Aspiration and Achievement

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Aspiration and Achievement

 

by Swami Sivananda

 

Good intentions alone will not do. They must be backed up by good

actions. You must enter the spiritual path with the best intention of

attaining Atma-Jnana, but unless you are vigilant and diligent,

unless you do intense and rigorous Sadhana, unless you guard yourself

against lust, anger and greed, egoism and selfishness, the good

intentions alone will not enable you to achieve success.

 

Moral purity and spiritual aspiration are the first steps in the

seeker's path. Without a strong conviction in moral values, there can

surely be no spiritual life, or even a good life.

 

Stern self-discipline is absolutely essential. Self-discipline does

not mean suppression, but taming the brute within. It means

humanisation of the animal and spiritualisation of the human.

 

You will have to break the virgin soil before you sow the seed. The

seed breaks itself before it sprouts out as a plant. Destruction

precedes construction. This is the immutable law of nature. You will

have to destroy your brutal nature first before you develop divine

nature.

 

The spiritual path is rugged, thorny, and precipitous. The thorns

must be weeded out with patience and perseve­rance. Some of the thorns

are internal; some are external. Lust, greed, wrath, delusion,

vanity, etc., are the internal thorns. Company with the evil-minded

persons is the worst of all the external thorns. Therefore, shun

ruthlessly evil company.

 

During the period of Sadhana, do not mix much; do not talk much; do

not walk much; do not eat much; do not sleep much. Observe carefully

the five `do-not's. Mixing will cause disturbances in the mind.

Talking much will cause distraction of the mind. Walking much causes

exhaustion and weakness. Eating much induces laziness and sleepiness.

 

(Source: http://sivanandaonline.org/html/)