Go Serious

We’ve been talking about problems, about difficulties, and here’s one method  which I want you to think about for a long, long time after hearing this talk. Give it your own very special attention, so you’ll understand it and then put it into practice. Here it is:

     From now on, when you notice how your mind is noisy, how it’s running away with you chattering all the time, or when you feel jealous of someone, when you feel overwhelmed – now listen very, very carefully – the minute you notice the jittery state you're in, any kind of a wrong emotion, I want you to become utterly, completely serious. Now, I’ll explain that.

     You see, you're not really serious when you're carried away, when you're dancing around the bonfire and your mind’s going a hundred miles an hour or when you're jealous or when you're impeding yourself.  Your mind is not serious.  It has a certain dizziness and a certain giddiness to it, right? You'll agree with that, won’t you?  It has no right seriousness, it’s going off somewhere.

     Absolutely from now on, you will practice this method of deliberately saying to yourself, “I am going to become serious.” Now you won’t understand what it means at the start. You may have to do it a thousand times before you understand.  But if you make this your aim, it will begin to counteract the fire of your mind, so that you have sent a message saying, “I am not going to be a slave to my own jittery mind any more. I'm going to become serious, not grim, not heavy, not depressed.”

     Haven’t you noticed the certain beauty in seriousness? Haven’t you noticed that you're in command of yourself when you're serious without being grim?  Think all this through and let it work through you and you will change.