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This is the second type of mental discipline described in STEP ONE. You might think the second type is just the same as this part, but take a closer look and you will see the difference.
This concerns the specific point of what’s in your mind. You focus your thoughts on a single idea and ignore the rest of the intruding thoughts. This practice adjusts the mind to a higher level of mental vibration. When you already learned to manage outer distractions with much ease and have reached the state of being an OBSERVER of your silent mind, then the next part you have to do is to choose a single thought and focus exclusively on it for several minutes.
When we mull over the correlation of adjusting the mind, it would be clear that the mind functions in predictable ways at each rate. At the rate of our normal daily lives, thoughts come with great rate and mixture, and mostly we deal little control over them. At the rate of the observer, the mind has lesser thoughts, but the mind itself is still also functioning daily in levels of perception. The observer exercise merely shifts the focus onto another level; it does not make the daily level vanish just as once. The same is applicable with the thought discipline level that the observer and the daily level of mind still exist; but this time your mind functions at a higher level.
Same principle of exercise is to be applied in this section like the management of outer distractions you learned during the thought control exercise. The more you do it, the quicker it becomes, and eventually, you might be amazed of how your results come to be.
Do not fight back the natural workings of your mind as this leads only to disappointment. The best judgement is to entice your mind. You control your mind, not the other way around, and all you need do is take the control that you already have and make it a more conscious thing.
Again, do never give up if at first you fail. This is also a fundamentally important ability to master for the upcoming exercises.
Just as the famous proverb tells us, “Whoever conquers his mind, conquers the world.”