Tuesday, October 9, 2012

How to Control the Mind - Part 10


Mind is Your Tool Only - Handle it Nicely
Mind is your tool or instrument only. You must know how to handle it nicely. When emotions, moods, sentiments, arise in the mind, separate them, study their nature, dissect and analyse them. Do not identify yourself with them. The real “I” is entirely distinct from them. It is the silent Witness. Master your impulses, emotions and moods and rise from the position of a slave to a spiritual king who can rule over them with force and power. You are eternal, all-pervading Soul in reality. Shake yourself from the tyranny of the mind that has oppressed you for so long, domineered over you and exploited you until now. Rise up boldly like a lion. Assert the magnanimity of your Self and be free.
Become an expert driver of the subtle, powerful “machine-mind.” Use all the mental faculties to your best advantage. Mind will become quite a good, willing servant when you know how to tackle with it ably. Use the subconscious mind also; pass on orders to work for you while you are asleep and even while you are conscious. It will sort, analyse and rearrange all facts and figures for you in the twinkling of an eye.
The mind is very plastic if you know the secret of its manipulation. You can bend it any way you like. You can create a dislike for the things you like best now and a liking for the articles which now you dislike most. Do a thing which the mind does not want to do. Do not do a thing which the mind wants to do. This is one way of developing the will and controlling the mind.
Maintain a Positive Attitude
Try to acquire the power of closing yourself against detrimental or undesirable influences by making yourself positive by a particular attitude of the mind. By so doing, you may be receptive to all higher impulses of the soul within and to all higher forces and influences from without. Make a suggestion to yourself, “I close myself; I make myself positive to all things below and open and receptive to all higher influences, to all things above.” By taking this attitude of the mind, consciously, now and then, it soon becomes a habit. All the lower and undesirable influences from both the seen and the unseen side of life are closed out while all higher influences are invited and, in the degree that they are invited, they will enter.
In the mind there is doubt; there is reality also. A doubt arises whether there is a God or not. Another doubt crops up whether I can realize Soul or not. Then another voice yells: “God or Soul is real. He is a solid, concrete Reality as a fruit in my hand. He is a mass of Knowledge and Bliss. I can realize ” We have clearly understood something and these ideas are well-grounded and ingrained. Some ideas are hazy and not firm. They come and go. We will have to cultivate ideas and ground them till they are firmly fixed and implanted. Clarification of ideas will remove perplexity and confusion in the mind.
When a doubt arises, “whether there is God or not, whether I will succeed in Self-realisation or not,” it must be dispelled by well-directed suggestions and affirmations such as: “It is true; I will succeed. There is no doubt of this.” In my dictionary, in my vocabulary, there are no such words as “can't,” “impossible,” “difficult,” etc. Everything is possible under the sun. Nothing is difficult when you strongly make up your mind. Strong determination and firm resolution will bring sanguine success in every affair or undertaking.
Reference
Mind – Its Mysteries and Control by Sri Swami Sivananda

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