There is no point placing a pot on the stove unless the stove is switched on. Without heat, your food won’t cook by itself. Sitting down, focusing and going through the motions of our meditation practice, is like preparing a meal and placing the pot on the stove. For our meditation to become a delicious cooked meal, we also need the heat of inspiration.
Sri Chinmoy writes:
“It is better to meditate well once a day in the morning, and to leave it for the rest of the day, than to sit five or six times a day with your eyes closed and just have pleasant thoughts drifting through your head.
“Some people meditate three times, four times, six times a day. But I wish to say the number is of no consequence. If you feel really inspired, meditate twenty times. But if you don’t feel any inspiration, then you are wasting your precious time and just deceiving yourself. Each time you meditate you have to offer your heart’s breath and your soul’s light that you are bringing to the fore. Only then is it worth meditating. Otherwise, you are just insulting your soul’s possibilities.”
But what if inspiration is lacking?
Like our stove, inspiration has to be switched on –
Speak with a spiritual friend who has implicit faith in you: they will inspire you. Vividly recall your own best meditation and other spiritual experiences: your own memories will inspire you. Take time to read the writings of spiritual Masters: their words of truth, beauty, power and joy will sound the bell of inspiration to reverberate within your heart. Sing spiritual songs: the bird of inspiration will fly in your heart-sky.
Now your stove is switched on, you’re ready to cook and enjoy a delicious meditation-meal.
Intuitively, we feel we have a soul – though we only sense our soul as a vague presence, light, power or assurance: we have not seen our soul, and have no direct access to our soul.
Yet our soul is supposedly our only true reality, our inmost, highest, incorruptible eternal self. How then, to connect with this one essential part of our being, with which we have no open line of communication?
Our window to the soul is our spiritual heart: this window opens the moment we silence the mind.
“Thought is from the mental world. But you also have the heart, the identification-world. When you remain in the heart, that means that you are identifying yourself with the soul. The soul is beyond ideas, beyond thought. Instead of concentrating on the mind proper, if you can focus all your concentration on the heart, then the reality that looms large inside the heart automatically gives you an access to the soul. If you concentrate and meditate on the reality that is inside the heart, this reality comes forward. So always try to meditate on the heart and try to bring the soul to the fore. The soul, which is a direct representative of God, is the eternal reality in us.”
– Sri Chinmoy
How do we meditate on the heart? By inviting and focussing only on the divine qualities of the heart: peace, love, light, joy, oneness and satisfaction – and banishing all else.
Our heart is the moon to our soul-sun. While we cannot look directly at the sun, we can gaze endlessly and adoringly at the moon. Loving our moon-heart more and ever more, we increasingly know and gradually grow into the source of all its myriad beauty, sweetness, subtlety, light, power and delight – our soul.
“Peace-search
Has to be man’s
Only true occupation.”
– Sri Chinmoy
When asked: “What do you do?”, or when required to list our occupation, we generally respond with our profession: “I am a bank manager”, “I’m a student”, “I peel potatoes”, “I’m unemployed”.
Yet to equate our occupation with a profession is entirely inadequate, and barely scratches the surface of our outermost being. Once we launch into meditation and the spiritual life, our all-consuming occupation becomes our ever-climbing aspiration and wholehearted dedication – to the search for inner and outer peace, for happiness, truth, self-conquest, life-transformation, integral perfection and God-satisfaction. This occupation does not switch on and off. It is a ceaseless quest, subsuming and transcending all our thoughts, emotions and activities; a quenchless cry, renewing and intensifying with each breath and heartbeat.
As a spiritual seeker, we must acknowledge to ourselves that while our profession plays an essential role in our outer life, it can never define us. It is our inner occupation – our devoted quest for peace, love, light and bliss – that defines us, informs and proclaims who and what we are, shapes what we shall become, achieve and offer to the world.
To a spiritual seeker, one’s outer profession is irrelevant. Infinitely better to sweep the streets with a pure mind and selfless heart, than to rule a nation amid fearful worries and torturing doubts.
At every moment, let our mantra be: “I am a truth-seeker and God-lover.”
The outer life flows ever from the inner life. Regardless of our profession, when our occupation is inner aspiration and outer dedication, then and only then shall our outer life blossom with meaning, value and fulfilment.
Next time we are asked, let us join with Sri Chinmoy in declaring:
“My inner occupation is silence. My outer occupation is surrender.”
