The spiritual path is for heroes!

There are beautiful roses, but there are also thorns, because without the thorns, the roses cannot exist. Sometimes the spiritual path becomes a bit difficult, but that difficulty is necessary as a cleanser. The whole object is for a person to face himself, and as soon as a person starts admitting his or her faults, the cure has begun; you are half-cured.

People do not want to face themselves

People do not want to face themselves; they do not want to admit their weaknesses. You can only cure or alter the fault if you admit that, “I’m at fault and should do something about it.” Therefore, with our meditation and spiritual practices, a great measure of self-help is necessary – some little effort is necessary. It is no use coming home and quarrelling with your husband every night over the most trivialised things and then say, “Oh, I’ll sit down and meditate and fix it all up.” No.

There’s no magic wand

Many people think, “Let’s go to the guru and do meditation, and like a magic wand he’ll just wave all our problems away.” Then they try it for two or three weeks and all their problems have not disappeared. Then they think, “Oh, the guru is no good.” They do not realise that their problem could stem back to ages past and they themselves have to work it out. The guru only gives the medicine, but they have to drink it. The guru shows them the path but they have to walk the path, and often people do not want to do that.

There is a lovely parable, which Ramakrishna quotes: “a camel eats thorns and although its mouth bleeds from the thorns, the camel still keeps on eating thorns. In addition, human beings are like that – they just do not want to get out of the rut or out of their miseries because they find it so comfortable.

For example, in the Himalayas you would find many deaths for one reason. if there is an avalanche or you fall into a groove of ice, after a while it becomes so comfortable because you feel a beautiful warmth as your body struggles to survive that you do not want to get up, and because you do not want to get up, you die. Therefore, the person must get up and start running around a bit to get his blood circulating so that they could live. In the same way, people are caught up in their own meshes and do not want to get up.

Don’t entrap yourself

Like a silkworm they spin, spin, spin, and then find themselves entrapped in their own spinning. The idea is to get out. After all, the spiritual path is like impregnation; your husband impregnates you, but the husband is not going to make the baby grow in you. He plants the seed but you have to look after the pregnancy period and suffer all the inconveniences that a woman would go through with giving birth to a baby. Nevertheless, when the baby is born, and the reward very exhilarating?  (US 83-103)

…… Gururaj Ananda Yogi

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