The More Our Consciousness Is Crowded The More Our Conscience Becomes Clouded Gita 16.16

Transcript

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the more our consciousness is crowded the more our conscience becomes clouded suppose we are walking through a crowded road where people are pushing against each other where if in that crash a pickpocket reaches into our purse and steals our credit card we may not even notice the theft in general when we have too much to process we may miss out on processing things that matter the most we may not even be able to process what matters how much this principle applies to our inner world also if our consciousness is crowded with too many stimuli we can’t discern which stimuli are favorable and which are unfavorable which this faculty for discernment is our conscience and like all other faculties it requires consciousness to function consciousness is the basic resource that makes all our other resources usable we may be good cooks but if we are distracted we can’t cook well similarly if we we may be even if our conscience is well trained still if our consciousness is distracted we can’t discern properly and when we are not able to discern among various stimuli then our pleasure seeking tendency makes us gravitate toward enjoyable stimuli especially those that don’t seem overtly objectionable and when we get a little pleasure we start seeking more pleasurable stimuli and gradually we may degenerate in the search for pleasure into activities that we would normally never do Bhagavata cautions that Bhagavata 16.16 states that that when our consciousness is split up too many things crowd our consciousness we get deluded and then we get dragged down into sensuality and eventually make our life hellish so how can we decrease the crowding of our consciousness by simplifying our life to some extent the world’s complexity means that there will be a lot of stimuli in our consciousness but when we make our life unnecessarily complex then that further increases the crowding in our consciousness simplicity doesn’t mean poverty it just means minimizing unimportant choices thereby freeing our thinking for more important choices for example if we go through 50 clothes every morning to decide what to wear we are burdening our mind unnecessarily if we learn to limit inconsequential options and standardize daily choices we can significantly simplify our lives further if we use simplicity to focus on spirituality then we will connect with the all pure divine supreme spiritual reality, all pure divine and that connection will purge our inner world of unsavoury stimuli thereby further decreasing the crowding of our consciousness so when we thus simplify and spiritualize our life our consciousness becomes clearer our conscience becomes sharper and our choices become wiser thank you