It is one of the best exercises to train attention. Curiously, if you begin practicing the Two-Minute Mind, you may discover that the exercise soon becomes harder. This is because with practice you become more discerning of your own attention. You know exactly when your attention is murky and when it's clear. You become more critical and demand of yourself a higher degree of mental clarity. After a couple of weeks of steady practice — say five or ten minutes a day — you'll feel a remarkable improvement in your attention. You will be able to concentrate for longer periods. Your mind will feel clearer, and it will take less time to gather and focus the full hundred volts of mental energy. Let’s begin: • Place a clock or a watch directly in front of a television playing a sit-com, the news, or better yet, commercials. Try to focus your attention on the movement of the second hand for two solid minutes. Don't allow the television to steer the focus of your attention. • Focus half of your attention on the motion of the second hand and half on your hands. Split your attention down the middle. • Place half of your attention on the motion of the second hand and half on a number series. Mentally recite the numbers 2,4,6,8,10,8,6,4, 2,4,6, and so on, juggling both items in your mind. If you start thinking about something else, or if you lose your place in the series, start again. Strive for two minutes or longer. • Concentrate on the' motion of the second hand with a third of your attention. With another third, focus on reciting a verse, like Mary Had a Little Lamb, or Row, Row, Row Your Boat. With the remaining third of your attention, focus on a number series. Try this exercise to sharpen your focus!

Guru says: The question is wrongly put. There is no question of failure, neither in the short run nor in the long. It is like travelling a long and arduous road in an unknown country. Of all the innumerable steps there is only the last which brings you to your destination. Yet you will not consider all previous steps as failures. Each brought you nearer to your goal, even when you had to turn back to by-pass an obstacle. In reality each step brings you to your goal, because to be always on the move, learning, discovering, unfolding, is your eternal destiny. Living is life's only purpose. The self does not identify itself with success or failure -- the very idea of becoming this or that is unthinkable. The self understands that success and failure are relative and related, that they are the very warp and weft of life. We need to learn from both and go beyond. If you have not learnt, you have to repeat.

If you re reading a difficult text and you're finding that your mind is wander- ing all over the universe, try this trick. Place a check mark in the margin of the book at the place where you noticed that your mind drifted. Go back to where you can remember reading, and continue from there. When you reach the bottom of a page, mentally review what you've just read. If you can't recall the main ideas, return to the top of the page and reread it. If you persist, you'll probably find that your level of comprehension gets higher and the check marks become fewer.

Something to remember this Thanksgiving: You are not in the body, the body is in you! The mind is in you. They happen to you. They are there because you find them interesting. Your very nature has the infinite capacity to enjoy. It is full of zest and affection and love. It sheds its radiance on all that comes within its focus of awareness and nothing is excluded. Show gratitude to your true self this thanksgiving!

Do you think the world is not external?I do based on self inquiry. I believe the perception of the world happens spontaneously in the Self, against the unchanging background of reality, like the dream that occurs in sleep. You are that Self, not an individual, but you have forgotten about it. In fact, the individual person that appears to have forgotten is also happening spontaneously as one of the characters in the dream of life, while the Self rests peacefully in its own completeness. If a world appears, there is consciousness of it; if nothing appears, there is no consciousness of it. The world that appears could be a dream world or it could be this waking world? The appearance and the one who perceives it arise together and are not separate. Both the dream world and the waking world disappear when you are deeply asleep. If they were true, they would remain.