If we find a large sum of money missing from our house, we immediately go all out to nab the thief.

But if small amounts are stolen discreetly and stolen by a familiar person whose presence doesn’t arouse suspicion, we may not even notice the loss. Even if in the long run the sum of these small losses may strip us of much more money than a big robbery.

Such low-profile long-term pilfering is the modus operandi of the mind. The commodity it steals is time – not by taking time out of our day, but by taking us out of the day. The mind distracts us into unproductive even destructive thoughts that simply suck and sap our mental energy. This kind of daydreaming and day-worrying is tantamount to a daylight robbery of our time.

But the robbery doesn’t come to our light because we don’t find large chunks of time unaccounted for in our daily schedule. Nonetheless, the small dips in our attention and performance that result from our mind’s distractions accumulate to a huge amount of wasted time – far more than what we would ever allow to be wasted in one chunk.

How can we stop such daylight robbery of our time?

By learning to become suspicious of our mind, for the mind is by default our enemy as the Bhagavad-gita (06.06) warns.

As the mind is always around us, its actions and suggestions don’t arouse our suspicion.

But by remembering the Gita’s warning that the mind tends to be our enemy, we can consciously watch its activities and prevent it from stealing our precious time. And by engaging ourselves and our mind in positive purifying activities, we can cleanse the mind of its robbing tendencies, thereby putting a permanent end to the daylight robbery.

Bhagavad Gita Chapter 06 Text 06

“For him who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends; but for one who has failed to do so, his mind will remain the greatest enemy.”