I just want to be taken by the hand, despite myself and led to the Mother. I want to know what is True. What is inside my heart and what I’m doing outwardly, starting right from my mind, vital and then in my choices, behavior, work, daily activities, are not at all matching.
I think it is mainly because of the very complicated and insincere way my mind works. It is causing me to waste the time, energy, opportunities and resources that the Mother has given me. How to start being mentally Sincere and Simple?
Even if I don’t understand much, it is very important to have an organized, straightforward and consistent mind, right? How should my mind work if I want to give it to Mother?
The first thing to know is the limit as well as the usefulness of the mind and reason. The mind cannot know spiritual things. So with regard to that, the mind has to learn to be quiet and turned towards the Divine in an aspiration for true knowledge, especially the discernment between what will take us closer to and what will put a veil between us and the Divine. Moral notions are helpful in the life of ignorance. They serve as a limited and imperfect light to regulate the unbridled vital impulses. But they do not help much in the much more rigorous journey of the spiritual life. Take, for example, the sexual impulse, or greed for food, ambition, or earning money. Morally, they are justified with sex with the wife or a person one loves, food in moderation, ambition as long as one is not harming someone else, and money through honest means. But for the seeker after spiritual life, there has to be no hankering after any of these. As a general rule, one has to see and discern what takes us closer to the Divine and what puts a veil. The sign of growing closeness is the growth of inner peace, joy, faith, aspiration, sincerity, devotion. The sign that a veil is being put is an increase of doubt, depression, anger, lust, greed, etc. The attitude, therefore, is most important and a sincere observation of how our nature reacts to different actions and circumstances. A basic first practice, therefore, is cultivating Peace and Equanimity. When we are restlessness we cannot have the light of discernment just as one cannot see the sunlight when a storm is raging, or the sky is clouded. Self-mastery with the help of the mind is, therefore, a basic requirement. All this takes a long time, sometimes many years, but without this foundation of inner peace and equanimity and the discerning reason (buddhi), one cannot proceed further on the path except fitfully.
Along with this, the growth of aspiration for which solitude and quietude are most important, the growth of faith, sincerity and surrender, for which the company of books, inner remembrance of the Divine Mother, offering our actions to the Divine Mother without hankering after the results, are the other side of the practice.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
