If we eat some food that causes us diarrhea, we learn to avoid that food in future. Even if other people enjoy that food, we still keep a distance from it.

Physical diarrhea is easily apparent, but when something similar happens at the mental level, it is not that apparent. We expose ourselves to some stimuli that makes our mind wild, with desire or anger or fear or whatever else. Such agitation and the disruption of our intentions and life that ensues is akin to diarrhea at the mind. Just as we learn to avoid the substances that cause physical diarrhea, we need to learn to avoid the stimuli that cause mental diarrhea.

The Bhagavad-gita (02.55) urges us to reject worldly desires and thereby with the purified mind find satisfaction within ourselves.

Just as some substance may be very palatable for our tongue but unpalatable for our body, making resisting them especially difficult, similarly, some stimuli may seem very pleasurable for us initially, but they may hurt us ultimately, thereby making resisting them especially difficult.

Materialistic people often think it a sign of their expertise if they can get to difficult-to-get sense objects. Spiritualists operating on a different value system see it as a sign of intelligence and expertise if they can resist difficult-to-resist sense objects. Such resistance is an art and it is best learned by practicing bhakti-yoga, which connects us with Krishna, our all-attractive Lord whose parts we all are eternally. Connecting with him gives us inner satisfaction which makes resisting outer gratification easier. And when by regular bhakti practice we learn to readily and steadily connect with spiritual stimuli – stimuli that take our consciousness towards spiritual truth and ultimately the highest spiritual truth Krishna – then we automatically master the skill of avoiding mental diarrhea.

 

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