Training The Mind How To Behave

In one sense to control the mind is to train it to behave. It is like catching a wild horse and turning it into a circus horse to do feats to order. How is it done?

Before we can control the mind we must study it.

We have to seize this unstable mind and drag it from its wanderings and fix it on one idea. Over and over again this mush be done. By power of will we must get hold of the mind and make it stop and reflect upon the glory of god.

The easiest way to get hold of the mind is to sit silent and let it we see where mind will go a while. Hold fast to the idea, then see it think as if it were a thing entirely a part from yourself. Identify yourself with god, never with matter or with the mind picture the mind as a calm lake stretched before your and thoughts that come with in a second and go as bubbles rise. Make no effort to control the thoughts, but watch them and follow them in imaginations as they float away. This will gradually lessen the circles. For the mind ranges over wide circles of thought and those circles widen out into ever increasing circles, as in a pond when we throw a stone into it. We want to reverse the process and starting with a huge circle make it narrower until at last we can fix the mind on one point and make it say there. Hold to the idea and watch the mind each day the identification of yourself with thought and feeling will grow less, until at last you can know entirely separate yourself from the mind.

We shall be surprised to see, when we begin this practice, how many hideous thoughts will come to our mind. As the practice continues the turbulence of the mind may increase for some time. But ht more detached from our minds we shall find it possible to feel our selves, the less will be its pranks. Gradually its vagaries will lose all vigour under the penetrating gaze of the observer, and finally the mind will become like a circus horse, vigorous but disciplined. We should for some time deliberately watch our minds every day at regular intervals. And this should continue as long as the mind needs to be taught how to behave.