“When you meditate,
If thoughts are flocking,
Then try to imagine
That God Himself is rocking
Your heart-cradle.”
– Sri Chinmoy
God is our highest Self. Whatever we experience, God is experiencing in and through us. If thoughts are bothering us and disturbing our meditation, they are bothering and disturbing God; they are blocking us from communicating and connecting with our God within, our own Source.
God wants and needs this conscious, open connection, infinitely more than we are aware that we need this conscious, open connection. And God has the capacity – easily – to dismiss our thoughts. So, since God is the One who most wants and needs for our thoughts to be brought under control, the simplest solution is to offer God the task.
For God to take care of our thoughts, all we need is to let go of our thoughts, and offer them to God. The easiest way to let go of thoughts is to remove our focus from them; the easiest way to remove our focus from thoughts is to focus on something more appealing and compelling. There is nothing and no one more appealing and compelling than God.
Just by thinking of God – God’s Peace, Light and Delight; focusing on God – God’s Beauty, Sweetness and Intimacy; concentrating on God – God’s Mastery, Mystery and Transcendence; invoking God – God’s Fulness, Perfection and Satisfaction; meditating on God – God’s Love, Compassion and Forgiveness – all our thoughts are obliterated.
“It is not your mind
That is more changeful
Than the tide.
It is not even your thoughts
That are more changeful
Than the tide.
It is your love of God
That is more changeful
Than the tide.”
– Sri Chinmoy
To control and transcend the mind and thoughts, ignore the mind and thoughts: just love God – more, evermore.
Thoughts are intermediaries between ourselves and reality; mental instruments we employ to perceive, comprehend and make sense of our jumbled, confusing world. Our minds assume there is no other way of knowing.
Yet above and beyond the mind, the Light of Truth is self-revealing within us: our intuition perceives and knows all, no need of any intermediary. Thoughts are superfluous, redundant; lead weights to a butterfly.
Sri Chinmoy writes:
“When we are in the highest meditation, there will be no thoughts, either good or bad. There it is only light. Now, in light, Vision and Reality are together. Now, you are sitting there and I am standing here. You are the reality. I am the vision. I have to look at you. You are the reality. Then, I have to enter into you in order to know that you are the reality. But, when you do the highest meditation, at that time it is not like that. Reality and Vision are one and the same. Where you are, I have to be. Where I am, you have to be, because we are one. So, in the highest meditation, Reality and Vision go together. That is why we do not need thoughts or ideas or anything. First a thought enters into us. Then we give it form. Then we come to understand what is going on, or what we are talking about. But, when you see the truth, when you see the Knowledge and the Knower and the Thing that is to be known all together, then it is the highest type of meditation.”
– Sri Chinmoy
This highest meditation is already within us. With all our heart and soul, let us hurl ourselves continually upward to our highest: thoughts and their burdens will be abandoned far below.
“Don’t be discouraged.
As almost every good thought
Had a bad past,
Even so, every bad thought
Can have a good future.”
– Sri Chinmoy
The most potent disinfectant and protection from thoughts, is the experience of thoughtless meditation. Here is a chicken and egg: to meditate, we need to clear away thoughts; to clear away thoughts, we need to meditate.
To improve our ability to clear thoughts along with our capacity to meditate, we throw ourselves into both practises concurrently. They go hand in hand.
Who would give up a sumptuous meal in return for a dry cracker, swap a tropical paradise for a cold prison cell, or trade their Porsche for a square-wheeled wooden push cart?
When we are immersed in the beauty, clarity, purity, wonder, liberating vastness and timeless radiance of meditation, the challenge of ridding ourselves of thoughts no longer arises. In pure meditation, we would as soon engage with thoughts as we would snuggle in a nest of scorpions. Thoughts are anathema to pure meditation: redundant, powerless, empty husks, they dissolve in peace, disappear in light, evaporate in bliss.
We cannot attain a perfect score in ten pin bowls without knocking down all the pins: the pins themselves play a crucial role in our success, by their very obstinacy.
Unless thoughts are present, they cannot be challenged; and unless challenged, cannot be overcome; until overcome, we can never attain pure meditation – let alone self-mastery, our nature’s perfection and the fulfilment of our potential – not to mention liberation, enlightenment, satisfaction and God-realisation.
