This article below started life as a letter to a family friend, a married lady with a son and a daughter in their early twenties. She was passing through a rough patch in her life, as we all do from time to time. After I sent the letter to her, I modified and sent it to another friend in distress. That friend wrote back to ask if she could send it to someone she knew who might also benefit from it. This letter has now been around the world several times. I offer this for your reflection.
CONQUERING THE MIND
By VivekAnanda Naicker
Puttaparthi
Before advising anybody on how to solve a spiritual problem, my first step is to try the suggestion on myself, always mindful that many of our problems emanate from the fact that we tend to forget that we are really spirit in an alien ambience. Actually, this is where our problems start.
Our primate earth body, you see, has a brain out of which comes what we call our mind or the intellect. The mind and hence the intellect are essential to your survival on this earth plane. However, we have to control and discipline this easily wayward component of our earthly being, so as not to let it go out of control and thus get the better of our inner spiritual entity, the atman or soul.
Out of that often delinquent primate brain and hence mind comes the worst part of the whole deal: our ego. This is the element that causes you all the troubles of your life. It is, to put it mildly, an inveterate trouble-maker. It’s constantly goading the mind on to unpleasant things. It keeps telling the mind it’s the greatest, that it should always claim the best for itself, that it should not tolerate opposition and so on.
The more your ego is given free reign, the more damage it causes. There is a riot of thoughts going on all the time in most people’s “monkey” minds. The solution is to rein in the ego and that means your mind too. The way to do this is to start to discipline your mind by curtailing the intrusion of random thoughts. Most of these are meaningless and serve no purpose other than to fuel the destructive ego, the source of all your emotional and other pain.
Most often, those delinquent thoughts are of past events that might have happened as recently as minutes or hours, days ago or even in the distant past. These are the most insidious and they must be dealt with most severely. The past is gone forever; recalling past events is to live in the past, which is to say that by letting them linger in your mind, you are giving them new energy.
Thinking of past unhappy events with sadness or even dark bitterness would earn you only more sadness and bitterness. Think only light and love and this is what you’d get abundantly in return.
Start making a serious effort to quieten the racket in your mind. The past is dead. Whether it was good or bad, it has no relevance to the now, the beauty of the present. Set aside some private time for yourself each day, when everyone has gone to work or to attend to their own matters.
Make yourself a cup of tea and sit with your Self for a moment. Try to think of yourself as a dispassionate observer of the great panorama of life unfolding before you each day. Try to observe without becoming emotional or judgemental.
Revel in the sunshine of another beautiful day; rejoice in the warmth and love of your family and friends. Thank God for all the elements that combine to make your day: the sunshine and the birdsong, the butterflies that flitter as you hang up the washing, that first cup of tea as you catch your breath amidst all the day’s chores for yourself and your loved ones, like planning the next meal you’d cook for them.
As you sip your tea, thank Providence for giving you all these things, however small and fleeting they may seem. Enjoy them as they happen and thank God from the bottom of your heart for letting you play your part in His great Panorama of Life. Thank Him, too, for the peace of the moment. Even in doing your household chores, you are serving others. How better to show your love than to serve those who are in reality the Embodiments of Love and the Absolute that we call God?
In revelling in the glories of the moment, you are in fact perpetuating that moment. In other words, you ensure that it happens again – and again. The natural law is that all thoughts and words have to manifest and deeds will have their echo. In other words, when you dwell in the beauty of the moment, you are ensuring that such beauty returns to you repeatedly. The opposite is also true, so avoid thinking of negative things.
Start making strenuous efforts not to allow stray thoughts to enter your mind, especially negative ones. If one intrudes, push it out so that there’s nothing there. It won’t be easy. The mind is rebellious. It would be ever so difficult to quieten it completely. Keep telling yourself that eventually, you’ll win the battle. In time, you’ll start to get there. Positive thought works unfailingly.
Make a point of sitting in a quiet corner with your eyes closed for just ten minutes each morning and evening. Do not just read this article and forget about it. DO AS IT SUGGESTS!
Before retiring from my job as head of media relations in the communications directorate of my country’s Independent Electoral Commission, it was my habit to go to my office an hour before others arrived for the day, shut my office door and sit quietly with my eyes closed, simply breathing deeply and blanking out my mind for an hour. In that hour a connection was made with my Higher Self.
Only when the sounds of my colleagues arriving at their desks filtered through did the thought arise to switch on my computer and open my diary. By then it was time to address whatever tasks the day might bring. No matter what contingency arose, it was possible to tackle it with equanimity despite the inherent stresses of communications in a completely unfamiliar situation.
It will not be easy, but do it every day and sooner or later you would learn the tricks to silencing your mind. In other words, you would stop thinking random, useless thoughts or at least drastically reduce them. When you do this, you are actually doing two important things: you are quietening your mind and in the process cutting down your ego.
If you still find it difficult, start saying a mantra the moment extraneous thoughts enter your mind during your quiet morning hour. Try saying the Gayatri Mantra or the Maha Shiva mantra mentally. Stray thoughts go away. Remember though that you would have to condition yourself to be alert: start a mantra the moment nonsense enters your mind.
