The War Between your Flesh and your Mind
View(s):A never-ending battle constantly prevails within you, a battle that you are often unaware of.
It is just like two dogs who live in the same house roaring at each other, trying to prove each one’s authority to the other, in order to validate who the main controller of the house is. This battle is the battle between your flesh and your mind.
The flesh continuously battles in contrary to the mind to take authority of a person. In the case of your mind surrendering to your flesh, unfortunately pain and agony will always become part and parcel of your life.
Your personality and your character are mainly based on who is in control of you. It can either be your flesh that controls your five senses or it can be your mind. Let me bestow a few examples about mastership of yourself. ‘Do you have control over your meals or does your stomach demand what and when you consume it? ’ ‘Do you control the TV channels you watch or do the TV channels control you?’ ‘Do you control your affiliation towards facebook or has facebook taken control of the time you consume online?’
’Are you in control of the usage of your credit card or is your credit card controlling you?’ If your wife requests you to buy a packet of milk from the supermarket, ‘Do you come back with chocolates, toffees, drinks and other things along with the packet of milk?’ ‘Are you struggling to remain faithful in your marriage?’ ‘Does alcohol and cigarette control you?’ ‘Do you find it difficult to wake up to the alarm?’.
Unless you train, discipline and program your mind to take control over your flesh it will override your mind and take mastership of yourself. Therefore, the battle between the flesh and the mind will take place until the end of time. A baby elephant who grew up tied to a stake will not attempt to get away from it when it is grown. While he was a baby elephant, he attempted to be free yet failed continuously.
Accordingly, his mind has accepted the signal that was sent to its mind through the reaction of his body. You need to be aware that you are the owner of your life, everyone has something known as the ”inner controller” which is similar to a “remote control”.
Your remote control is your “mind”, it functions purely based on your “free will”. You have the free will to either respond to the alarm and wake up or turn it off and sleep for another hour. You can decide if you want to walk 5km a day and remain healthy or enjoy the temporary pleasure of eating junk food. It is your will to choose to remain faithful to your wife or to entertain an illicit relationship. You can opt to study hard and get through the examination or you can take it lightly and remain unresponsive to your studies. “Free Will” is an amazing gift which could either make a man or break a man. It is indeed unfortunate to witness many people walking in slavery whilst they have the free will to make their own decision in every situation of their lives. People who use their free will and get into the destruction of the slavery of fleshly desires seem as though they are people who sell their own houses, waste the money and then live on rent.
Which part of your body do you develop on a daily basis, using your free will?
Is it the flesh or the mind? When I was very young, I was exposed to pornography, the liking I had towards it continued feeding my flesh. This ceaseless feeding, sent a message to my brain, confirming that pornography is pleasurable. Realistically speaking I was feeding a roaring lion who destroyed my happiness one day. Think for a moment, do things that you seek to attain self-satisfaction, destroy you?
If your happiness relies on indulging in things that will ultimately destroy your life, then what you have actually derived is not happiness but sorrow in instalments. Therefore, make a firm decision to put your flesh under the mastership of your mind. The reason many people endure agony in this world is a result of allowing their flesh to master over their mind. The mind has been made a slave of the flesh whereas the mind should be mastering the flesh.
Sewing your mouth will prevent you from 75% of the troubles you may face by speaking and eating unnecessarily. That is the reason the wise stated “bridle your tongue”. Does opening the refrigerator, even when you are not hungry push you to pick something you like to eat? Your flesh overrules your mind by pushing your hands to pick something.
When you are seated in front of the television, your eyes tend to become a slave of those worthless dramas. The moment you switch on the radio in your vehicle, your ears become a slave of the news you hear. It destroys your peace of mind and temper making your blood boil. When you see the bed, do you instantly jump into the bed assisting your flesh to overrule the planned schedule in your mind? Therefore, it is important to vote for the precise master and ingest its leadership within ourselves. The mind must undeniably be positioned as the master of your life over flesh.
People are very keen in appointing the President of the country. They think that electing the correct person as the President would change everything for the betterment in the country. Even though you elect the best President and there is no terrorism in the country, you will never live-in peace if you do not appoint the correct master over yourself.
In life’s journey, appointing and permitting your mind to take control over your body will allow you to gain victory. Recently I was invited to a function, the head of the table very humbly said “Sir, why don’t you have a small shot of whiskey with us for the sake of fellowship”. I told him, “Oh, don’t worry, I can relish a better extent of fellowship with some lovely orange juice”. Train your mind to master over the craving desires of your flesh. Do not compensate or compromise your policies or decisions based on impermanent feelings.
Suppose a monkey is sitting on a branch of a tree adjoining your house expecting some food. Even though he may not get anything on the first few days, out of sympathy, eventually you will keep some bananas on top of your wall which the monkey will eat.
Once you continue this practice for a few days, the monkey will leisurely come in to your property and by any chance if your kitchen door is open, it will take whatever possible from there and run away. Your flesh is also similar to that, the moment you are fond of something it sends a signal to your mind that you have officially approved the particular activity. Based on the signal, the activity persists and your flesh takes pleasure in programming it as your default form of happiness.
Once you are addicted to it, your flesh starts taking control over you. Do not allow your children to leave their plates on the table after a meal, train them to wash their plates, if not their flesh will get accustomed to be lazy and it will compile to a state of it becoming an attitude displaying laziness in their behaviour.
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philipnehri@chandanalepa.lk / voice:0779526496