Question: Please discuss the discouragement felt about the lack of progress made in meditation.

Babaji:

A sadhak, the one who meditates, should not really bother about progress, should simply surrender to the Guru. Just adopt the methods taught by Guru with full faith. Every time you try to know about progress, your concentration gets distracted. You start trying to analyze, making judgments about your own self and your own progress. Only an expert teacher can know the progress. It’s better to think positively always. Reassure yourself that the Guru is with you. He is protecting you. Just concentrate on the practice of meditation.

When you worry about progress, your concentration gets distracted. You have to stop, to look back, thus your practice gets distracted. It is stopped. So your attention goes somewhere else and in the process you get involved. You won’t be able to progress then. Say you are going in a train from New Delhi to Bangalore. It is a super, fast express but if you want to get down at every station to find out how much you have travelled, how much you have progressed, you are likely to miss the train. You will have to stop there and wait for another train to come. So do not get down off the train. You will have to be sitting in the train. It’s like this. So you have to be practising constantly, simply. Practising is your duty. Just do not bother about progress. The teacher knows. The teacher is with you. The Guru is with you always. He will help you.