SILENCE OF MIND

If you wish to still your mind, you have to start by not engaging in the stream of thoughts incessantly flowing through your mind. Instead you have to make yourself their disinterested observer. However, because the mind cannot help producing thoughts, simply standing by and watching its movements is not enough to reach a place of silence within your mind. And wanting to stop the current of thoughts moving through your mind is like trying to stop a strong river flowing along its course. You cannot but fail. And if you have been hoping to be successful at it you are feeling frustrated and discouraged at your fruitless attempt on top of your failure. But what you can do, is to take the conscious decision to change the contents of your thoughts and to thus guide your mind gently towards the desired state of silence. One way of catching glimpses of such a state of silent serenity is to start up as second thought-reel in your mind. One which you are consciously filling with beautiful, harmony enducing words. For a while you might be aware of both levels thought running through your mind or you will find your awareness switching to and fro between the two. Try to focus your whole attention upon the second one. Once you are able to keep your focus tuned to its wavelength slow down your speed of thinking to the point of spelling each letter of a word singly in your thoughts leaving moments of silence in between. Like for example:  H – A – R – M – O – N – Y. And quite possibly (with enough practice) you will suddenly realize that between the letters you are thinking the moments of silence are imperceptibly lengthening and deepening. Another way of doing this is to picture the letters with the empty spaces in-between.