When you struggle for recognition and acceptance, you have to ask also, “Recognition and acceptance by whom?” By somebody who is struggling just as much as yourself? Or perhaps by somebody who is not even trying?
Many years ago, when I was giving a successful series of dance performances, I gave my housekeeper and the janitor a couple of tickets. In many ways they were very lovely people, but they were not culturally educated. The next day when they said to me, “Oh, madame was so wonderful,” it was not a great compliment to me because they didn’t know what is involved in dancing.
The important thing is to get the opinion of somebody who knows. Most of the time you struggle for acceptance by people who are not any further ahead in their spiritual development than you are, and often by people who are much further behind. Why do you want their acceptance? That is a very important question, one that you must ask yourself again and again.
Think of great musicians who died in poverty. Mozart was one. He didn’t have the recognition he deserved in his lifetime. So it is with many great artists. They get recognition in the end, however, because their work becomes eternal. But there are lots of people who were famous in their lifetimes that we have never even heard of, because they reaped all their rewards while they were alive.
Jesus says in the New Testament that if you want your reward on Earth, you will get it, but that will be it. However, if you can forego your reward on Earth, you will reap it in heaven.* So if you have to make that choice, make the right choice. Who else can reward you but the Divine? What is a reward worth from someone who’s just as mortal and human and has all the same frailties that you have?
* Matthew 6:1, 5.
Do a written reflection on that for yourself: What is the price you pay for that kind of acceptance? Do you neglect your spiritual practice?
If you spend an evening with a person who gives you that kind of acceptance, you are indulging the personality aspect in you that wants acceptance. You think, “Well, that person was very nice to me so I must be somebody.” You may not verbalize that thought clearly in your mind, but your emotions and a part of your mind react to it nevertheless. So verbalize that thought and know it’s there.
It’s the same if you are fighting for something. Unless you are fighting for the attainment of self-discipline, what are you fighting for? It may be for something that just gives you more trouble, so that you say in the end, “Better I had never put my hands into this.”
There is no harm in occasionally saying, “It would be wonderful if I had this or that or the other.” But you must not take the competition that we are all trained for in life into your spiritual life—“I must be the best speaker, the best dancer, the best hatha yogi or yogini, and the best writer, the best editor, the best of anything.” That competition will just stop you from truly becoming what you are meant to become.
The kitchen in particular is a place where people look for recognition. They think, “I don’t get any recognition, but if I cook something really extra-special, everybody will come and say, ‘Wonderful! Oh, how wonderful! You really put great food on the table’.”
When you want recognition, look at the facts as they really are. And then wait. When the Divine gives you recognition, what a great joy, because you know it is truly a reward, it is truly something given to you. If the Divine has praise for you, you will get it in time. You don’t have to worry about that.
When I returned to Canada, Gurudev Sivananda never answered any of my letters, and I was very downhearted. I would send off a report every month of everything—how many people came to meetings, what the subject was, the income, the expenses, absolutely everything. I wanted to know if I was doing the right thing, but I finally stopped because I never got any replies. Looking back, however, I think my motivation was only that I wanted to be the best disciple and to have approval for that. When I didn’t get any answer, I almost gave up because I thought Gurudev wasn’t approving what I did, and my work almost fell apart.
Then one night I had a dream about a little boy who was living in the ashram with his mother. He came to me in the dream with a whole handful of jewelry. He said, “These are all waiting for you. You will get them one by one.” He held a ring out to me, and he said, “That’s the first to come.”
I looked at this ring, and I was surprised and overjoyed, but also shocked. Someone had just given me that ring, with the same design of a Crusader’s cross.
You will get the signs when you need them, and it is important to remember that. All that effort to get recognition from the people around you should go into self-discipline. If you conquer some bad habit, you are free of it, and there is your reward.
Swami Sivananda Radha
From Time to Be Holy, Timeless Books, www.timeless.org
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