Stop playing games with your mind – and with those who play games with your mind
Suppose a person starts playing with a poisonous snake, treating it like a pet or a toy. They would be courting danger. Suppose they had [...]
Our mind is constantly hiding – and is constantly ready to give us a hiding
On our daily path, suppose someone waits hiding for us. Catching us unawares, they bully and beat us. As long as they are hiding, [...]
Even if the mind is not shrill, it is still a shill
A shill is someone who enthusiastically pretends to buy something from a shop so as to allure others to also buy. Our mind is sometimes [...]
If we repeatedly let our mind take us to hell, eventually it won’t let us come back
Addicts often live in their own mental hell. Their mind subjects them to tormenting emotions: unbearable cravings, crippling self-flagellation, utter hopelessness. How do addicts enter [...]
When fighting temptation, focus just on surviving the present battle, not on winning the whole war
Suppose we were to fight a boxing match against a formidable opponent. Suppose further, before and during the fight, an acquaintance from the audience discouraged [...]
The mind tends to do what we don’t intend to do
We may resolve to do some things, say regulate our eating or sleeping, but find ourselves doing the opposite, or at least feeling impelled to [...]
The mind deafens us not just to Krishna, but also to the body
Suppose we are walking on a street, wearing earphones that deafen us to all external sounds. We would be in danger especially if a large [...]
Our forced errors don’t justify our unforced errors
In tennis, when a player is put into a situation where it is almost impossible to hit a shot back into the court, player has [...]
The mind is a masterly telemarketer – don’t pick up the phone
Some telemarketers are dangerously expert at marketing their products. They can make unsuspecting customers who had no desire for that product feel that they need [...]
The mind is not inherently our enemy – it is circumstantially our enemy
When we understand how our mind frequently sabotages us in our endeavors to do constructive things, we may become averse to it, deeming it as [...]
As soon as we stop working constructively, our mind starts working destructively
We often do things that we regret later. If we look back at why we did those things, we will notice that some voice within [...]
The first me is practically never the best me
Some people ask, “We are often told to repress our impulses in the name of civilized behavior or spiritual standards. But doesn’t that mean we [...]
Don’t let the mind control the activities meant to control the mind
During a war, an army can sabotage its opponents by seizing control of their weapons and then using those very weapons against them. Our mind [...]
Train yourself to hack the inner hacker
A major danger in today’s digital world is hacking, wherein unscrupulous people gain access to our confidential, valuable data. A similar danger plagues us all [...]
Even in paradise, the mind will say, “Yes, but …”
We may know people who are habitual faultfinders. No matter how well a thing is done, they harp on some wrong that is irrelevant, insignificant or even imaginary. Being with such people is a recipe for misery. Unfortunately, we have to live with one such inveterate faultfinder: our own mind. It finds faults with the things we have, with the way people treat us, with the way life turns out.
The mind may show us a horror movie, but we don’t have to watch it
Suppose someone starts showing us a horror movie. If we find such movies disconcerting or distasteful, we will refuse to watch it. We need to [...]
The mind’s spells make our life a waking nightmare
Suppose we have a nightmare in which someone is strangling us. We try desperately to resist, but find ourselves being increasingly asphyxiated. Just as we [...]
The mind will smother if we don’t see it as the other
Murderers who don’t want to leave any telltale signs by using a weapon sometimes smother their victims. The mind acts with similar calculated malevolence while [...]
Devotion makes the mind’s power our power
Our mind is phenomenally powerful. Within a fraction of a moment, it can take our thoughts from one end of the world to another. Unfortunately, [...]
Our lack of confidence doesn’t choke us as much as our overconfidence in our hypercritical mind
When we get an opportunity to do something challenging – something that can help develop our God-given talents – we often shrink back in apprehension. [...]
The mind seduces us into doing wrong – and then scolds us for doing wrong
Suppose we have a tyrannical boss who tells us first to do something that doesn’t make sense and then castigates us for having acted senselessly. [...]