Ekagra

Lesson 4

Now that we know the five mental states of yoga, let’s make ekagra our goal for daily living and working. What? You may be wondering why we wouldn’t make niruddha  — the highest level — our goal. A lot of thought when into this, so allow me to delve into the explanation.

Collectively, we have all gone through a great deal. We’ve been so traumatized, stressed, and over-stimulated in life — especially over the past few years. Everything is so fast, and it is so hard to keep up these days. Because of this, the attention span of nearly everyone has been severely damaged to the point where many people can’t focus for more than a few minutes at a time.

I am not judging you or anyone here. My attention span has been damaged too, and I know how difficult it can be to focus. I also understand we are all innocent, which really helps me drop the judgment. When I say we are all innocent, I mean that nearly everything in modern-day life is now set up to make you stressed, over-stimulated, and distracted. Don’t beat yourself up or get frustrated if you have a hard time focusing. This will only make everything worse and cause you to waste time.

In 2024, it is unrealistic to think you can easily achieve the highest level mind of niruddha — where you are always completely focused all the time and distractions don’t affect you at all. To help paint a picture, it is like expecting to go from couch potato to ultra-marathon runner in a single day. Don’t put that pressure on yourself.

Make one-pointed focus the goal. That is the essence of ekagra. Try to be focused on a single thing for as long as possible. When you see yourself becoming distracted or lazy, identify that mind state internally. When you are getting distracted by Facebook or YouTube, say to yourself, “That is a kshipta mindset. I need to get back to the ekagra mindset and focus.” When you start feeling lazy or blah, say to yourself, “This is a mudha mindset. I need to get back to ekagra and focus.” The same goes when you are partially concentrating — sometimes focused and sometimes distracted. You can say to yourself, “This is a vikshipta mindset. Let’s get back to ekagra and focus on one point.”

This mind state identification exercise is more powerful than most people can initially fathom. With a little practice, it gives you much greater control of your mindset, as well as solid direction. However, I want to emphasize again how important it is to not beat yourself up. Frustration and stress almost always bring you down to the lowest states of mind. When you get distracted or lazy, just notice it (don’t judge), and bring the focus back to one point. Make ekagra the goal, then niruddha eventually happens on its own.