“If your mind is brave,
Then challenge thought!
If you heart is pure,
Then transcend thought!”
– Sri Chinmoy
When we live near a volcano, to protect ourselves from its eruptions, we have two options: fortify our home so it can withstand a lava flow (and pray); or move to somewhere without volcanos, like Australia. The second is the safest and surest choice.
Once we have acquired the capacity to detach ourselves from the thought process, we can either post a guard to allow only good and inspiring thoughts to enter our consciousness; or we can fly beyond the thought-horizons into the meditation-skies of peace, light and bliss.
Flying in outer space, a rocket appears stationary, the universe a vast stillness; in pure meditation all is poise, balance and calm. Yet to reach outer space, the rocket required a stupendous effort to counteract and overcome earth’s massive gravity; to attain the bliss of silent meditation demands the mightiest aspiration of intense focus to counteract and overcome the attachment-gravity of thoughts.
On our own, we are no match for thoughts. Only by taking the help of a higher power, can we overcome them. Thoughts have their own astonishing velocity and immense power. To transcend thoughts, we must be faster and/or vaster than thoughts.
To be faster than thoughts, we must propel ourselves with intense aspiration, or fly on the wings of divine Grace.
To be vaster than thoughts, we must ascend beyond the mind and expand toward the infinite. Thoughts can live and breathe only in the artificial atmosphere of the finite mind. Outside and beyond the mind, thoughts have no bearing, traction or oxygen. Incapable of rising or expanding beyond their self-created finite realm, before the light of the infinite, thoughts evaporate into their true form: nothingness.