Tuesday 29 January 2019

FOLLOW THE CHOSEN PATH DILIGENTLY

Srīnāthā Rāghavan shared a beautiful piece of advice on fb moments ago.
Stick to one Practice, one Guru and one Path, no matter how "tempting" the other Practice, Guru or the Path is.
We often get carried away spiritually, by the various Spiritual Personalities, because of the way they (and their followers) share with us their Spiritual stories and experiences. We secretly begin to believe, that by following them, we too shall experience the same grace, which is an utter fallacy.
The whole of Sri Ramakrishna Community celebrates 1st January as Kalpataru Day, when the Master had blessed around 30 odd followers who were fortunate to be present there, with spontaneous spiritual transmission and awakening. Those who received it, received the same energy in different ways, some went silent for long periods while some jumped and hopped in ecstasy behaving like lunatics. However, as hard it may sound, the Master refused to give this gift to a few present there, saying plainly, "Your time hasn't come!"
I would always be vexed reading this part of the story, because of the selectivity shown by the otherwise all inclusive Master, and so I once got it clarified through a Senior Monk of the Sri Ramakrishna Order. The venerable Monk beautifully put, "It wasn't that Thakur wasn't willing to give, but the few who were asked to wait, weren't ready to receive."
My next question was, "Why so?"
So the Monk said, "In all probability, they hadn't accepted Thakur fully as their Master or Beloved."
He went on to explain, "When you walk the Spiritual path as shown by your Guru, you need to be intensely loyal to it and walk on it till the end. There will come many on the path, offering you a deviation or a different version, but your faith in your own Guru, should be strong enough to not get distracted by anyone or anything..not even God!"
Ah! That was an eye (and heart) opener. These are the days where we get to choose, change or drop one Guru/Path for the other, but there were those days, where the Guru chose you after much deliberation and you stayed true for life. That's the difference between now and then.
There is only one Mother, one Father and one Guru, stay loyal to them till the end.