The presence of thoughts spurs us to transcend and rise beyond them. Use thoughts as your incentive and aspiration-fuel. Challenge them now and always. Accept each thought as a blessing, for beyond thought-barrier, all our goals beckon – known, unknown and unknowable.
“Each thought that you have is like a tiny drop in either the ocean of darkness or the ocean of light. If it is an aspiring thought, it is trying to feed you with affection, sweetness and love. If it is a desire-filled thought, it is only trying to bind you, blind you, capture you and devour you.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Thoughts are intimately connected with desire: thoughts and desires both attach us to, and enmesh us in the finite and the unreal. They direct us away from the destination of happiness and fulfilment, our infinite soul, our true self. Desires enlist thoughts to aid them in their purpose, then clothe, embellish, intensify and propagate themselves with thoughts. Both come to us disguised as friends, mentors, even saviours, and we embrace them as such. Thoughts and desires alike stand as barriers fencing us inside our egos, and together expressly prohibit our entry into deeper meditation.
How tempting then, to ascribe blame to thoughts, desires, and to the mind itself, which nurtures both these antagonists. If we could only dispense with the mind, these destructive forces would have no harbour to dock their ships and unload their treacherous cargo.
Thoughts, desires and the mind itself are neutral: our problems arise from our attachment to, and identification with these phenomena. As we rush to embrace and claim thoughts and desires as our own, they claim us. By this same trade, Dr Faust sold his soul to the devil: we exchange infinite potentiality, for passing sensations and fleeting power.
We will always need the mind as our soul’s ideally suited instrument to live and operate in the world. To reject the mind is to throw away the baby with the bath water: the mind must be transformed and illumined – now.
“Each moment is an open door
To invite either
Aspiring and illumining thoughts
Or desiring and binding thoughts.”
– Sri Chinmoy
We meditate not just to have a good experience during meditation; we meditate to transform our consciousness, to intensify, expand and elevate our life experience, 24 hours a day.
As our meditation affects the quality of our life outside of meditation, so does our life outside of meditation impinge on the quality of our meditation.
It is useless to follow a strict diet for 2 hours each day, if we consume junk food for the remaining 22. Strictly disciplining our thoughts during meditation cannot be of much help, unless we carefully monitor and control our flow of thoughts while we are not meditating.
Thoughts are hugely influential in shaping the consciousness we radiate and offer to the world from moment to moment. Our thoughts are 100 per cent our responsibility. As we choose our clothes according to how we wish to present to ourselves and the world, so must we be careful and wise in selecting the wardrobe of thoughts we inhabit, wear and display.
As dust settles and weeds grow, so thoughts will occupy our every idle or distracted moment. To outpace unwanted thoughts, remain always active and dynamic, ever striving for a goal – for aspiration and dynamism give positive focus and form to our thoughts.
Thoughts are the food and currency of our limited and limiting mind; to escape the mind is to escape the corrosive influence of thoughts.
Our spiritual heart is our saviour and refuge. The more we can be in our heart, the better. Humility, gratitude, selflessness and humour are magnets that draw us into our thought-proof heart. Immerse yourself in these qualities: the thought-monster will gradually weaken and eventually surrender.
“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.
Once we are able to detach ourselves from the thought process, if we then choose to allow certain thoughts into our meditation-hall, we must be extremely careful and cautious in our approach.
During meditation, our awareness is heightened and everything is intensified – including the power of thoughts. As Sri Chinmoy has written: “During meditation, if a wrong thought comes, it is like an arrow entering and piercing your inner life.” Yes, positive thoughts can assist and elevate our meditation – but one wrong or negative thought is like releasing rotten egg gas in a perfume shop; it can completely wreck our meditation and leave us in a worse mood than before we started.
So, the guard we post at our door must be extremely vigilant and adept at checking the ID and establishing the credentials of each thought before allowing it access to our meditation.
Thoughts almost never travel alone. They come in “trains of thought”, and these trains can be endless. When one thought appears at our door, inevitably its extended family and friends will be ready to come pouring in the moment our door is slightly ajar. Once we “entertain” one thought, our door is effectively thrown wide open: each thought will summon all its friends, and our party becomes a free-for-all. Among the uninvited guests, some may be disreputable characters who revel in creating disturbance, refuse to leave, trash our home and leave our consciousness a complete mess.
We keep our homes neat and tidy. To allow negative thoughts to run amok during meditation is the same as to have an open sewer running through our lounge room.
