A: You don’t, and you have no right to. You don’t. Just let them race. They haven’t any power. They can’t do anything to anybody, not even to you. It is just as if there were radio stations buzzing through here, and a billion thoughts from that station go through the mind while I’m talking, and I’m paying no attention to them. They go and they come.
Now in our earliest stages before meditation has become a very deep thing with us, everybody has the experience of thoughts racing through their mind, more especially when they’re trying to be quiet. The reason is that we have been trained to live in the outside world, to see, hear, taste, touch and smell everything that’s going on around us. And so the very moment we try to get quiet, all of these sense things race through our mind. And the strangest thing is this—that it takes so many different forms, as if there really were a devil determined that we weren’t going to get to God.
Now, when the idea of meditation first came to me—and I had no way of knowing how to learn meditation; I had to teach myself—one of the first things that I found in some of the literature on meditation—and there’s not very much of it and what is available isn’t too good—but among the things that I found was that you must try to stop these thoughts. And of course, I really got nowhere fast, and as I discovered, ultimately you can’t stop them. There’s just no way to stop them. They will come and they will go, and you might as well make up your mind to let them come and let them go, and have all the fun they want with you, and just ignore them. Pay no attention to them. Let them come and let them go, because there is a you—there is a you that is thinking about God in your meditation.
Now let’s say I am right here, and I want to meditate, and I want to meditate on some statement of truth. And the thought comes to me “Son thou art ever with me and all that I have is thine.” Good. That thought has come, and I want to meditate on that. I want to meditate on that. Remember that—I want to meditate on it; Joel wants to meditate on that. So there’s an I here; there’s a Joel here. “Son thou art ever with me and all that I have is thine.” “Thou art ever with me”—then I think, “Yes, yes. Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” Jesus said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Yes, I can see that, that God is always with me. Then I can even go back and think of other illustrations of Scripture where it was so evident. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, he could fear no evil, for God was ever with him. Yes, I remember Hezekiah. His people were troubled because the enemy was so great in number that he said to them “Fear not, be courageous. They have only the arm of flesh, but we have the Lord God, the Lord God almighty.” There again was evidence that all the times, in all situations, the Father was saying “I am ever with thee.”
But now you see, while I have been thinking that, especially back in those [my] beginning days [of meditation], these other thoughts were coming through my mind. The body started to itch, first one place, then another, then the top of the head, and then the toes. I had to take my shoes off to get at the toes. And then these thoughts kept coming in, and I don’t know how all people are, but some of mine were pretty bad, and I used to feel very guilty about it because I thought they were my thoughts. I was a little surprised that a person could be so seriously intent on spiritual truth and be thinking such horrible mortal and material thoughts, and I wondered how it could be. I found out later that those weren’t my thoughts. Those were just human thoughts going through the air, and I was picking them up and putting the word “my” before them and thinking they were my thoughts. They never were my thoughts, because my thought was very intent in those years on finding God. I was just picking up other programs in the air.
And I learned to ignore them and just keep my thought on “Son, thou art ever with Me.” And so when these other thoughts would intrude, I would get right through them to that central point and keep my thought there. Rather than wander through these other thoughts, all I had to do was come back and say, “All right, wander away all you want, but I’ll come back.” Here I am: “Son, thou art ever with Me.” And I’d begin all over again. If I wandered away, I’d come right back to my central theme and begin over again, because I learned that these thoughts that would intrude are not power. And always remember this, especially if you’ve been studying forms of metaphysics where they teach that wrong thinking is bad and has power: Don’t believe in it any more. Wrong thinking isn’t a power. Bad thinking isn’t a power. Not even good thinking is a power. Thinking just isn’t a power at all and pay no attention to it.
You concentrate on truth. Truth is power, and the truth that “Son thou art ever with Me” is a truth, and that is power. But if I were to think that God is with me, that’s not a power. If I were to think that God is with you, that’s not a power. If I were to think that the devil is with you, that isn’t a power either. But if I know the truth “Son thou art ever with Me,”that is power. That’s not a thought. That’s an actual truth. That’s as true as two times two are four. Now thinking the truth or thinking about two times two isn’t power, but two times two is four—that’s power because that’s truth.
And so I say, “Son thou art ever with Me.” That’s truth; that’s power. All those other thoughts that are going through there are not power at all. Then I come along to the next statement, “and all that I have is thine.” And the minute I hear that word “I,” it sets up a train of thought, and I go right back to all those statements as I’ve quoted to you: “I am come that ye might be fulfilled.” “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” “Whithersoever thou goest, I go.” Yes, that’s true. Everything that Ihave, I have. All that the Father hath—that Iof my being—is mine, and I am keeping my thought in line with that truth.
It doesn’t mean that a thousand other things aren’t going through my mind. Oh, they may be! They aren’t this minute, because in the years that have followed, my thought has become such that these outside thoughts don’t enter. I can sit down in the silence and go right to my main theme, and nothing comes in. That’s why I can stand on the platform and while I’m talking, even though it hasn’t been thought out in advance, after you listen to the tape, you’ll find we went from a premise to a conclusion. We just didn’t wander away, and the reason is that now everything is shut out except the idea that’s in my mind. But that comes with practice, and the practice of it is to learn to disregard these other thoughts.
Certainly, while you are pondering the deepest truths, you may fear that you are going to die. You may fear for your supply or for your job. You may fear for your children or your grandchildren. Well, don’t stop your meditation on that account. Let those fears go right on. Let those thoughts go right on. You just get through them. Break through them. Hold to your central theme and when you lose the thread, don’t get mad at yourself. Don’t think that you are failing. You aren’t. You are having the same experience that everyone else has had. Just gently go back and pick up your theme again and begin all over.
And of course, don’t be concerned if it does take you six or eight or nine months before you are able to really sit down and hold steadfastly to the truth of being. Your benefit comes from the very first minute of your meditation. From the very first minute that you turn your thought to God, your new consciousness begins to develop, and from then on, it’s merely a matter of stick-to-it-iveness, like it is for any other phase of existence.
From the very moment that the seed is planted in fertile soil, the crop is starting to mature. It may be four months until the harvest. It may be that you can’t even see a shoot coming up from the ground. But you know right well that if you keep your seed warm in the ground and give it fertilization, moisture, and whatever it needs, in due time there will be a crop. So it is with this. The moment the spiritual seed is taken into your consciousness, if you will concern yourself with the necessary fertilization and moisture and whatever care it needs, you can be assured that the time will come when you will have a full and complete crop of that mind that was in Christ Jesus, because every single minute of meditation is a strand in that web. Every single truth that you include or embody within you from a book, from Scripture, from memory, from a lecture, from a class, every one of those truths becomes a strand in the web of your new consciousness.
And of course, you can’t just expect that you can start from scratch and build this whole new consciousness in any other way than strand by strand. “The way is strait and narrow, and few there be that enter”because they will not stay long enough to develop this entire new consciousness. You must die daily and be reborn of the spirit, and there is a time element.
1This excerpt is from Recording 9B-2: 1952 New Washington Series, “Greater Works.” It is posted with kind permission from the Estate of Joel Goldsmith, which holds the copy protection on the recorded classes and the copyright on the transcripts. The full transcript of this recording is available at www.joelgoldsmith.com or by calling 1-800-922-3195.