Strive for the Highest

We all have an opportunity to follow saner and better ways, but we cling to our particular toys and do not let go our hold. So we have to suffer, and we suffer until we learn the great lesson life teaches us again and again, in innumerable ways, and come to act wisely. Just as most people try to achieve their worldly ambitions and ideals, we should strive for spiritual life and illumination, but this most people won’t do. And it depends solely on our own choice whether we take up the worldly life or the spiritual life, whether we lead a life of slavery and fear or that of freedom and fearlessness.

We must strive to achieve something that is higher, that is not subject to change and decay. But we very often choose the path of avidya (ignorance) willfully and deliberately because we cling to our phantoms of physical and emotional enjoyment which, after all, we shall have to give up sooner or later. We all, one day, must let go the hold, and if we do not do this of our own tree will, the toy will be torn away from us, and this will mean great sorrow, and in many cases, a broken heart. For most people this is the only way in which they can be made to learn their lessons, but it is very painful and usually takes many lives. We should try to live a spiritual life, knowingly, consciously, deliberately, in a spirit of dedication and singleness of purpose. This will of ours may be directed towards the higher channels of life or towards the lower ones just as we please.

          If we are able to rouse tremendous enthusiasm in our-selves for the goal to be attained, then only shall we get the necessary energy to strive for it and do our utmost. In the world of the spirit you very often find people with a chaotic brain. They do not care to follow any definite system, and like to drift on the boundless sea of their emotions and impulses. So they attain attain practically nothing, in fact, just as little as the out-and-out worldly-minded people do. No person with a muddled brain can have any success in the world, and much less so in the spiritual world. Settle once for all what you really want. Very often we want to attain peace, but follow a path that can only end in restlessness and trouble. There is a saying in Bengal: There are some people who, when they want to go towards the east, start walking towards the west; and if you ask them why they do so, they reply, “Because I want to go towards the north.”

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