________________
THE DYNAMICS OF MEDITATION
be doing than the task at hand? This also shows your mind lacks control. The incessant jumping of your mind consumes your energy and misdirects it. When you are not acting with awareness, your energy is going in another direction. Sometimes you do not use even a fraction of your energy. That is why you make mistakes in driving, typing, writing, calculating, or in talking to people without focusing on your words or their impact.
These errors will be minimized by learning to concentrate and by bringing the power of your whole mind to a subject. When you are talking to someone but thinking of something else, you may use harsh or wrong words. Later you say, “I'm sorry, I did not mean it that way." But if you did not mean it, why did you say it? Nobodywas forcing you to say the wrong words or use the harsh tone of voice. Your apology may erase some of the pain, but it cannot erase everything. Some spot remains. It is like the typewriter: we may erase and type the correct letter five times, but still a reader can see that some error was made.
Meditation is used to educate our mind. This is basic. An uneducated mind is as dangerous as a high-speed automobile with weak brakes. It can create disaster at any moment. What we learned in school was formulas, information, repetition. That was a different thing. What we are now seeking to learn is the art of living. In training our mind we change the quality of our thinking from negative to positive. Then we know how to use all our information properly, precisely and effectively.