Skip to content
  • Home
  • Videos
    • First Steps
    • Stories
    • Yoga Perspectives
    • Essential Life Skills
    • Spiritual Development
    • Devotional Yoga
    • Yoga in Daily Life
  • Talks
    • Higher Yogas Classes
    • Yoga Basics
    • Bhakti Yoga
    • Sri Ramakrishna
    • Go Farther with Meditation
    • Theme of the Month
    • Devotional Chants
  • Writings
    • Yoga as a Spiritual Path
    • Discover the Miracle of Prayer
    • Keys to Higher Consciousness
    • Growing on the Path
    • Relating with Spirit
    • Spiritual Living
    • Interviews
  • Courses
    • Introducing Courses
    • Online Seminars
    • Online Retreats
    • Initial Mysteries
  • Explore
    • Lifelines
    • Topics
    • Yoga Terms
    • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Favorites
    • Recent Additions
  • About
    • Ramakrishna Ananda
    • Why Are We Doing This Now?
    • Our Ideals
    • Get Updates
    • Contact Us
    • Terms and Privacy
Menu
  • Home
  • Videos
    • First Steps
    • Stories
    • Yoga Perspectives
    • Essential Life Skills
    • Spiritual Development
    • Devotional Yoga
    • Yoga in Daily Life
  • Talks
    • Higher Yogas Classes
    • Yoga Basics
    • Bhakti Yoga
    • Sri Ramakrishna
    • Go Farther with Meditation
    • Theme of the Month
    • Devotional Chants
  • Writings
    • Yoga as a Spiritual Path
    • Discover the Miracle of Prayer
    • Keys to Higher Consciousness
    • Growing on the Path
    • Relating with Spirit
    • Spiritual Living
    • Interviews
  • Courses
    • Introducing Courses
    • Online Seminars
    • Online Retreats
    • Initial Mysteries
  • Explore
    • Lifelines
    • Topics
    • Yoga Terms
    • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Favorites
    • Recent Additions
  • About
    • Ramakrishna Ananda
    • Why Are We Doing This Now?
    • Our Ideals
    • Get Updates
    • Contact Us
    • Terms and Privacy
Auther

Ramakrishna Ananda

What Will Prevail?

Are you letting old habits keep you from lasting happiness?

You may find you have to struggle in order to be more conscious. Despite wonderful benefits close at hand, you will nevertheless find yourself fighting what seems at times a tedious, uphill battle. Why? Old tendencies are very powerful. Your habits will almost always win. It’s not a question of sincerity, either. Of course you’d like to be a more loving, creative person. Who wouldn’t?

Certainly it would be wonderful to contact your higher consciousness with its thrilling insight and inner power. No question it’s a worthwhile endeavor. No question it’s worth persistence and quantities of attention. Nevertheless, your old tendencies, the way you habitually think and feel — your most regular attitudes about life from yesterday and yesteryear — will not easily yield to a happier you.

Keys to Higher Consciousness, Habits

Very often we sincerely make commitments to ourselves. We may even tell others about the new person we are striving to be. Yet a few weeks down the road we are all too often the same. Endeavoring to shape a new life, in one way or another, can be gallingly frustrating. We usually fail. The old way of doing things, the old habit patterns, are so familiar and apparently powerful. Too frequently we resign and give in to the idea that while other people may succeed in their transformation projects, we are somehow less qualified as human beings. Others must have tremendous will power, whereas ours must indeed be very puny. Or, then again, were we truly sincere? Maybe we didn’t mean it. Obviously we must not have valued our commitment to our new dreams and goals because we gave up so easily. We failed with such total surrender. It only took a few weeks and here we are, unsuccessful once again. We feel either weak-willed or are convinced that our sincerity is most ingenuine.

Next time, when a good idea comes our way we decide not to be fooled into believing we’re sincere. That’s that. So it goes. We joyously jump into failure.

Good Intentions Aren’t Enough

But the fact is you’re not alone. You’re normal. Most everyone, despite helpful inspiration and a deep sincerity, will fail or give up (“giving up” is a nicer word for failure) before accomplishing vitally important goals. Many people will generally fail.

Then, with failure, the guilt feelings come along. Unhappy with yourself, you often lash out at others, or you refuse to have good will, not only for other people but for yourself as well. The guilt feelings last a long time and regularly tell you you’re not a very good person — you’re not worthy or capable of a better life. Certainly, you feel you’re not worthy of higher consciousness. You develop a secret. Despite the right clothes or the right words, you know down deep you’re inferior to other people. You know your failures. You know your limitations. Other people don’t know. They can’t see how badly you’ve fallen short of your dearest hopes. They don’t know, or do they?

“Is my inadequacy visible?” you wonder.

When you know you’re an inferior person, what’s the point of trying? So, when you’ve failed several times you do the obvious: find fitting compromises, find a niche for your inadequate self and muddle along as best you can. Of course it’s helpful to be quite critical of other people so you can be mindful of their inferiorities as well as your own aching ego. Compromise is the rule of the day and, after all, isn’t that what everybody does? Isn’t everyone, in fact, something of a joke? A blunderer? Yes, why does anyone ever try to be more than he or she was yesterday?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is widely stated. Good intentions are pleasant in their own way but how do you, how can you, take good intentions and make them into realities? How can you in truth become more conscious and accomplish, in fact, not in fantasy, what you so powerfully yearn for?

