By Joel Goldsmith P. 97
Disregard the Thoughts That Come in Meditation

Your meditation is really for the purpose of arriving at the real meaning, the inner meaning, of the statement, “I and my Father are one.” As a beginner, however, you cannot keep that up for very long. You quickly lose the thread of it and find yourself thinking about whether you are missing your appointment at the office, or missing the bus or the train. The first thing you know, your thoughts are wandering.

At that point, gently bring your thought back to the statement. “I and my Father are one.” Do not become impatient with yourself, do not condemn yourself, and do not think that you are hopeless. Pay no attention to this wandering of the mind, but gently bring your thought or attention back and begin again, pondering this idea, or possibly by that time some other idea will have come to you, probably a better one for the moment. As many times as your thought wanders from it, gently come back to the idea again, with no impatience, criticism, or judgment of yourself.

In this beginning state, it is not only that your thoughts wander, but your thoughts keep racing in and out—all kinds of undesirable thoughts. You may think they are your thoughts. They are not. They are just banging away at you, trying to disturb and distract you, so do not fight them, do not try to stop thinking these thoughts, because you cannot succeed, and knowing that, may save you a great deal of trouble. You will never succeed in stopping your thinking, so let those thoughts come in and go out and do anything they want to do. Do not be concerned about them. Just hew to your center, to the particular subject of your meditation.

There will come a time as you continue in this practice when extraneous thoughts will not come, because you will have starved them by neglect; you will have made yourself so unreceptive to them by not fighting them that they will not return. If you fight them, however, they will be there forever because your fighting them is the very thing that keeps them alive. “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him.” All these wrong thoughts that keep recurring are not dangerous or harmful; nobody will know about them; and they will not hurt you. Let them come; let them go; but pay no attention to them.

Always remember that you are in meditation but for one purpose – to realize God.