I find it hard to stay focused on my spiritual practice when I am engaged with work and outward activity. Could you suggest a practice to keep me focused while doing my daily duties?

Ans: We have forgotten our real nature-we need to remember and reassert it. Begin your practice from the mental plane. Vedanta is a complete divine psychology, and it can be used to refocus the direction of the mind. You must remember your lost heritage, your real nature, and reassert it again and again. It is a sort of autosuggestion. For this method your hands and feet are not required, you can let your body be engaged in any activity throughout the day, but you need not forget the ultimate truth of your existence. You unbrokenly carry on the divine current of Atmic assertion of "I am That," and this will slowly develop from a mere aptitude to a higher devotion and then to an integral part of your practice. As you think, so you become.

For this autosuggestion, there are two obstacles: the impurities of the mind and then also the vices that have bedevilled humanity. Two methods are prescribed for overcoming them. One is thinking of the opposite. This is a method in which by constantly denying the presence of that which you wish to remove and asserting the presence of that which you wish to gain, you grow into the nature of the virtues, and the vice disappears. The other is the law that positive always overcomes negative. Therefore, a set of positive assertions is prescribed to assert your true nature, and through this your identification with the mind and the senses is lessened. You are pure Atman, not the names and forms. Your essential nature is Satchidananda-this you must assert.