Table of Contents
What are the Mind Faculties and What lights them up?
The mind faculties are the mirror of the world. The mind Faculties comprise of the Memory, Intellect and the False Ego. What lies within our minds are our thoughts, views, opinions and perspectives. Our Inner Projections colour the world around us.
The external world presents these projections through the medium of the senses of sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch. The world outside is whatever illusion we have built within ourselves through our thoughts and perceptions, consciously or unconsciously.
It is within each one of us. It is usually untrained, and there is a great need to tame it. If left free, without control, it creates havoc in our lives. The news is, it’s already doing it. It is the very nature of our inner world that poses challenges in the outside world. What we undergo in life is just a roll up of our deeper hunches, unconscious traits, unclean habits and all those aspects of human behavior which we ourselves are totally unaware of.
The Mind Faculties are in a Reptilian Mode Right Now
What is at stake, is our very life, our peace and happiness. All suffering is because of the incorrect functioning of the mind faculties. The mind faculties are a mad circus driven by greed and self-centeredness.
It operates on survival instincts, totally in the reptilian mode. The mind faculties represent the animal within us, which, if let unattended, can wreck the quality of our life. The secret of solving the mystery of life, at the outside, is by grappling with the inner instrument that projects it, the mind faculties.
The mind faculties have to be, at some point educated, retrained and re-programmed. It has to be re-informed about birth, aging, illness, death and Moral Conduct. Unless we fix these aspects of life within, life in the exterior will continue to torment us.
What makes the Mind Faculties run on Auto Mode?
One needs to educate oneself about what needs struggle and where struggle is unnecessary. All of us have grown up, unaware of what has shaped our growth. We do not know the seeds sown within our hearts that are tailoring and shaping our future, even without our conscious consent.
This is frightening, if we care to understand it at all. What is important, is to get a hang on the triggers of life within us. The mind faculties enjoy, seated quietly behind our sensory perceptions of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Give food to engage the senses and the mind faculties shall only demand more and more.
Tools have to be employed to get the mind faculties to behave.
A proper spiritual discipline, in line with our Vedic Wisdom, is perhaps the only toolset available today, to embark the mind faculties in the proper direction, towards resolving life’s problems, towards enlightenment.
Constant reflection and clear awareness of suffering is the means of frightening the mind faculties. Unless you frighten the mind faculties thus, it shall be happy to immerse us, in the deep waters of unceasing struggle. A struggle that shall lead us nowhere, but towards furthering confusion.
7/8 Questions from Sanatana Dharma
The scores generated in this Quiz may or may not be absolute. There may be right or wrong answers to each Question. A percentage towards 100 indicates that you are more aligned to the overall subject matter.
How can we Escape the Auto Program Mode of our Mind?
Engaging the mind faculties in higher things, higher ideals, training the mind to rejoice in virtues, is a great means to make it feel lighter and healthier. That will elevate us in our endeavors to reach higher areas of joy and happiness.
Inspiration is a needed tonic for the mind faculties. Thoughts that trigger selfless actions, will release the soul. Today, the soul is a slave of the mind faculties. Unless we make the lighter in the light of conscious morality, the soul shall never be free.
Follow your heart, it is a sign of freedom. Follow the words of the Wise, it is a sign of intelligence. When one cannot chant the names of the Lord or cannot meditate; If one’s mind faculties remain disturbed as one tries to meditate, it is a matter to be investigated upon.
Why is Meditation Not Helping us as it Should Have?
There could be several reasons for such lack of calm. One of the major reasons is to be exposed too much to negative environments or influences.
Over 80% of the meditators remain disturbed as they go about their meditation or spiritual practices, as a routine that lacks life. One can carry out Meditation or allied spiritual practices only if one adheres to pre-practice restrictions.
It is to be understood that more than for the body, meditation is for the conscience which is the rudiment of consciousness. The way meditation works is that before the body; it first attempts to clear the mental mess, it works on the conscience, purifies it and with the purified faculty, finally, it works on the body.
Some people use meditation in the exercise regime, for their body. This approach shall not yield results in the longer run. It becomes essential for the practitioner to first purify one’s senses, one’s intentions and realign life goals, if at all meditation is to be rendered useful to them as a life-changing mechanism.
For all other hideous and shallow purposes, meditation cannot qualify as the right tool.
If a person exposes himself to material that promotes violence or indulgence in sensual pleasure, the mind faculties become attached to these passionate mental experiences and shall throw up obnoxious thoughts every time when he sits down to chant or meditate. Other reasons for meditation, not to yield results, could be if one has disturbed relationships or fights and also attachment to compulsive argumentation with hateful people.
Another reason could be that of exerting the body with unnecessary exercise and tiring oneself unconsciously through body or the mind faculties. In all such cases, one may become disinterested in chanting and meditation or become distracted easily.
To tackle such instabilities of the mind faculties, one should make meditation and spiritual practice as one’s highest priorities. Meditation, it is to be understood, is for freeing oneself and not for “achieving” something of this world. This is the point.
Conscious Control of Mind Faculties is vital
One should avoid anything that will agitate the mind faculties, as one takes up meditation.
For the sake of entertaining the mind faculties it will be foolish to expose it to unpleasant or passionate feelings, as also it is necessary to avoid any actions of unpleasantness or unnecessary turbulence or agitation; both via body and the mind faculties.
Over-exposing the mind to pleasurable feelings is also a great deterrent in its readiness to take up meditation or spiritual practices. One has to be resolute in training the mind to take up Sadhana (spiritual practice) and temper the mind faculties through discipline.
Meditation and Chanting should be the single-most important practice of one’s life if at all one is interested in leading a calm and peaceful life. These restrictions, if adhered to, as one meditates and chants can catapult one to heightened states of consciousness, as one builds the practice over a protracted stretch of time. Meditation,one must realize, can only blossom as a long-term practice.
It is quite useless to practice meditation with short-term goals in mind. Sensual agitation will lead to failure in concentration. This is obviously detrimental to your goal. If one is serious with one’s meditational practices, then following the preliminary practices are a must.
Some Preliminary Steps to get the Animal Called The Mind
Avoidance of too much company with society people is mandatory, if meditation is to work for you. Only meet people if it is absolutely necessary. Keeping relationships transactional without attaching too many emotions to people is vital.
Avoid watching too many movies or films. Listen to talks by elevated sages who base their talk on Vedic Scriptures. Avoid personal development lectures that promote achievement of worldly success, wealth, prosperity, fame and worldly gain. All these talks can cause a high level of agitation and also pump undesirable hormones such as dopamine into your blood-stream that cause anxiety.
With these unnecessary habits, it is to be understood that one gets pushed into the mode of passion, which does not support meditation. One shall ultimately lose one’s peace, influenced by such useless talks, rendered by unworthy management and motivational gurus who only end up stoking greed and desire in the hearts of innocent men.
By all means, one should refrain oneself from the rat race of competition and hiked up self-worth. Meditate often. Avoid too much association with the other sex. One should not get involved in gossip or back-biting. Even when one is involved with something specific, taking one’s attention consciously to one’s breathing and entering the present moment, is a powerful practice.
The most important of all suggestions is regarding work. One should never focus attention on the result of work or actions. Work is to be performed in the light of the Vedic Scriptures, which encourage you to perform work as worship and inspire people to free themselves from getting attached to the results of work.
One must inspire oneself to work and enjoy the journey, that’s it. With these areas being taken care of, one shall automatically get inspired to chant and meditate with no concentration lapse.
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