While rowing the boat, not only our oarsmen should be doing their job but we also should have lifted the anchor — the metal device used to prevent a boat from drifting. An anchored boat does not move. There is an interesting story in this regard:
One moonlit night, some drunken men took it into their heads to go on a boat ride. They went to the river bank, hired a boat, sat at the oars and started rowing. They rowed and rowed the whole night. Early in the morning, when the effect of drink had gone, they found to their surprise that they had not moved an inch. ‘What is the matter? What is the matter?’ they asked one another. They had forgotten to raise the anchor!
In the context of spiritual living too, we have to lift our anchors. As it is said by an eminent spiritual teacher, at the time of your spiritual practice are you able, at least to some extent, to free your mind from worldly matters and give your purified mind to God? That is the point.
Lifting the anchor means having the capacity to free the mind from attachment to objects of senses and desires as well as from fear, anger, greed and so on.