The mind often misdirects our energy. It makes us crave for trivial things or makes us worry about things that haven’t materialized and may never materialize.

That’s why if we hear the mind, we will reduce ourselves to incompetence and incoherence. Worse still, the mind after getting us into unnecessary trouble by suggesting sinful indulgences as the quickfix solution to the troubles.

If we are not to be misled by the mind, we can’t afford to trustingly hear the mind – we need to mind what we hear. That is, we need to discerningly evaluate whatever inner voice comes to us and act as per our higher intelligence. The Bhagavad-gita (06.05) urges us to elevate ourselves with the mind and not to degrade ourselves.

To boost our higher intelligence, Gita wisdom offers us a readymade, reliable reference point.

We can compare what we are prompted to do internally with what we have learnt from scripture externally.

During military communication, the authenticity of the source of a message is evaluated by checking whether the message conforms to certain norms – to speak certain passwords, to convey messages that are in accordance with the nation’s broad interests, for example. A trained commander can identify that hostile forces have taken over the military communication system when the messages coming through it are against national interests. Similarly, a trained spiritual warrior can identify that the forces of illusion acting through the mind have sabotaged the inner voice system when the suggestions coming from it are anti-spiritual.

The more we study scripture and tune ourselves to hear the voice of God coming through scripture, the more we are able to identify his voice and to also expose whatever is not his voice. Thus, we can make healthy choices and march towards all-round success in life.

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