Sri Yukteswar ji said "Is the whole world going to change for you? Change yourself: be rid of the mosquito consciousness.” Can you give some practical suggestions as to how to get ourselves out of this mosquito consciousness?
—Alok Datta, India
Dear Alok,
I assume you are not talking about mosquitoes, as such, right? Well, even if you are….
Remember that the story you just quoted takes place between two avatars! Just try that solution on real mosquitoes in a place like India! Nonetheless, the solution is being offered but we must also be realistic in our application of it to our own lives.
After all, if you really are talking about mosquitoes I don’t recommend you lay there all night and get bitten head to toe. I doubt that would help you overcome “mosquito consciousness.” For your efforts, you might get malaria!
In lesser challenges, however, you can learn the power of the practice being offered to us in this example. Swami Kriyananda (a direct disciple of Yogananda and founder of Ananda worldwide), used the term “problem consciousness” to describe that tendency of the conscious mind to see only differences, not solutions. Solutions come from the soul (or, as Yogananda termed it: the Superconscious Mind). [Others might use the term the Akashic record. It is a reference to the intuitive power of the soul, connected to all life and wisdom.]
Since I do not know for sure that you aren’t referring to mosquitoes, solution consciousness would be, at first, to simply get a mosquito net. In Yogananda’s life he was clearly ready for a test beyond having to depend on a net. But you, or I, indeed, most of us, are probably not ready to find a solution to mosquitoes by mental force alone.
Nonetheless, you could practice ridding yourself of Mosquito Consciousness at other times to see if you can use the power of your mind to create an aura of invisibility to mosquitoes (or whatever other temptation, negative thought or habit, etc. that you are facing).
Begin, in other words, in small matters first to develop your mental muscles in the gymnasium of the mind.
Returning now to developing the habit of seeking solutions instead of focusing merely on the problems (which seem to multiply like mosquitoes), here are a few pointers to help you live “superconsciously”:
- Meditate daily (2x a day). After practicing an effective technique of concentration, sit in the silence with your thoughts at rest and your heart open in devotion and self-offering. It is in the “sitting” phase of meditation that access to intuition, the state of Akasha, or the knowing power of the soul, is developed.
- Daily meditation plus mindfulness during activities will help you to gradually calm your own reactivity to problems. Learn to pause before you speak; before you act. Learn to listen to the pauses between activities; between the words of other people; learn to feel the space in your body; between words and actions. Live more in the inner silence. Take refreshing mental time-outs from feverish and unceasing thoughts throughout the day. This “pause that refreshes” will become a habit that allows the superconscious mind to insert words, images and thoughts of creative solutions to the “mosquitoes” in your life.
- Mix with successful people: artistic, creative, successful, and spiritual people: whether by direct association or indirectly through books, stories, etc. Learn to seek and to admire and emulate creative people, especially the saints. “Satsang” with spiritually-minded fellows is very, very important. More important, in fact, than anything else until such time as your development draws to you others seeking your magnetism.
Well, I think I’ve offered plenty of mosquito bait for your mind. “Banat, banat, ban jai!” (Lahiri Mahasaya: “Doing, doing, soon done!”)
Jai guru!
Nayaswami Hriman
Seattle WA USA
www.Hrimananda.org
