SOMETIMES when we are engaged in study or writing a visitor arrives; he may be a welcome friend at any other time, but at the moment he is a trouble. So also when we are engaged in an attempt at concentration, “visitors” throng in upon us, some welcome and others unwelcome. What is it that brings them here so inopportunely, and by what means can we persuade them to take their leave?

A little study of these intruding thoughts will show that they are mostly concerned with considerations of self, and are linked to some emotion and memory in the mind. There is always a tendency for us to regard the things and persons that we meet in the light of how they affect our own lives. As long as this is so, feelings about them will invade our minds when we least require them, and these emotions in turn will awaken their corresponding trains of thought.

If Colonel Snuffamout is a jolly good fellow to all his companions at the club, he is none the less a rank bully to his hapless subordinates, and any thought of him will arouse emotions of cordiality in the one case and of resentment in the other. If I take a walk across the sands, I find the moving particles an insecure and disagreeable foothold; but doubtless the camel finds them indeed pleasant to the hoof. It is so with all the events of life; each thing has its agreeable and its disagreeable aspects, and the latter will end for you only when we have learned to use them all to further the purpose that we have chosen

As long as you choose to regard other men and the events of life solely as they concern your own daily life and feelings, your mind will be swept hither and thither by the winds that blow from everywhere. The mind will be full of memories and anticipations which habitually suggest emotions of anxiety, regret or resentment. These suggestions may be for the most part latent when you are engrossed in some physical work, or some mental activity which is kept to the point by having a physical basis, such as study or reading from books, or thinking in the course of conversation with others. But as soon as you turn away from active pursuits or study to engage in concentration, especially when no visible image or form is employed, you feel this persistent press of thought, which is then very unwelcome.

It is therefore desirable that you should weaken and destroy these associations, which are so fruitful of mental and emotional agitation, by constantly regarding other people and things not as appendages to your own personal life, as providing you with occasions for resentment or self-gratulation, but rather as working out a destiny of their own, in which you can help them or hinder them, as you will. In practice this means that you should form the habit of considering another man’s actions, motives, words or conduct, not as they affect your own life and whatever you may be interested in, but as they affect his life and interests.

This unselfish mode of life prevents the accumulation of personal thoughts, and certainly concentration cannot be fully accomplished unless it is seriously undertaken. The states of mind during concentration and during the rest of the day react upon each other, and if you can thus to a large extent eliminate anxiety, greed, envy, jealousy, anger, fear, pride and irritability from your daily life, it will be so much the better for your concentration.

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