Focus is key to success. Otherwise, you will not be able to put in your best towards the task in hand. Be it to absorb a subject matter under study. Visualise the challenges confronting us in the right perspective due, in order to negotiate them with prudence and patience. Or intelligently articulate your actions while pursuing even your aspirational urges to its desired destination. That calls for being on the alert to keep your indwelling discriminatory abilities in active mode. The irony, however, is that a great majority do not remain conscious about this truth, and so, they are not able to remained focused.
There are five different levels of mind. First, an ignorant/darkening mind. For lack of awareness, such characters keep moving directionless. They are not able to set their priority preferences right and keep wandering unmindfully. Their inherent sense of inertia also plays spoil sport with them. Second comes the scattering type. Their attention keeps drifting hither and thither, randomly flirting around with myriad unwanted and unsolicited thoughts playing in mind. They are tempted to take up so many things at one go, and leave them half way. Majority belong to the above two categories. Third is the gathering up type. Those who somehow realise that they are not able to perform for want of focus, try to gather up their mind. They train their mind to remain disengaged from all inconsequential thoughts, so as to remain riveted to their priority preferences. Their attention may still keep drifting back and forth. They consciously pull back their attention again and again towards desired destination. Consequently, they start doing relatively better. Continued practice helps reach the fourth state — One-pointedness. This is a stage when you will be able to remain focused little longer on the subject of interest, and therefore, proves rewarding. Finally, you graduate to the fifth stage — concentrated mind — when you are able to effortlessly remain focused for long, and at will.
The question now is: How to improve one’s focus. Answer lies in the eight fold dhyana process as laid down in the Patanjali Yoga Sutra. Here, the word dhyana means paying attention. To what? Your own mind-self to figure out what lies within. That includes the negative thought seeds, which keep distracting your attention, knowing which you could make necessary correction. Also, the workable positive imprints, which you could hone and make them worth use in contemporary terms. Finally, figure out the immense potential lying dormant out of ignorance, which unfolded in full will know no limits.
The first four steps are preparatory. Dhyana process as such begins at the fifth stage with Pratyahara. It calls for shifting your attention away from the callings of the seeming world and turn it inward to explore full landscape of mind. Experience, however, suggests that exploration of human mind is something like a sea voyage — the other end of the shore not in sight. Even the path to be traversed is unclear and cluttered. Yet the ship must sail through. Here comes the role of a trained navigator, who first invokes and sharpens one’s inner tools. He then trains his mind on cosmic bodies, seeking guidance from its intelligence pointers to safely cruise through the shortest possible path. It needs to be appreciated that ordinarily a human being attends to nothing less than 60 to 70 thousand thoughts every day during their waking and dream state. Imagine the huge stockpile of thought imprints gathered over the year, one would be confronted with while looking within. They keep you so much engaged that you do not get the mind space necessary to explore full landscape of mind. Not to say anything on how to navigate the mind intelligently. Thus comes into play the role of a trained Guru.
The Guru first teaches you how to settle the mind. You are asked to let the thoughts flow in and out unhindered by remaining focused to the breath cycle. Over a period of time the inconsequential thoughts go out of reckoning, allowing you mind space for further exploration. It is something like a flowing water stream. If somebody passes through its bed, the mud at the bed gets agitated, which makes the water dirty. If you leave the water flow unhindered for a while, the muck will settle down and clean water will become available. Mind too works on similar lines. Here, unwanted thoughts serve as muck. If you refrain from paying attention to these thoughts, they will settle down.
The writer is an astrologer, vastu consultant and spiritual counsellor. Connect with him at
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