Suppose our home has a broken door. If we don’t want to be robbed, we need to fix that door asap. 

Our inner homes often have broken doors. We as conscious beings interact with the world through our senses, which receive outer stimuli and execute physical actions. Thus, our senses are like the doors to our consciousness, as indicated in the Bhagavad-gita (14.11). 

When are the doors to our consciousness considered broken? When our senses become default pathways for some agitating perception of temptation or some degrading indulgence in temptation. 

How may a door break? By indiscriminate indulgence. When we repeatedly, nonchalantly indulge in some temptation, such indulgence gradually becomes compulsive. Thereafter, we indulge even when we have resolved not to. Often, we indulge without even realizing what we are doing. Thus, through this broken door, temptation robs us of our intelligence, time, morality, dignity, sensitivity, humanity. 

Whenever we succumb to temptation, we often beat ourselves up for being weak-willed. Increasing our willpower is important, but even more important is learning how to better use whatever willpower we presently have. Even if we aren’t strong enough to stop the thief when they are barging in through the broken door, we can still work to fix the door at other times. 

How can we fix the broken doors to our consciousness? By three broad measures: 

  • Distance ourselves from that temptation, either by physically keeping it afar or by creating some obstacles between it and us.
  • Remind ourselves of all the things we have been distracted from, all that we have lost, because of indulging, thereby deterring us from casual indulgence. 
  • Direct our consciousness toward all-attractive Krishna, thereby providing ourselves satisfying alternatives to that temptation. 

When we thus fix the broken doors to our consciousness, we can better resist temptation. 

 

Think it over:

  • How do the doors to our consciousness break?
  • For resisting temptation, what is more important than increasing willpower? Why?
  • How can we fix the broken doors to our consciousness?

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