If obedience is impossible, then there is another way — purifying the heart. There are three ways: the first is obedience; the second is purifying the heart; and the third is selfless service [seva].
To cleanse our hearts is very difficult. How to do that? It is not in renunciating the world and leading a secluded life. While leading a worldly life, you can cleanse your hearts. Suppose you become angry, you have bad thoughts. What to do? The thing to do is to let the thoughts come and go.
Do not check them. To become angry sometimes is in a way good. You get excited, and if you do not express your excitement, you get an opportunity to consider why you got angry. You get lustful thoughts. They will come. Let them come. But do not express them through actions. There is no credit if thoughts do not come. They will come. But you should not check them. Through the evolution of consciousness through the lower stages [of animals], the human mind is subject to anger, lust and greed because of the impressions. It is due to these impressions that we get these thoughts. You can check them temporarily, but they are sure to express themselves. And these impressions express or spend themselves through thoughts. But if you commit actions, you create bindings. Yet this binding is in the Nothing [illusion]. Everything is zero.
Suddenly you become angry, and if you do not express the anger, what will happen? Your mind gets angry but your heart should not know about it. For that there is a way, and that is of no expression — not to express thoughts. As soon as you get angry, immediately remember Baba, and your heart will not be affected by your anger. Do the same with lustful thoughts. Remember Baba wholeheartedly. This is the greatest thing. It is not child’s play to remember me when you are excited.
-www.lordmeher.org, p3735
May 1955; Meherabad