In a recent post of some of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, a number of disturbances that prevent the clarity of the mind were given, such as doubt, misapprehension, lack of detachment and instability.  These are very similar to the conditions that Hazrat Inayat Khan described in this post as the rust that covers the mirror of the heart: confusion, fear, depression and all manner of excitement. (Since excitement implies agitation, in this context it can be equated to instability.) In order to bring us to the recognition of Reality, our mind must be stilled, so that the mirror-like  quality of consciousness can reflect what was always there.

As a method of preparation, Patanjali gives advice that may seem rather simple or even superficial: to be friendly with the happy, to feel compassion for those in distress, to rejoice over the virtuous, and to be equanimous toward those who are not virtuous.  If we look carefully at this sutra, however, we see that it puts in a positive way the need to deal with negative tendencies which are so common that they pass unnoticed in our daily life.  Vey often the sight of someone who is happy or virtuous stirs the negative feelings of envy, jealousy or resentment; if we do not feel compassion for the suffering of another person, our lack of sympathy confirms their misery, and leaves open the possibility that we will show cruelty in some circumstance; and if we are not equanimous and detached from those who are non-virtuous, we display criticism and intolerance.

When these negative attitudes have been eliminated, then, as Patanjali says, the mind becomes lucid and it is not difficult to fix it upon one point, from which follows all understanding.  Therefore the sincere seeker might want to take this as an exercise for a week or more: to look for these four categories of people, so well as we are able to judge: the happy, the virtuous, those who are suffering and those who are (in our view) non-virtuous, and to awaken the positive feelings that the sutra advises.  If this is done persistently, we will certainly begin to experience a different mode of consciousness.