Random Forays: Raising the levels of our consciousness

Where exactly are our thoughts focused the whole day long? There is something rather automatic about the act of picking up one’s phone after every two minutes, to check upon this and that, almost, though not quite, akin to the act of blinking or breathing. But the really damaging trend is for human beings to habitually direct their attention towards the muck and filth which the mass media and its social cousins keep raking up. It is indeed a fact that our lives and our whole beings tend to catapult themselves into zones beyond the usual and hackneyed when we start thinking of the bigger picture of life. Paramahansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi, in his uplifting poem, The Noble New, puts it beautifully: Sing songs that none have sung, Think thoughts that ne’er in brain have rung, Walk in paths that none have trod, Weep tears as none have shed for God, Give peace to all to whom none other gave, Claim him your own who’s everywhere disclaimed.