How to Get Rid of Bad Thoughts

 A few years ago, I read a life-changing book. It was called Fast-track to the Stars.

Allow me to briefly give you the essence of it.

There once lived a monk who had two homes. One was a hut deep in the Himalayan Mountains. The other was a loft in downtown New York City. She lived a life of two extremes – six months of the year was a pristinely quiet and slow life in the mountains, the other six a fast-paced and harried life in the city.

The two lives were so different; it was hard to even begin to correlate the two. Where she would softly bathe in a gentle stream near her hut and drink directly from it when she was thirsty, she would have a hurried shower and purchase bottled water for $1.50 near her apartment.

Where wild fruit and her own organic vegetable patch sustained her food intake in the mountains, pesticide-sprayed fruit and wilted vegetables with marked-up pricing got her through in the city.

Where her slow mornings in her hut would begin at 5:30 AM with the sunrise; a gentle yoga flow and seated meditation, her super-fast mornings in the city meant she woke up at 5:30 AM but rushed out the door by 6:30 AM to avoid morning traffic on her way to work. The sooner she left, the more breathable the subway was.

The monk went on to speak about the balance of the two lives, her journey to sainthood and the ultimate liberation.

When life in the mountains was idealistic and incredibly dreamy, why would someone choose to live such a dusty, polluted life in the city?

As I read through the book, the above question kept coming back to haunt me. Why did she choose to live through two lives, both poles apart? She could so easily have chosen to stay back in the mountains permanently. Why didn’t she?

Then, towards the end of the book, I came across a section.

“Now, you may have wondered as you were reading this book, why I put myself through this. Why did I lead two lives when I could have chosen one? The mountains were easily the better option, especially for a monk. My meditation practices would have been incredibly qualitative; I would have remained immersed in the Divine constantly. It would have truly been the good life.

But.

When we think of meditation, we often think of a person up in the mountains or in a dark room, seated cross-legged, eyes closed, perhaps chanting something.

Do you know what my meditation was?

Balancing the two lives. And let me tell you, it was the hardest thing I have ever done. It broke me completely. To come back to the city after six months up in the mountains seemed nothing short of torturous. I remember crying out to God nights in a row, wailing to him about my suffering.

“Why do bad things happen to good people, God?!”

“When bad things happen to good people like me, am I supposed to just keep quiet and allow it to happen?! Why are you making me suffer so?”

My rebellion was as strong as my arrogance, as big as my ego.

It was during one of these rants that I asked the question which changed the course of my life. I’d been silently screaming at God and feeling guilty at the same time for having bad thoughts, for questioning Him. I struggled, crying and desperate, until tired out, I fell onto the bed.

“Okay.” I looked up at the ceiling. “Tell me then. I will surrender to Your Will. Just answer one question for me - how to get rid of bad thoughts which constantly cause me to get angry and curse at You? Tell me this and I’ll leave you alone.”

Almost instantly, it felt like the entire world had gone silent. It was a silence beyond description. I could hear everything – the honking of the cars, the rustling of the leaves, the meowing cat nearby, the loud cursing of the upstairs neighbor, my own breath – but I couldn’t hear any of it either. All the sounds, everything I saw- they all seemed to emerge from my very being. But it all seemed like a drama – only in this, I was the director and audience at once.

In that moment, clarity emerged like the soft sunrise above my hut. What was bad? What was good? They held no meaning. What was the difference between the hut and the apartment? Nothing. The external world would always change. But if I remained connected to God, what did it matter? He was inside me and I was a part of Him. We were One, watching the world go by, playing in it, filled with laughter and bliss.

It was the only thing that mattered. It IS the only thing that matters.

And just like that, my dingy little apartment reflected the pristine beauty of my hut.

I had just tasted my first experience of Oneness.

A few days after finishing the book, I accidentally left it behind in a cab. I have never been able to find a copy since. No online vendor seems to stock it, no bookstore seems to know of it. It’s like it appeared by magic, showed me the fast-track way to the stars and then disappeared, job done.

Job done, indeed. For that was the beginning of my journey.

But that’s a story for another time.