Y.A.R.
Nine Distractions of the Mind
1. Disease
We must learn how to maintain our vehicle like we maintain our car. Disease comes to the skeletal/ moving parts structure, the fluid structure, the nervous/electrical structure which includes the breath. The moving parts must be flushed out and healthy and the structure aligned and balanced. The fluids must be circulating strongly and the pumps and valves working properly. The nerves must be clear and the nadis strong. We must bring all of this into our awareness. If we're going to have an object, we need to connect with it, feel it and care for it. Whatever it is. Diseases occur when the vehicle is not maintained. Disease is simply the self-cleansing process of the body. If we're in the business of making the unconscious conscious, we must weaken the power of disease.
2. Langor
Concentration and depression are opposites. Concentration builds, intensifies energy; depression detensifies energy. In yoga, when sluggishness comes up, we intensify our concentration, creating heat in the mind which melts viscosity or languidness (sluggishness, dullness, lack of passion, depression). Instead of being good to ourselves or being with it, we intensify our concentration, we raise our will, kick in our survival instinct to raise our concentration. It's battle to the death and we intend to win! Only this kind of energy will allow us to accomplish the objective of being conscious in waking, dreaming and deep sleep. Why are there people with no passion? Fear - fear of not achieving a goal, fear of failure, of getting hurt, of not being able to handle the energy in someway. In order to be safe, we throttle ourselves down and refuse to have great expectations about anything. If we are going to be conscious, we must fight to open deeply, first to one thing and then to everything, relating to everything as energy. We may have many experiences which seem to close us down, but we choose to open or close. We have free will to "explore strange new worlds".
3. Doubt
It says in the teachings of yoga, the nature of mind is doubt. It is bipolar. It uses its energy by going around in circles, ending up in the same place it was before, having gone nowhere. Physical existence is the perfect ego. Its own existence is its satisfaction. The nature of existence is doubt. We must clear the doubt in our mind, the duality, either/or view, the endless robotic ping pong mind. Concentrate the mind on one thing which is higher than two . . . like the third eye rather than the physical eyes and the inner ear, located just above the head, rather than the physical ears. We find the single point out of which two points arise and arrive to get their energy. This single point is in the subtle world. We shift our awareness to unity. Pleasure and pain are shadows of pure feeling, feeling without its own nature, just feeling itself. Concentrating the mind on one thing solves all problems of doubt, all problems of duality. The mind is fundamentally electrical; it runs along magnetic and electrical lines. We bring ourselves from either/or mind to both/and mind when we see the unity in all things, the oneness of being.
4. Carelessness
Carelessness is not paying attention to where our body is, where our mind is, who we hang out with, all the ordinary aspects of life where we have accidents and loose vast amounts of energy if we're not conscious of what we are doing. If we are careless, there is a good chance that we will have accidents - injury to the body, harm to our relationships, problems in our business, etc. Physical, emotional and social complications keep us from doing yoga, from being in the state of yoga. Our willingness to be careful, shows our sincerity in practicing yoga. If we create accidents, problems for ourselves, if we are involved with people who complicate our life of yoga - people who live in the ordinary soap opera of life, it is doubtful that we are sincere. It doesn't matter if we practice 8 hours a day. To witness the perceptions and thoughts in our mind and the activities in which we participate, and correlate that with our own internal process is the beginning of the practice of yoga. We actually energize our neurosis if we create more energy through yogic practices, but do not witness ourselves. The energy we create either goes into our conscious awareness or our confusions.
5. Laziness
Laziness simply is the unwillingness to look at ourselves and do something about it.
6. Worldlimindedness
Worldlimindedness refers to being interested and distracted by things in the world. We get caught up in the things we do and forget what our life is about. To be successful, we have to be interested in the goal of yoga, the purpose of yoga above all other things. We must be one-pointed in our focus. Great musicians are people who have deep feeling for their instrument, and who become one with their instrument so that their deepest feelings can be expressed.
7. Delusion
Delusion is being caught in our own unique reality, and it arises out of a gnawing insecurity of our own mortality. The delusion masks for us our fear of being trash, of being something disposable. We delude ourselves rather than find what is under our own mortality, that state which is eternal and is not effected by death, that constant play and flow of creation. That flow is easily recognized if we look at ourselves with a body engaging in some activity, then we go into a dream with another body doing some other activity, wake up from the dream, do something else for a while, go back into a dream again, wake up and engage in a new dream with another situation and body and activity . . . and on and on.
8. Non-achievement of a stage
Many people start this work of mastering the mind, then they see something else and delude themselves into thinking they have completed that work and can take it into the next thing that comes along . . . and in the new thing, present themselves as a master. They want to be at the end of the journey without completing all the stages in between. They want to skip over the dirty work. They will visualize a stage or pick it off another person and imitate that, building a false identity. It is expecially common if they have had a powerful experience, or receive recognition for having a lot of light or knowledge or beauty, or become advanced in one area relative to other people around them. It is easy to want to be at a higher stage than we are, pretend to be there and defend our position.
9. Instability
One day we function at 100% and the next day we function at 10%. If we want to dissolve our conditioning, we must build energy. To build energy, we have to be stable, consistent, steady and maintain balance. If we build a lot of energy through yogic practices, but do not witness our own mind, we energize our demons, magnify our tensions.