A unified mind is the antithesis of a scattered and divided mind. When your mind becomes the employee of your conscience, then your mind no longer harbors fantasies of fear and attack. Grooming your mind to listen to your conscience is one of the main themes of this article. This achievement is possible for everyone, and once this union is established, wherever you travel in the world you will feel an inner sense of unity with all people and places.
The experience has been described as walking with a constant awareness of a divine presence or highest virtue. To observe such an inward phenomena implies a continence or self-mastery of the sensory network that feeds your mind, as well as a personal philosophy of unconditional acceptance or love. According to yoga science, the senses reach outward and contact their chosen object and then bring the image and experience of that object back into the mind. The experiences that are more exciting and stimulating create a much larger impact on your mind, thus shifting your mood in a major fashion. But their impact can be much longer lasting than a passing mood.
The reverberations of powerful stimuli become the foundation for the development of our subtle habits and interests. Thus, we see people who are driven by their taste for sweets, others who crave touch, and some who crave music and conversation. The sexual urge is the most powerful and, therefore, can become the most disruptive if not directed and channeled properly
Intense cravings drain a great deal of energy from both your mind and body. If you allow your mind and body to become weakened by these cravings, you may lose some of the strength you need to withstand the challenges of disease, old age, and death. The science and psychology of yoga offer us the insights to understand this phenomena and the methodology for self-transformation. The most practical apparatus to change the quality of the mind is the transportation of data through the five senses and the buddhie. When unsupervised, the senses run out into the world and make contact with a multitude of objects. Immediately upon contact, the senses flood the mind with the impressions and power of their experience. If the senses continue to do this in a random fashion, the contents and interests of the mind may become unmanageable. Thus, this fourth principle of learning how to move through the world in a unified manner requires that you learn how to understand and control your senses as well as your sensual urges. For example, sometimes I have the craving for a cookie.
However, once I eat the cookie, I may immediately want another one. It is the nature of desire that fulfilling a craving often does not bring it to an end. This is also true for stronger desires. Therefore, learn to live in moderation and fully understand that fulfilling your desires will not end your desires altogether. This implies the ability to understand and direct your choices of desire and activity. The more you become free from the intensity of sensory cravings, the greater your joy and clarity will become. Refraining from the fulfillment of all desires is not the goal. The goal is to control the senses in order to achieve deeper levels of inner awareness. Without a comprehensive understanding, any prohibition of desire commonly leads to an imbalance in both food and sleep. Thus, all desires must be studied, understood and mastered.
Any observer of their own mind or humanity, at any scale, can readily see the impulsiveness of our behavior. When spontaneous impulses or everyday desires are fulfilled without merit, chaos can dominate our lives. When Patanjali wrote this fourth principle, he gave us a vision of how a happy mind moves through the day - unified, satisfi ed and inspired. He acknowledged the multitude of distractions and desires that would quickly make anyone forget their bond with humanity. This fourth principle of self-mastery teaches and models the manners of channeling and choosing our sensual urges with dignity and virtue.
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