Page 392 - WLMIG_6132004.indd

should undertake various spiritual practices like meditation,
prayers, and devotional practices.”
• Impressions will also be distorted by our own projections onto reality of the pain and suffering that we carry in our reservoir of repressed memories (in the chia). Cleansing the mind of this pollution is hastened by regulating one’s food and other living habits.
• Clear and clean mental impressions will be completely hidden by unruly and destructive inner feelings such as lust, anger, pride, greed, jealousy, and envy. Of these impressions, pride is considered the worst enemy. There are eight types of pride: pride of money, learning, caste, affluence, beauty, youth, position or authority, and spiritual. “The best way to remove this distortion is to develop love for all.”
Defects
The mind has certain defects.
• Delusion \[in darkness, seeing a rope as a snake\]
• Danger \[mistaking the snake for a rope and picking it up; in other words, building unrealistic belief systems
upon the faulty bedrock of deluded thinking\]
• Weakness \[such as mental illnesses\]
• Jealousy
Sense Control and the Mind
Swami says that mental awareness is strongly aracted to the senses and the outer world, thus distracting us from lasting inner happiness. Sense control is needed to focus awareness inside where we can find absolute bliss.
Spiritual practices will yield greater reward if the senses are kept under control. Unmindful of the power of the senses and without making proper use of them, man is under the delusion
392