A happy spin-off of this method is that it can be used effectively to cure depression. It monitors your thoughts, especially negative ones that lower the morale and thus lead one into depression. Keep at it and depression would become a thing of the past.
If you do not know a mantra such as the Gayatri, just say your favourite name for God repeatedly. This is as powerful as any mantra. I say, “Om Namah Shivaya, Om Sai Ram”, repeatedly. A favourite nephew of mine greets God every morning. He simply says, “Hello, God! I hope you’re feeling as great as I do today!”
If you persist, you’ll start to discover after a while that all solutions to all problems are really within yourself. Why? Because the more you look at things in a positive light, the more problems would seem to resolve themselves, or solutions would seem to arrive miraculously. Gradually, it will start to dawn that there is really nothing you cannot do if you set your mind to it. You see, when the solutions eventually come, they in fact emanate from your Higher Self.
Be ruthless with your ego; cut it down every time it raises its head. If it tells you to assert yourself, do the opposite and concede to others while you place yourself last. Place everyone else before yourself. Work hard at being unselfish. Stand back mentally as well as physically and give others a chance. After all, they too deserve a place in the sun.
In speech and in writing, cut down use of the insidious pronoun “I”. There are many ways of saying things without using this rude and arrogant word that the ego so loves to latch on to so as to control your mind and your attitudes. Do it all the time and you’ll come to know that the true meaning of humility is godliness.
Do not allow thoughts of envy, hate, jealousy, fear, spite, malice and vengeance to ever cross your mind. Never say a thoughtless or angry word. Use your hands only to serve and to pray, never to strike. Let alone not gossiping behind someone’s back, don’t even think negatively of others. Always remember that anger earns you more negative karma than almost any other emotion. Eliminate it ruthlessly from your system. Nip all negative thoughts in the bud.
Do not be judgemental of others, no matter what they might have done to you. Sometimes, it would be difficult but keep in mind that not even God judges; He merely observes – with great sadness, no doubt. Why should one judge, knowing that the law of karma is incessantly at work? Remember that every action, including that of passing judgement, in time comes back.
At this point, a most important point has to be made. Nothing happens to you that you have not caused yourself. Read that line again and think about it very carefully. It was stated earlier that our thoughts invariably materialise. Let me make that even clearer.
Everything in your life, all that you did when you awoke this morning – the breakfast that you ate, the clothes that you chose to wear, what you said when you received that telephone call, the order in which you carried out your tasks – are manifestations of your thoughts. Some of those thoughts occurred only seconds or minutes before the manifestation of the idea that gave rise to it. Others were minutes, hours, days, or a longer time ago. However long they took to manifest, all the events of your life were the end result of your earlier thoughts.
Your entire life’s journey, in other words, is the direct end result of your own thoughts.
Therefore, think only positive thoughts, say only good, positive words and do only things that would make others happy. Sow these simple seeds and you’ll reap a cornucopia of happiness.
When you are eventually able to empty the mind effortlessly, you would in fact be meditating. When you achieve this serenity, you’ll hear the Voice of Divinity.
This is what Sri Sathya Sai Baba was alluding to at when He so often said: “I am God and I know it. You are also God, but you do not know.”
Now comes the most important part. First and foremost, remember that your thoughts, words and deeds shape the quality and the course of your reality. They are incredibly powerful. This is the basis of our relationship with the Universe and would in the Golden Age become the root of mankind’s higher consciousness: think, say and do good things and good things would come in search of you, often instantaneously.
The opposite is equally true.
Read that paragraph above as well as the punch line that follows it again because the quality of your life and of those who love you depends on it. Condition yourself into doing these things and the divine grace that the Avatar of this Age came to give mankind would descend on you and yours in the most wonderful ways.
Do it with love and conviction and as surely as the sun rises, your life could take a seemingly miraculous turn for the better.
And while you’re at it, here’s another thought. In the course of your interactions with people today, look out for an opportunity to make someone happy, even if only with a kind word, or gesture. Offer to do some of her work for an unwell colleague. Even a compliment or a positive comment on someone’s appearance or dress could bring happiness to somebody. Remember the law of karma: the more happiness you spread, the more happiness would come in search of you. A kind gesture leaves an indelible impression within the cosmos.
Years ago, while working in the beautiful offices of the Department of Foreign Affairs overlooking Durban Bay, our cleaning lady once told me that she left home so early to get to work on time that she was always tired and hungry. I told my wife, so she started to pack an extra sandwich and fruit in my lunch box each day just for her.
When I was eventually transferred from the Durban office of Foreign Affairs to an overseas posting, that cleaning lady went to the trouble of asking after me from colleagues there. She told them she wanted to write me a letter. They offered to convey it to me in the weekly Diplomatic Bag.
That letter is among the most touching I have ever received and I still have it in my collection.
She wrote: “Thank you for the food you gave me each day when you were in Durban. It was often the only meal I had until I reached Kwa Mashu in the evening. May God always care for you as you did for me.”
Going by the things that have happened to me since then, I am sure He does.
Om Nama Shivaya, Om Sai Ram
VivekAnanda
Prasanthi Nilayam, 21.01.2017
