The real power is in the Divine within. To attain to this power, one has to surrender self-will, because self-will, like self-love, is very destructive.
I became aware that unless I surrender my habitual thinking, the habitual quick response in my mind—in other words, my own mental activity—I can’t really hear what anybody is telling me. In any human relationship (not only in marriage), if you want to hear somebody, you have to surrender at that moment and really listen to that person. If you practice that, thinking each time, “That was another little opportunity to be better able to listen to the still, small voice within, to listen to the Divine,” then surrender becomes second nature and you don’t have to make a conscious effort. When surrender has become part of your nature, you will no longer have to say to yourself, for example, “At five o’clock Jane will come to talk to me and I had better surrender so I will hear what she says.”
At times, if something comes out of the blue or somebody drops in unexpectedly while I am busy, I may not hear what is being said. As soon as I become aware of that, I say, “Repeat that, please. What was it?” At that moment, then, I drop everything else. Now this means I can forget a hundred and fifty other things, but this is what must be done.
Sometimes my place is like an airport with all the people coming and going. But I have made it that way on purpose because surrender means not saying, “I open the doors from three to five only, and if you don’t make it, that’s too bad.” You have to surrender to the Divine twenty-four hours a day. You cannot do it part time.
How do you do a spiritual practice if you keep all your doors open and somebody walks right in? Well, you have to learn to incorporate that person, that conversation, into the practice of surrender, even if you had intended to do something entirely different. And don’t get irritable, don’t get impatient—particularly if the interruption isn’t all that important and the work you were involved in is important.
This practice teaches you to surrender, to be quick in adjusting your concentration, to be able to go back to where you were quickly, and it deepens your acceptance of what is.
When that is well established, then you can say, “Okay, between seven and nine—that’s my time.” But still be willing to surrender to circumstances and adjust your time. If you don’t, impatience comes in the door. You will begin thinking, “Oh, I can never finish anything. There are all these disturbances. There are all these interruptions.” That impatience reflects later on in other areas of your spiritual practices and your daily life.
For me, all these things were particularly difficult, not having grown up in a large family and having no brothers and sisters. To me, people meant problems, and who wants problems? However, I made up my mind I would do it, never mind what it was, and there’s no question that I had my hard times. But victory comes only if you allow it to happen.
By Swami Sivananda Radha
Excerpt from Time to be Holy
Published by Timeless |