HOW TO SUCCEED

Overcoming Old Habits

It is so important to understand something of the process of success. In whatever area you seek success, you must understand that your tendencies, your habits, will prevail. Most often, old tendencies and habits frustrate and generally smother the new life you are striving to create. Your old tendencies took years of development. Each of us is deeply entrenched in old ways. How can we expect a new rivulet created in three minutes or three days of aspiration to possibly stand against the mighty, deep rivers we have built over ten, fifteen, twenty-five years?

Yet the fact that you are here indicates you have already begun breaking free of old, destructive tendencies. You are searching for a new vision. You are raising your consciousness to new possibilities. You are thinking of higher and alternate ways of doing things. You are contemplating the possibility that higher consciousness does exist and is available to you. You even suspect that higher consciousness is this very minute locked within you, ready to be unleashed. Further, you appreciate that some higher consciousness is already at work throughout your life in order for you to be able to breathe, walk, talk, think, feel. This attitude allows your attention and emotions to overflow the banks of old riverbeds of habits to seek new directions.

Old tendencies will never — repeat, never — be able to stop you if you thoroughly understand the following process. The main thing that must be understood at every step along the way to a more conscious and even superconscious life is this: The seeker of higher consciousness and fulfillment must create new tendencies! Your greater success in life is based on your willingness to not only think about new possibilities but to redirect the flow of your thoughts and feelings, the flow of your life force, into new tendencies and habits of living. New tendencies must be formed, habits and attitudes which will be truly constructive and which at no point will block or inhibit your heartfelt purposes. Almost all failure, especially regarding the achievement of higher consciousness, is caused by our not forming new tendencies.

Keep At It

Somehow people think that merely having a new idea or an enthusiastic, heart-pumping time at some lecture will bring about the new fulfillment or extraordinary capacities. If this were the case, our planet would be instantly out of trouble. The world today is filled with people who get excited about a new idea or way of life almost every month. As soon as they begin to lose their inspiration, and old habits start to sweep them away from the goal once glimpsed so brightly, they move onto something else and proceed through life, jag after jag. Later they look back at their lives and notice they haven’t accomplished much of anything. They notice friends they met along the way, friends who seem to have gained the fruits of success — friends who were more constant in their focus on goals. The jaggers find they themselves have traveled far but arrived nowhere.

To accomplish your fulfillment and know your higher consciousness, vigorous, constant, new tendencies have to be formed. These tendencies will become so strong that no old habits will be able to overcome them. Also, when these new tendencies are consciously and lovingly created, shocks and deceptions of the outer world will not be able to knock you off course or out of stride.

It’s important also to value those constructive tendencies you have already developed. Not all old tendencies are bad. Take time to evaluate which habits of thought, feeling, and action have always been constructive and valuable in your life. Appreciate them anew, give them a chance to grow and expand, becoming more serviceful aids in your life’s new directions. The habits of being kind, or of being able to concentrate easily and well, for example, are extremely helpful tendencies which all too many seekers of higher consciousness have to reestablish or perhaps build from scratch.

Please keep in mind as you progress that many wonderful ideas will come your way. Many partial skills will be revealed to you, too. But none of these significant gifts along your path will be truly yours until you have fully established new tendencies. New habits of thought, feeling, and self-esteem must become an integrated part of you. When you find it particularly easy and natural to behave in the new way that you have chosen, you will succeed. You will succeed for you have formed the tendencies that will get you there.

Watch Next

Find out how to create new tendencies that lead to greater fulfillment
Do you know how to capitalize on your good tendencies?
How to let your deepest yearnings lead you to higher consciousness
27:14
Improve your life by changing old habits
What Happens at an Online Yoga Retreat?
We bring the California mountains to you with online retreats that include Life Mastery techniques, guided meditations and devotional chants. As you access the material at your own pace, you’ll have the opportunity to be spiritually uplifted and stay connected to higher consciousness. See the Online Retreats.

New This Week

Meditative prayer helps you sense your soul
Discover the secret to more effective prayer
Overcome fears, lack, confusion and health challenges
Home > Writings > Keys to Higher Consciousness > What Will Prevail?
Next
  • Home
  • Videos
  • Talks
  • Writings
  • Courses
  • Explore
  • About
  • Search
  • Home
  • Videos
  • Talks
  • Writings
  • Courses
  • Explore
  • About
  • Search
© Copyright 2023 Yoga World Fellowship
  • Terms and Privacy
  • Sitemap
#2 THE MYSTIC GAZE
A Classic Technique

This classic technique is one of the mystic’s greatest treasures.

It is designed to stimulate your mystical faculties and begin the process of spiritual awakening.

With the Mystic Gaze enjoy the developing sense of clarity, coordination and attunement with life in all you do.

