Know your nature
If we cannot know the ins and outs of our being, who else can? Can we not perceive that our moods flicker as rapidly as mercury in a barometer at the slightest change in the weather? When we detect a relapse in our yagna (sacrifice to God's remembrance), we should feel shocked at our fall and renew our yagna at once. Only when we constantly stir the fire of our passion for Self-realization shall we be able to make any headway in sadhana. How strenuous are the efforts we make to get food, when we are extremely hungry? So absorbed are we in our attempts that we sometimes forget everything else in our unbearable pain.
We should have and if we have not we must strive for -- such gnawing hunger, such all-consuming fervor to reach our goal. That alone enables us to go forward in spirituality. It is a rare soul, however, that naturally possesses such intense zeal. The real key to progress in sadhana lies in always goading ourselves to gain such overpowering desire.
Natural Attraction
It is also necessary for our heart to be surcharged with a natural attraction for him (Sat-guru). But that is more easily said than done. Not a blind spell, but real love at first sight is very rate phenomenon in this world, almost an impossibility. The first contact must create repeated meetings. These gradually bring about a kind of affinity between the two. If that close agreement leads to camaraderie, there rises attachment and then attraction between them.
In the same way for our spiritual development, we must remember him again and again, think of nothing but him, and at the same time infuse into all our actions and behavior our yearning for spiritual progress. His repeated remembrance is the first step in creating a close relationship with him. We should tell him everything that happens to us when it happens. We should also dedicate with love and devotion our thoughts, words, actions - everything in fact - to him.
Someone may ask, "How can this opening of the heart to him have any significant beneficial effect upon us?" The fact is, such continued practice goes on creating more and more 'psychic contact' with the awakened soul (Sat-guru).
Vacillation
We have the habit of irresolution, i.e., vacillation of the mind before performing any action. This is a flaw in our character. This is by no means the first time that I have pointed it out to you. We waver before doing the simplest thing. In order to overcome such ingrained hesitation, it is necessary for us to form the counter-practice of working with a firm, decided, and no longer dubious mind. A deeply earnest spiritual aspirant somehow manages, from one source or another, to learn what he ought to know. This has been my experience based on hundreds of occasions, not one. We must create that confidence and cease fumbling about for the right way of doing anything. We must do whatever we do with a steady, self-assured mind.
Sadhak's view of death
You know the Gujarati proverb: "You can not go to heaven unless you yourself die." We must also die - and the earlier the better for us - but in a different sense. The saint-poet Manilalbhai sang:
This is
the Lover's decided say,
"The path to life is death always."
Here "death" means the state beyond dualities (such as love and hate) and the three gunas virtue, activity and procrastination). Only then comes the attainment of "resurrection" and that alone deserves the name of life. But our present "life" is composed of dualities and the triune of the gunas.
Conquest of Our Enemies
Sloth and dilatoriness as well as lust and anger are our life killing vipers. We do understand this, but only intellectually. Our knowledge is only skin-deep. But our intellect goes one step even further and know it is necessary to put up a strong fight and conquer these enemies in order to develop our soul. The question is "How to make the Herculean effort so absolutely essential to defeat these enemies?"
The qualities that prompt and invigorate these enemies are rajas and tamas. Therefore, if we want to eradicate them from our lives, we should summon up the sattwa guna in us to do what is needed. This can be done only when continuity grows in our Japa (remembrace of God), prayer, meditation, and such other constructive sadhana. When our sattwa guna is thus activated, we can certainly drive these enemies away from us. We can by God's grace, come out of our present jiva state( the state in which God or the Oversoul in us lies suppressed by our lower nature) and "die" (in the sense already shown) by means of detachment - freedom from immovability, from egotism, from greed, etc. These qualities release us from the numerous thoughts, feelings, and prejudices that make us rigidly adhere to our jiva state. it is impossible for us to experience Life Eternal, or even to develop our life, before all this happens in our being.
It is not true that lust, anger, greed, and infatuation are uprooted when tremendous earnestness for self-reform becomes a part of our being. The knaves that they are lie deep within us cosily enshrouded. They are always watching and waiting for a chance to again raise up their heads and draw us back to our previous state of submission to them. They can succeed in overpowering us whenever there is a derailment in our sadhana.
If at that time we are able to shake off our lethargy, we can, by God's grace, free ourselves from their grasp; but sometimes even then we fall prey to those lower urges. During the process of sadhana, these hidden enemies exercise their power in the form of more and more fierce attacks whenever we slip in our watchfulness.
Tremendous Potency of Prayer
BHe who has a very gnawing appetite for developing his life writhes in anguish at finding himself defeated by the diabolic forces arrayed against him. At once he rushes to his one recourse - prayer from his lacerated heart to God to fly to his rescue.
Without making an ingot of steel red-hot in his furnace, the smith cannot beat it with furious strokes from his hammer and mold it into the shape he wants. In the same way without a fiery ordeal and consequent prayer, the sadhak cannot enter the stage of sattwa guna. Heartfelt prayer is thus our most valuable means for self-elevation. The poet is perfectly justified in asserting the potency of prayer when he says:
More
things are wrought by prayer,
Than this world dreams of."
How to control the Mind
Gita is revered for teaching us wisdom. Hence, the book is called Mother (Divine). Mother Gita (Bhagawad Gita) states that, though seemingly unconquerable, our mind can be brought under submission, In trepidation, Arjun, a disciple, tell the Lord, "The mind is as difficult to control, as the wind."
The Lord reassures him and says that vairagya (the absence of infatuation for anyone or anything) and abhyasa (repeated practice) are the means to bring and keep the mind under control. We must never run away from actions, situations, or circumstance in which we are involved. That is not all. We must quite willingly accept the view that it is our duty to perform actions dedicated to God with the consciousness of doing God's service.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Shakespeare