Ego is the worst enemy for mind, followed by lust and greed. You should never allow your ego to dominate. “I” ness is an addiction. A mind influenced by ego, destroys truth, destroys love, destroys kindness, and destroys charity. You will consider ego as the supreme. Instead of universal consciousness you attach importance to “I” consciousness. “I” consciousness is an illusion or maya. In this stage you consider yourself as a separate and distinct entity from God, the universal consciousness. Unfortunately this is the stage in which most of us live. Why we should tame our mind? Is it not a fact that we enjoy all worldly pleasures through our thoughts and mind? Yes, we enjoy every bit of worldly pleasures through our mind only. When your mind is happy it makes your physical body to enjoy the happiness. Mind cannot enjoy the end result of happiness and it always acts through the organs of action or sensory organs. When you are too happy, you get tears in your eyes. You get tears because the mind acts through your eyes. In a nail biting cricket match, you automatically move to edge of your chair due to the influence of mind which feels the excitement. That is why I have said earlier, your association plays a vital role in influencing your mind. Association can be with an event or place or people or action. Association can be for a longer duration or for a shorter duration. Such associations do not modify the influence on your mind. But an association for a longer period leads to addiction. Addiction is extremely difficult to get rid of. Any bad association will make your mind wicked. An association with thieves makes you a thief. Second biggest issue with the mind is suspicion.

Doubting about an anticipated end result certainly will not give you the result you wanted. Affirmation is the greatest boon to mind. When you are repeatedly affirming on a positive result, you can be rest assured that the result will be certainly positive. We should tame our mind so that it continues to retain its original identity, identifying itself with the supreme Atman. Right from our birth, our mind is influenced by so many factors both good and bad. All these influences leave impressions in our mind. When we tame our mind in such a way that it is not influenced by our experience, then mind retains its original identity. Taming can be done only by training. So we have to train our mind. First step is to cut off all the inputs to the mind. The inputs to the mind are given by our sensory organs. To control the inputs to the sensory organs self control is important. For an effective self control you have to have a great will power. Where do you get this will power? You will be surprised to know that you derive will power only from your mind. How is it possible to control your mind by a product derived from the same mind itself? Will power is a product of the mind that is not influenced by the sense organs. There are no external inputs and the inputs are only internal and these inputs are generated by mind itself. This is called subconscious mind. We will continue our discussions on mind in the subsequent postings.