  1. Sit calmly and relax your eyes
  2. Gaze slightly upwards 20-30 degrees
  3. Look into space 20 feet or more
  4. Gaze, don’t stare or strain your eyes
  5. Simply observe and appreciate your awareness of space
  6. Enjoy the dawning wholeness for several minutes
  7. Gear down and go about your day

Print this How to Card

Close

© 2023 Yoga World Fellowship

#7 EXPANSION THROUGH ATTITUDE AND GOOD WILL
Change Your Heart

Your practice of good will cultivates the heart’s truest, deepest feeling:  love.

These good will practices are a boon to mystical study.

The goal of good will practice is the change of the heart.

When your heart naturally and spontaneously radiates forth a palpable good will, then you are a changed person.

  1. Consciously direct your thoughts and feelings toward an attitude of good will
  2. Bring a person to mind
  3. Or place your awareness on a person closest to you
  4. Direct good will toward this person
  5. Feel free to add specific well-wishes like health, love, courage, etc.
  6. Allow your heart to expand, to change

Print and Practice

Close

© 2023 Yoga World Fellowship

#6 EXPANSION LEVEL ONE
Quality of Life

Mystics break out of body bondage through numerous expansions of the heart — of the sense of self.

Your feeling of self-awareness imprisons or frees you.

Happily, you can do something powerfully liberating about the state of your heart and the quality of your life.

  1. Sit comfortably for 15 minutes
  2. Choose a person you know
  3. Imagine you’re walking in his/her shoes
  4. Feel you’re inside this person
  5. Say “If I were (name), I’d feel and think…”
  6. Have fun with it and let your heart expand

Print this How to Card

Close

© 2023 Yoga World Fellowship

#5 THE HEART AND ITS LIBERATION
Your Sense of Self

Mystics break out of mind and body bondage through expansions, expansions of consciousness.

Your “Heart” is your sense of self, your feeling about who you are.

Who are you as a distinct person from everyone else? This is your core individuality, your mystical heart.

  1. Focus on your mystic heart
  2. It is located in the right-central chest or inside the spine behind the heart
  3. Practice The Radiance or The Mist:
  4. Feel that your mystic heart…
  5. Radiates love, light and energy, or
  6. Generates a white mist flowing outward

Print this How to Card

Close

© 2023 Yoga World Fellowship

#4 THE MYSTIC BREATH
Your Window

Your breath is the key to the mystery of your life. The Mystic Breath is conscious use of this key.

Our individual natures will require different windows — different energy centers — from which to view the life force.

Allow the mystic breath to reveal your personal window.

  1. Stretch and then sit comfortably
  2. Take 5 to 7 deep breaths
  3. Focus on the center of your upper lip
  4. Witness the breath come and go
  5. Let your mind move to a natural center
  6. Watch your breath and the life force from this “window”

Print this How to Card

Close

© 2023 Yoga World Fellowship

#3 THE ASCENT
The Essence of Your Life

We begin meditation on the Infinite by focusing our awareness on Spirit, the life essence within us.

How can we do something so seemingly abstract? It’s easy. Spirit empowers your breath night and day.

Let the life force reveal itself to you. Sense the higher power which flows through you.

You’ll feel more alive.

  1. Stretch and relax your body
  2. Sit comfortably
  3. Take 5 to 7 deep breaths
  4. Focus on your nostril rims
  5. Witness the breath come and go
  6. Enjoy for 10 to 12 minutes
  7. Inhale deeply and stretch

Print this How to Card

Close

© 2023 Yoga World Fellowship

#0 THE MYSTIC SELF
Our True Nature

In the view of mystics, the major problem in life for most of us is ignorance of our true natures.

The Mysteries reveal many ways that you can actually contact your mystic self — and the Infinite Consciousness.

Do you, can you, contact your Mystic Self? Yes, indeed!

  1. Practice this anytime you like
  2. Probably your mind wanders quite often
  3. At times during the day, look at your mind and notice when it’s wandering
  4. Then, turn your attention to that part of your consciousness which observes that your mind is wandering
  5. That special overseeing awareness is part of your marvelous mystic self

Print this How to Card

Close

© 2023 Yoga World Fellowship

#1 MYSTIC AWAKENING
Benefits

Stimulate your mystical awakening.

When you wake up from a dream you realize you were only dreaming.

Consider too that this normal state of awareness in which you live may be a kind of sleep also.

As you do this technique you’ll find the world becomes more beautiful and enjoyable.

  1. Try this many times a day
  2. Whisper to yourself, “Wake up!”
  3. Mentally say, “Wake up!”
  4. Increase your attention, appreciation and feeling of love
  5. Just cheerfully exhort yourself
  6. Wake up!

Print this How to Card

Close

© 2023 Yoga World Fellowship

How to Succeed

As you may know, we do not charge for our courses. All Yoga World content is free and available to you with our blessings. However, we do have a simple, but important request that’s key to the transformations necessary to succeed on the path.

We ask you to commit two hours a week to selfless service. This service can be anything you choose ranging from helping a family member or neighbor to volunteering at a nonprofit organization.

I Commit to Serve

This commitment is solely between you and your inner self.

Why the Commitment?

Share with a Friend

NOTE:  We will not share your information with third parties.