Conquering thoughts

Now let us come to the problem of thoughts. The moment an undivine thought or wrong thought enters into your mind, your aspiration must cut it to pieces, because during meditation everything is intense. While you are talking or engaging in your ordinary earthly activities, you can have any kind of thought, for your thoughts are not intense at those times. But during meditation, if any undivine thought comes, the power of your meditation enlarges and intensifies it, and it ruins part of your subtle being. Your spiritual life grows weaker the moment your mind becomes a prey to self-indulgent thoughts. If a good thought comes, try to enlarge it as much as possible. If the good thoughts are on a lower level, you can try to lift them up to a higher level. But if you have a bad thought, just cut it off and kill it.

How will you do this? If the thought that is attacking you is coming from the outer world, try to muster your soul's will from your heart and bring it right in front of your forehead. The moment your soul's will is seen by the thought which is trying to enter into you, that thought is bound to disappear.

There is something practical you can do if you are bothered by thoughts during your meditation. Please feel that inside your mind there is a room and also a door. Stand either inside the room or outside the room, just in front of the door, and wait there to see who is coming. As soon as you see that some people are coming — "people" here means thoughts — you just keep the door closed. In the beginning, in order to become strong, you do not allow anybody in. Otherwise, while you are allowing friends to come in, your enemies may also come in and then you will be totally lost. But there will come a time when you will become inwardly strong and will be in a position to let only your friends come in. At that time you will allow your friends in and keep your enemies outside.

Good thoughts are your friends. Thoughts about God, about self-sacrifice, are good thoughts. When these good thoughts want to enter into your room, you will just leave the door open. But as soon as you see bad thoughts like fear, jealousy, doubt, frustration, depression and so on, you will keep the door closed.

One method of meditation you can use, particularly if your mind is restless, is called "mantra." You can repeat "Supreme" or "God" for a few minutes. Usually it is best to chant a mantra out loud. Just say it in a normal but soulful way.

After doing this for a few minutes, if you can feel that there is somebody inside, your inner being, who is repeating the mantra for you, then you do not have to chant out loud. Sometimes you may have this experience after you have finished. You have repeated "Supreme, Supreme" quite a few times. Then, when you stop, you hear God's Name being repeated inside your heart. Your mouth is not functioning; it is your inner being that has started repeating God's Name inside you.

From:Sri Chinmoy,A child's heart and a child's dreams, Aum Publications, 1986
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/chd