If we leave our house empty while we go elsewhere, some squatters may occupy it. When we return, they refuse to go or even let us in. 

That’s how bad habits take over our life. When we don’t have anything constructive that fills our life, we start filling our spare time with whatever indulgences gives us quick pleasure. When we indulge thus repeatedly, the resulting bad habits gain control over us — those habits become like squatters who take over our inner home. 

Suppose we don’t want to move back into the house, but just want the squatters to leave. When confronting them, we may not fight firmly enough because we may subconsciously think that the effort or risk isn’t worthwhile. Or we may visit our house temporarily and reassure ourselves that they have left, whereas they are just lying low, waiting to resume control as soon as we depart. In these two cases respectively, we half-heartedly resist our bad habits or temporarily abstain from them, but soon find ourselves relapsing. To reform ourselves permanently, we need to move back our inner home; we need to regain ownership of our life by cultivating a positive purpose. 

While we all can have our own particular purposes, such purposes become most empowering when integrated with the underlying, universal purpose of our existence. Gita wisdom explains that we are souls who are parts of the Whole: the all-attractive supreme, Krishna. We are meant to lovingly connect with him and contribute in a mood of service to him through our various talents, interests and aspirations. Pertinently, the Bhagavad-gita (02.61) states that when we fill our consciousness with the positive purpose of remembering and serving Krishna, then self-mastery becomes attainable and relishable. 

One-sentence summary:

Bad habits are like squatters who won’t move out of our inner house till we move in, by cultivating a positive purpose for our life. 

Think it over:

  • How are our bad habits like inner squatters?
  • While fighting our bad habits, why do we relapse?
  • How can we overcome our bad habits?

***

02.61: One who restrains his senses, keeping them under full control, and fixes his consciousness upon Me, is known as a man of steady intelligence.

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