Stop Your Mind

Place your mind below the navel chakra. Stop the distractions.

You know, we have a responsibility to stop our head from running. It is our own really basic responsibility if we want to have a spiritual life or a decent class.
We have a habit, undisciplined habit of thoughts running, and running and running and running and disturbing our life. So, it is our responsibility really to stop them, and it's not easy because sometimes the thoughts are so pleasant, something in us want to follow it. Of course, following to nonsense, to emptiness.

Reality is still around, but it's our responsibility as human beings, not even as spiritual beings, but as human being, to stop the thoughts, even if it's halfway, you got yourself thinking and you catch yourself thinking, stop it at that second, that's all. Just stop it, and you'll have a reprieve for a few seconds or minutes, and then you'll want to start again, you stop it again.

After doing it a few trillion times, your head gets discipline, the thoughts will stop, they'll start and you'll just detach, and they'll stop, then the new one comes, and you detach, and they'll stop. They're not going to take your life away or take your attention away, they're not going to affect your spiritual life. You don't fight them. If you fight them, they get stronger and stronger. We just stop them. That's what one has to do, not only in class, before class or after class, but during the day. This is our responsibility as conscious human beings who want to grow, start stopping your thoughts.

The mind wants to think all the time, it knows nothing else, so I train it to be placed down in the navel chakra. When it’s down there, it stops thinking, it has a house. If it's not there, it's like a wild animal, it will think all the time, has nothing else to do. These bubbles of energy have nothing else to do. So, it's our responsibility to bring it down to the navel chakra, bring it home, this is the home. When you're here, focused here there are no thoughts. All you can do is hear the OM sound, and when you hear the OM sound you won't have any thoughts in the head. It starts with our responsibility of being aware that 90% of the time we are in our head.

So, take it down to 80%, then 70%, slowly reduce the time you think and increase the time when you are more conscious. When you are below your navel it's a struggle, it's a day to day, minute to minute struggle, but if you're determined, I mean there's only one winner in this, your mind will eventually win and focus and stop the thoughts.

You know, I remember once driving from New York to Texas with a truck full of antiques, for the ashram, to sell antiques and on a trip like that you drive 20 hours a day.

So, your mind runs all the time, what else is there to do? It was a snowy day in Tennessee, a snowy evening, and suddenly I’m with my thoughts after an 18-hour drive, then suddenly the truck in front of me, the car in front of me pull the brakes. Stopped. It was snow. So, this kind of skidded, glided it and I pressed on the brakes. And I started skiing towards them about 20 feet, the big truck. And why do I remember it so clearly? Because these 20 feet suddenly my whole being sunk here. I was here. There was not one thought in my head. I mean, the shock of what's about to happen brought me down here. And I never forget this sensation: totally focused by this shock outside shock. And of course, I stopped about five inches away from the other truck.

But I remember that like it was yesterday. Hopefully we don't need shock to be here, but if you ever remember yourself in times of crisis, of difficulties, you suddenly fall down here into the navel chakra. You don't have time to think, and you don't have time to emotionalize the situation. So, what's left? Your whole energy goes down below the navel when you're really in need of it.

So, we have to figure out a way during the day where this is the case, that our life and days are so valuable, so important that we have to be here. We don't have to wait for shock or an extraordinary situation to come towards us to suddenly become focused. Every day is an extraordinary situation, every minute we have in life is extraordinary. So, why wait for an outside situation to force us to go down to our navel. We can do it on a minute-to-minute basis. And that's how eventually you really get a spiritual baby in your belly. That’s where your home is, your foundation.

You know, when see someone who’s thinking, you see that, you see in their eyes, you see they're not with you, they're just somewhere else waiting for you to stop talking so they can talk. The art of listening. And if you are with somebody who is conscious and quiet, his mind is below the navel. You feel that. Otherwise, it's hard, you look at people in a cafe, talking to each other or I rather say, talking at each other all the time. It’s just kind of reliving tensions.

When you are based below your navel, when you're really rooted below your navel, you become a listener. Really, you learn how to listen without waiting for someone to stop talking so you can talk. You really listen because you want to learn. It’s important. What anybody says is important. But to do that you have to be quiet in your navel, not having your thoughts combat his words or their words. Just quiet and listen and you will not believe it, what you learn, when you really listen. You’re not going to believe what you are going to learn from every simple sentence somebody says to you.