Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami's very simple but powerful teaching on protecting your mind through daily meditation. In daily meditation we can correct our thinking, control the feeling nature and stop being a channel for the negatives feelings of others and from the mass consciousness.This talk was given in 1962, but carries a timeless message for all spiritual aspirants.

Unedited Transcript:

The Self God, an intense awareness of being.

We live our lives until we become aware of our surroundings; we live our lives influenced by our surroundings. I'm going to teach you how to protect your mind. Should you find yourself in negative surroundings, and you want to remain positive, you must build up within your own subconscious mind a greater power of positive living to combat the negative surroundings you find yourself in. Now, how to do this, you may ask. You live with yourself though you may like to think you live with other people. But basically, you live with yourself; you live within your own mind and within your own feelings. And these feelings of yours must be protected.

Build your feeling nature strong and in building your feeling nature strong, you protect yourself from the influences of not only the mass consciousness but of negative conditions that may surround you. This is your exercise for the week. Sit quietly each day. Breathe deeply and look into your own mind. Now how do you look into your mind? Try to study objectively how you have been thinking and feeling all day long. And through your study of your own mind you will be able to gain enough strength from within yourself not only to correct your thinking, but to correct your feelings about many many things. When you have control over your feeling nature, then you are no longer a channel for the negative feelings of your surroundings.

How would you describe feeling? You could describe feeling very much like you would describe an antenna. We could say man has a thousand antennas surrounding him, picking up the many thousands of vibrations that reside in the ether, not only feelings of other people, but feelings of groups of people. But you must not be a channel to register all the feeling of the mass consciousness as many people do. You must gain your individuality by turning these antennas within so that you can use the subtle part of your nature of your being to tune into the radiant feelings that emanate from your soul.

Sit quietly each day, breathe deeply. Pull yourself into yourself. Correct your thinking if it needs to be corrected. Correct your feelings if they need to be corrected.

The Self God, an intense awareness of being.