In meditation, mind your mind! Treat every thought as an explosive hot potato. Invite only your most trusted, pure, uplifting thoughts – or better, none at all.
As our mind gradually develops a tolerance for inner silence, with practise, we acquire the crucial capacity to detach ourselves from thoughts. In the beginning, this is difficult because we identify ourselves with our thoughts – we feel we are our thoughts. It is impossible to detach ourselves from that we consider to be our very existence, like separating the fragrance from a flower, or blue from the sky.
Once we realise that thoughts are not something we are, but things we have, like clothes from our wardrobe, or tracks selected from a playlist, only then can we imagine existing apart from our thoughts. Once we conceive ourselves as separate to our thoughts, we realise it is not inevitable that thoughts dominate us.
Thoughts do not own us, and cannot be allowed any more to control us.
As our own sovereign consciousness, we must take control of our mind’s immigration policy, and carefully choose, to which thoughts we will issue entry visas to live, study and work in our consciousness-realm.
It is useless to have a policy we cannot enforce. If we are to determine which thoughts we allow to enter, we must know we can exclude those we wish to exclude: we must first develop the enforcement capability to exclude all thoughts.
Detachment is the key, and must be practised. You are here: your mind is there. Imagine your mind is a pristine whiteboard; continually erase each and every thought-mark. Your mind is the sky – keep your mind-sky blue, empty of thought-clouds. Thoughts are projected onto an outdoor screen; remove the screen and the projections are lost into the night. Your mind is a silent, sound-proof room and thoughts are chattering monkeys, helplessly stuck outside with no access.
In detachment, thought-control grows; from detachment, thought-mastery flows.
If we keep our house spotlessly clean, pests will find no food source and cannot make a home there. Whenever we are bothered by thoughts – either in meditation or any other time – the most effective remedy is to make our minds spotlessly pure and sparkling clean by blocking out, flushing away or sweeping aside all thoughts.
For temporary relief from unwanted thoughts, we don’t even need to meditate, we just need distraction – we might engage in strenuous physical activity, sing, read, listen to music, watch a thrilling sports game or phone an engaging friend. Yet all we are accomplishing here, is to swap one costume of thoughts for another.
To free the mind of thoughts completely, we must surgically remove any thoughts that are already inside our mind, and ban any new thoughts from entering.
To treat thoughts already inside the mind, we direct all our attention and channel our focus to a single point of concentration – our chosen object, mantra, music or creative visualisation exercise. Starved of attention, our unwanted thoughts fade and disappear.
To completely clear and then to keep the mind clear, to disallow new thoughts, requires constant vigilance, which cannot be achieved by distraction alone. Here the patient, practised discipline of meditation is indispensable. Our mind is so used to constant activity, constant distraction, that for it to be occupied with only one thought – let alone no thoughts – feels strange at first, disconcerting, even alien and somewhat alarming.
Like a child first entering the water, or a newborn foal on wobbly legs, the mind needs time to adapt to the unfamiliar milieu of thoughtless silence.
To control and detach from thoughts, we must first enrol our mind in the training school to master the art of accepting, welcoming and embracing inner silence.
It’s all very well to say: “Keep out all thoughts!” This is easier said, than done…
It is wise to know one’s enemy. Thoughts in themselves are not our enemy – it is their hold over us, and our helpless attraction to them, which stand as a ruthless barrier to our meditation and inner peace. In our quest to control thoughts, to keep them at bay, it is well to consider the nature of thoughts, and our obsession with them.
As we require oxygen, so thoughts depend utterly on our attention, for their food and fuel. The more we focus or dwell on a thought, the greater its power and influence. When we ignore a thought completely, it starves and withers, and might as well never have existed for us. It is we who make each thought powerful, or not – indeed, we are the power source for the entire thought industry, a Frankenstein of our own creation.
When we speak of controlling thoughts, it is not thoughts in themselves we seek to control: it is our attention on and attachment to thoughts that we can and must rein in.
As long as we identify ourselves primarily with our thinking minds, we imagine and even believe that we are our thoughts, that without them, we could not exist – when actually it is thoughts which rely on us, not the other way around. If we were only our minds, we might indeed need thoughts – but we are not, and can never be, our mere mind.
Pests only inhabit a welcoming environment. We have gone out of our way to make ourselves an attractive home to thoughts, putting out the ‘Welcome!’ mat and offering free board and lodging.
The first step in pest control, is to clean up our house…
