When fantasy distracts us from reality let reality distract us from fantasy

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
in the world.
Thank you. Awareness of sensory reality can protect us from mental fantasy whenever we are caught in temptations caught by temptations it is easy to put the blame on the particular sense object that we indulge with, say for an alcoholic they can they may see, they may feel that the alcohol bottle is the curse that that bottle is there and they feel like smashing that bottle however, they can smash all the bottles around them they can remove all alcohol bottles from their house and that needs to be done because if the object that is tempting us and dragging us down, degrading us is readily available then we may succumb to it even before we realize what we are doing but at the same time although at one level sensory awareness or we could say the presence of sense objects within our in the awareness of our senses in the physical awareness of our senses, that can trigger desire and that can make us succumb but it doesn’t have to always be like that the converse can also happen if we, for example we may be sitting in our own room an alcoholic may be sitting in their own workplace doing some work and then suddenly a desire for alcohol comes into their mind so at such a time it’s not at all easy to just get rid of the desire because once the desire comes in, the desire takes the conscious, it occupies the mind and then it drags the mind it possesses the mind and then it pushes the mind so just like say if a train hijacker or a plane hijacker they enter into the plane and then they make the pilot they may force the pilot to move in some other direction go to some other destination so like that, sensory desires they possess us and then they push us they push us away from the physical place where we are situated into a mental world, a fantasy where we imagine ourselves indulging in a particular object and by that indulgence we think that we will get enormous bliss and thus we get caught, we get consumed we get deluded but if we recognize that actually whatever pleasure is promised through such indulgence that pleasure is actually finite it is limited, it is actually very short, very short lived so it works out that we being unable to deal with our desires we go into a fantasy world but at that time to just resist the desires becomes very difficult sometimes returning to an awareness of the physical reality around us can act as a counter to the pull of the desire that is dragging us into the mental fantasy so for example if you are sitting in our office and you start verbalizing becoming aware I see this roof over my head and the ceiling has white paint on it near the ceiling there is a tube light and that tube light is of a modern kind which is short like a bulb protruding but it gives white light and there is a AC which is long bulky, little noisy and has a fan which is now open it is around 45 degree open, whatever so like that if we start observing things around us and verbalizing things at one level this is completely unrelated to the temptation that we are facing that is true but we don’t have to necessarily confront the tempting desire to get rid of it basically just as the desire sometimes distracts us from what we are doing we can distract ourselves from whatever the desire is making us do that means say we were working and suddenly the desire drew us into a fantasy world and what we could do is by just becoming aware of our physical reality and verbalizing say five things that we observe and then five things that we hear there is a tap that is on and it is dripping out water there is a vehicle that is moving in the background, I can hear a low sound with the occasional horn blowing whatever, things like this then that enables us to return to sensory reality sorry to sensory reality from the fantasy so we so just as the fantasy becomes a distractor from the reality, the reality can become a distractor from the fantasy just as the fantasy can become a distractor from the reality, we are working and the fantasy of particular desires that distracts us so the reality can become a distractor from the fantasy, that means we can start becoming aware of our physical reality and thus we can just by even if we don’t find the physical reality interesting, all that interesting, but just focusing our attention on it, by trying to note it and trying to verbalize it that forces our thought away from the temptation that was consuming us and ultimately when we are fighting, we have to use whichever weapon works so directly spiritual weapons such as chanting of the holy names, recitation of scriptural verses, praying to the deities, looking at a picture of the deities, all this can help and if it helps, wonderful but the more important thing is that we have to get our thoughts out of that world of delusion and fantasy in which they are born and we have to pull them back to Krishna pull them back to a safe place and the journey towards pulling them back to the safe place can become by becoming, can begin by becoming aware of our circumstantial reality now of course if we as spiritual seekers have some devotional stimuli around us, we can try to become aware of them also so for example you can say okay there is a picture of Krishna in my room it’s a picture of the deities of a temple that I have actually visited only two times till now here in this particular picture Krishna is dressed in yellow with a green waistband and has a simple headdress with three peacock feathers made into one so like that, now this is verbalization than in the spiritual context and this can be even more powerful again the principle is we want to get ourselves out of our mind, living inside the head is not very healthy all the time it can sometimes make us so consumed by whatever little effort whatever little struggle we are facing whatever way we are getting overwhelmed that we just don’t know how to move on, what to do how to face the situation that we are going through in such circumstances the best thing to do is to help us move towards Krishna to move towards spiritual reality to move towards the reality of what is around us and by being aware of the reality around us we can move towards focusing on being closer and closer to the path where we want to be to the path of self awareness spiritual awareness and progress so when fantasy distracts us from reality let reality distract us from fantasy