ground enter into your life without multiple ruminations.
First, ask, "Do I need to do this for my purpose in life?"
Then, once that question is answered, "What is its place and how should I use it?"
This is the path to a meaningful, uncluttered life.
Rather than the earth pulling you down, you lift it up.
What the Rebbe's fragment is really telling us is: we have the capacity to decide beforehand what should be part of our life and what should be further away. It is not rumination rather a thoughtful understanding of what is good and what is harmful for human beings -and especially for us Jews. Everything we do deserves thinking before acting on the issue at hand. This thinking might just take a few minutes, but in other instances several days. We DO NOT act upon it until we have a good understanding of the issue at hand, and its nature in the short and in the long run. Rumination is an obsessive type of thinking and I don't agree that this path to fend ourselves of toxic issues and events. Reply
Always be aware of your surroundings where ever you maybe. G D, created all humankind with the ability to choose what we want to accept and toss to the wind what we don't find interesting or helpful in our lives at the time. But don't miss anything on your daily ventures, and you'll be a much better person for using a gift from our G D.