Spiritual aspiration is a rare blessing

In the field of religion also there is a kind of aristocracy. The great saints and sages, the illumined souls in all religions, Form a class by themselves. But unlike worldly aristocrats, these spiritual aristocrats are always witting to share their riches with others. They are only to glad to give to others what they themselves enjoy. But the pity is few people care for the great treasures of spiritual life. Most of the people would rather wallow in the pigsty of the world than enjoy the cosy warmth of the spiritual mansion. You can tale a horse to the water, but you cannot make it drink if it does not want to. So you need not look around to see how many people are following the spiritual path. If and try to fulfil its conditions. If others don’t pay any heed to that call, you cannot do much about them. A parting of ways is inevitable in spiritual life.

Samkaracarya says; ‘A human birth, desire for emancipation, and contact with holy men-these three are very rare and are attained only through the grace of the Lord.” But even these three advantages are not enough. We must be eager to profile by these and must be willing to sacrifice everything for spiritual life. There must be the readiness to undergo any hardship, pay any price, to achieve the supreme goal of life.

We should look upon it as a great fortune that, for some reason or other, our mind possesses an attraction for the higher and eternal things, and should see that we steadily and gradually proceed along the higher path, never flagging till we reach the goal. Our spiritual fervour is to be maintained, but we very often run the risk of becoming slack. Thus spiritual striving stops in most people after they have taken to the spiritual life for a certain time. Their minds are too restless and too outgoing to keep up this spiritual fervour and intensity for a very long time, and to go on steadily and doggedly with their spiritual practice and readings and studies. So we should be on our guard. Dogged tenacity is the one thing needed for spiritual life. All progress can only be had through great steadiness and tenacity, never allowing ourselves to flag or to become lukewarm. Wordsworth says in one of his famous poems, ‘Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.’ In another ode, he says, ‘The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.’ We should not spend all our tine in this state.

Swami Yatiswarananda A monk from Ramakrishna monastic
Collected from a compiled book