“Let your thoughts be in hell, but you rejoice in the Divine.....”

On the spiritual path, the utmost thing that we have to do is to control our mind. We say to watch our thoughts. What is a thought? A thought is an image. A thought is a creation.  Why is it said that we have to watch our thoughts; because most of the time our thoughts make us negative. We have to watch them and have them under control – very often it’s quite difficult. Our thoughts make us who we are, because we always run behind them. A few days ago there was a reading in the chapel where there was a saying from St. Silouan of Mount Athos that said “Let your thoughts be in hell, but you rejoice in the Divine.” I will comment a little bit on that. Nowadays, the moment you see your thoughts running to hell, you are all running with the thoughts to hell. Your thoughts are jumping, jumping and jumping and then boom – there they go. You are also jumping behind them and doing the same, throwing yourself after them. When we watch ourselves, we see that very often we like to speak out what we have in our minds. We like to tell  everybody how great we are. We like to publicise ourselves and say “Oh, I have seen that light, I have seen this and I have seen that. I have felt this and I have felt that.” Why? It is to feed that thought, so that the thought can become bigger. It’s like when you analyse a reptile. A reptile can be very soft, very easy, going its way, but the moment it falls in a pit, it will try it’s best to come out. The moment the reptile comes out of that pit, it will be more aggressive than ever. This is how our thoughts are also. The moment we let it out, it’s infamed with this vigorous power, saying “Yes, I am out.” Like Christ said “It’s not what goes inside the person that makes them polluted, but what comes out of the person.” In the Gita it says “A controlled mind is your best friend, but an uncontrolled mind is your worst enemy.” Like I said, the way we think is the way we are. We have to control our thoughts. Prayer and continuous remembering of the Divine help us to control our mind. They help us to bring our mind, which is always running, into calm, into silence. Through silence, the thoughts will disappear. If your thought is negative and you let it out, all around you everything becomes negative. There will be nothing positive. But if you keep this thought inside, through prayer and through inner silence, it will dissolve. But no, we like so much to express ourselves, to express our thoughts. You can;  I won’t say “No, don’t do it”, but  first, master it, then you can express it. If you silence yourself completely, if you silence your mind, you will receive everything. You will not even need to ask. You will receive, because God is merciful. He is the all-knowing, so do you think you really have to ask Him?