Living with Spiritual Paradoxes
Divine Life
Society Publication: Living with Spiritual
Paradoxes by Swami Atmaswarupananda
The spiritual life is full of
paradoxes. One of the most puzzling of them is the scriptural declaration that
if we want God-realization we must make great effort, supreme effort. At the
same time, they adamantly declare that we are already what we are seeking. Our
common sense objects. If we are already what we are seeking, why do we have to
make extreme effort? And indeed, there are some teachers who ridicule normal
spiritual practices and say, "Just realize that you are already
free."
But that is not what, for
example, the Yoga
Vasishtha tells us to do. The whole first section of the Yoga Vasishtha is
dedicated to self-effort. That’s not what Gurudev said. He constantly urged us
to make effort. And in Pujya Swami Chidanandaji’s book, Ponder These Truths,
74 of the 75 talks urge us to make effort of one sort or another.
One morning here Swamiji
suggested an analogy for this paradox. He said, "It is as if a poor man is
living over a treasure. One day a sage tells him that ten feet under the small
plot of land where he is sitting, a treasure is buried. That means that the
poor man is actually very wealthy. But until he digs down those ten feet, he is
as poor a man as he ever was. Even if he digs 9 feet 11 inches he is still
poor. It is only when he has dug the full ten feet and puts his hands on the
treasure that he is wealthy beyond his fondest dreams.
Other analogies speak about
cleaning a window so that the light that is always there can shine through,
tilling the soil so that the grain can grow. Swamiji also mentioned that
Gurudev had a secret. Gurudev made extreme effort, yet at the same time he
always knew that everything was happening by God’s will. "It was a
secret," Swamiji said, "that Gurudev kept to himself, because we
being half-baked people, if Gurudev were to tell us that everything is
happening by God’s will, we would stop making effort."
Are we then just supposed to
make effort without recognizing that we’re already what we are seeking? That
doesn’t seem to be the answer. Part of our sadhana should be a constant
remembrance of the fact that we are already what we are seeking.
But how do we do this sadhana?
We do it with everything that we have within us. We use our intellect to
remember that the scriptures say that God alone is. We use our heart in
devotion to God, recognizing that He is everything to us. But above all, we
must put it into practice. If God is all in all, if everything is happening by
His will, then why is there this inner tension within me? Do I require an inner
tension in order to do my spiritual practices? Why can there not be an inner
relaxation—knowing that everything is in God’s hands—and yet I still do my
duty, I still do my spiritual practices with all the earnestness that I can
muster?
Indeed, if we will inwardly recognize
that everything is happening by God’s will, that He is in charge, that we are
already what we are seeking, we will also find that we will be able to see very
clearly what we should be doing in our outer life, what is favorable to our
spiritual life and what is not favorable. The spiritual life is full of
paradoxes, and the real challenge is to be able to rise above those paradoxes
and incorporate them into the fabric of our sadhana.
Excerpts from:
Living with Spiritual
Paradoxes by Swami Atmaswarupananda
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