Page 416 - Meditation – Pujya SriRamchandraji Maharaj

have the choice whether to be that thought or feeling or not.
So, before we can choose not to compromise ourselves, we must first become acutely and intensely aware of those thoughts of ours that may be holding some secret seed of self- defeat. If we do not know that we are doing this kind of compromised thinking or acting out the emotional counterparts what else can follow but defeat in our endeavour. For example, the lower mind through its harmful inner voices and emotional forces may tell us to resent someone or to hate our life; or to give up, and accept fear as a way of life. Our own thoughts may instruct us, without our ever knowing it, to cling to doubts; or to jump headlong into pools of self-pity. And because we do not know that there are alternatives, we do as we are instructed by our lower mind.
With firm faith in the Master which is the first seed to bring out the Courage that is within us we learn during meditation and individual sitting sessions that we can and in fact do wake up to the right path in the middle of these negative states of mind. Working with self- observation, we can actually see, for
ourselves, that these self-compromising 416