Despite an inner connection with The Mother since childhood, I find myself trapped in mental doubts, ambitious cravings, and confusion about my true swadharma. My outer life feels mechanical and unfulfilling, and my surrender often seems superficial rather than complete. How do we awaken the psychic being so it may govern our entire existence and teach us how to truly love and surrender? How can one navigate the clash between inner aspiration and the demands of family and career? Please guide me out of these mental traps and show me the way forward.
First of all, wishing you a happy, beautiful birthday. May you progress more and more towards the one true goal, the Divine.ย
The past is there and so are the desires and all the other difficulties in everyone. They are the human inheritance from the past. But there is also the divine element in us that grows through everything. Just as the seed is fed by the manure as well as sunlight, so too the soul within us grows through all the experiences of life. But a time comes when we quite naturally begin to seek the Divine consciously. Until then we remain under the law of desires and its dual results of pleasure and pain. But while we are driven by desires and ambition, one will naturally try to do better and better, financially as well as otherwise. There is nothing wrong in striving to do better, to improve and progress in every way and in every field, including the attempt to crack the Civil Services. The only thing is that it is good to have a realistic assessment of one’s natural capacities, innate temperament and the turn of mind. It is always better if the driving force behind our actions is not desire for money and ambition for power but something higher, for example, serving people or the nation through the work. The work itself should ideally be in tune with one’s natural innate temperament, swabhava and swadharma, as the Gita puts it, rather than simply because it might bring fame and money.ย
Whatever it be, whatever work we do, satisfaction comes only when it is a natural outflowing from your deepest nature. It is worth studying oneself a little to see what kind of work goes with one’s inner temperament and then look for options. As to desires, try to practice moderation and balance. The term used for this is Sattwic life. Here too, desires are there, but they are kept in moderation so that others are not harmed and the tendency towards selfishness is balanced by sharing and sacrifice, compassion and love. If we live life that way, then the psychic being automatically grows until we are ready to seek it consciously. It is then that things change as we engage in conscious yoga. Then desires and ambitions must completely pass away, replaced by the workings of the Divine Force and the fulfilment of Her Will in us and through us.
Affectionately,ย
Alok da
