Reviews
"Radha has brought an exceptionally open mind and heart to her practice... She not only recounts her own adventures on the path, but offers practical advice on finding a master, discusses the intricacies of the teacher-student relationship, and provides tips for identifying false gurus."
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Yoga Journal
"Her adventures and conversations will fascinate anyone who's ever wondered what it would be like to sit at the feet of Eastern masters."
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Bloomsbury Review
"The book is suffused with the luminosity and lucidity that spring from mature spiritual discipline and long experience with disciples."
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Quest
Excerpt
From Chapter 20 Aspiration: Spiritual Learning
What propels a person to become a spiritual aspirant? Why should one aspire to something more than is already present? For some people it may be an urge to find more meaning in life - an empty place needs to be filled or a stagnant life enriched. For others it may suddenly be imperative to find the purpose in life, especially if pleasures have lost their impact or the price has become too high for their short duration. Sometimes the reason for the seeking is unknown, and it may even feel like groping in the dark.
While dissatisfaction with life is often a starting point for spiritual life, it is seldom a sufficient driving force to catapult seekers toward the goal of Self-Realization. What is needed is a willingness to learn, a passionate desire for knowledge, and an intense yearning to evolve toward the Light.
If we use our intelligence correctly, which means with discrimination, we can learn from anyone and everyone. Whenever we listen and observe, we can learn, even from a dog or from an ant carrying a weight many times her own. So if we are willing to acquire knowledge by these kinds of efforts, we also open ourselves to greater wisdom that follows. We attract this wisdom and we begin to see it everywhere.
When we really want to learn, we have to accept the opportunities any way they come to us. If I am critical of someone's bad habit, I have to learn not to imitate it. So I can learn even what not to do, which is perhaps the first part of the learning process. On the other hand, if someone shows certain strengths in conducting herself, I will ask, "Why do you do it this way?" So again, because I want to learn, I will make myself the inquirer and pick out what I recognize is best for me at each stage of my development.
But we can only learn according to our ability to surrender prejudgments and preconceived ideas. The mechanicalness in our behavior that has been established almost from the time we were born, has to be changed. We have to clarify why we think every single thought, why we do every single action in daily life, because only then can we become aware of how conditioned we are.
By clarifying, "Where do I imitate my father, my mother, or any authority in my life?" and by deciding "I want to be my own person," then I can start to become my own person. But if I still live by the values of the past, I cannot. If I am not my own person, I have no freedom and will never learn to handle freedom.
The unconscious can be compared to a bowl. If this bowl is already filled with preconceived ideas from past experiences and training, then what else can be put into it? So the old must be recognized and cleared out, if it has no value. This creates space for new insights and new intuitions, which are no longer overruled by past judgment or condemnation.
All the residue in the deeper levels of the mind has to be removed somehow. It is like a salty crust at the bottom of the bowl that has to be dissolved and washed away by a flow of clear, fresh water. Involvement with the Divine is this fresh water. People often say they want to be a channel for something higher; then they have to be a well-scrubbed channel. Otherwise they are like a rusty pipe: along with the water comes the debris.
One day Swami Sivananda poured me a cup of coffee and asked me to go outside with him. Then he began to pour milk into the coffee. Of course the coffee overflowed with the milk, and there was less and less coffee, until eventually there was just a hint of coffee color in the milk. The coffee symbolizes the negative aspects, and it is only by pouring in the milk of divine wisdom that we will finally remove all the darkness, not by analyzing how the coffee got there. But for those who cannot pour the milk in, then analyzing how the coffee got there is the only other way, but it is a hard way.
Many people are victims of self-deception, thinking they have gained knowledge when they have only acquired information. We have to test our knowing in our own lives. We cannot take for granted that our knowledge is all inspiration, and we cannot believe anything without trying it out. We want to be persons of knowledge, not believers or collectors of information.
© 1991 timeless
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