Let’s assume that you have chosen God as the goal of your meditation. Without fighting with the impositions, distractions and thinking in your mind, just acknowledge within, “I’m meditating upon God, not ‘me.’ For so long I have been meditating upon me and my satellites, my cherished ruts and patterns.” You are trying to free yourself from these patterns—the distractions, thinking and desires that are your security—by fighting with these same patterns, but all these paraphernalia are dependent upon “me.” Therefore meditation does not get fresh. As soon as you meditate upon God, not “me” you will see that very morning or evening you will come out of meditation refreshed. When you are not there He is there. But you cannot remove you and bring God in mechanically. It requires a surrender—not me, God, You. “Forgive me that I have been meditating upon ‘me’ in Your name.” If you do this you will see that your meditation will be fresh again. 

TAKE THE EXAMPLE OF SUNSHINE. When the sun shines you bask in it, you like it, you admire it. But among millions daily around the world, there are very, very few who look up at the sun and remember the sun as the light-giver. Why? We are occupied with “me and my sunshine giving me enjoyments.” We do not go to the source of sunshine, the sun. The day you do this you will experience the sunshine golden and anew. Take another example: food. You like it. You relish it. The tongue has thousands of taste buds to appreciate the taste. But we are tied up with “my tasting . . . my appetite . . . my aggrandizement . . . my gratification.” You like the food but that itself becomes a rut. If anyone should give you the same thing daily, you would get fed up. I am not trying to compare myself but I have eaten the same food for ten years and did not feel tired of it. You might have read how Tibetans have daily the same tea and tsampa. I don’t mean that you should eat the same thing daily. I am just suggesting that whatever you do, it should be refreshing and renewing. When our whole internal consciousness is on the tongue, the palate, “what I like,” we are missing the creative approach to the food. Let’s take this from the mundane to the spiritual. When we approach the food, we pray. Actually the very idea of praying before eating was this: so the mind gets quieter, so we are more conscious and relaxed in order to properly relish and digest the food. Whatever dish or food item it may be, just look upon it with thankfulness because God created these things, which are beautiful. If you do this, you will find that you are tasting that carrot for the first time in your life, as if you have never tasted it before. The vibrations change.

EXPAND THIS FURTHER. You are meeting a person daily—a relative or friend or even someone who is negative or hostile to you. Normally you think a person is positive or negative to you and you begin to look at him or her in this way. There are two tragedies in this in the case of a negative person: one is that you are not releasing your positive vibrations that could help change him; another is that you are closing the doors to receiving his positivity. Now what would be renewed thinking about this? When you meet a person whom you know, positive or negative, do not assume how he or she was with you in the past. Try to meet him with an open attitude of “let’s see how he is.” If you do this, he will be a new person too. He may prove the same on this first day but perhaps by that evening or the next day or the third day, if you have a fresh attitude and outlook, that person may begin to change. It is not a magic touch; it is not even positive thinking alone because that could be a false courtesy.
       A fresh outlook is where you are not assuming anything is as it was before. You are seeing it for the first time. Open your eyes when the rain is falling and see how the raindrops are coming from the clouds. Do not assume it is the same old thing. When you assume, “it’s the same old thing” it is bound to be a rut for you. The most eternal, the most original—God—could be made into a rut too: He’s so old and the same since the beginning of time! But if you would see God daily, you would never be fed up. You would see how anything He has created—people, animals, insects, birds, seasons, commodities or atmospheres or circumstances—can never be a rut. It is because of ego that you make things a rut: “I like this way. I dislike this way.” You are making furrows or grooves in your brain where the wheels of your mind get stuck and then you say, “It’s the same old thing.” You never remember that you are the one going on and on with the same old thing. This thing happens and you get icky. That thing happens and you feel pleasant. But there is a way of looking at things in a renewed fashion, where you do not have preconceptions.