Begin from where you are, and what you realise || Acharya Prashant (2019)
Question: Acharya Ji, I am only a beginner on spiritual path, and my experience complicates things. Which tool can I adapt for myself to take the right decision?
Acharya Prashant Ji: The response is hardly spiritual in the classical sense. I will not say that for life’s decisions, kneel down in front of the unknowable. I will not say that what you need, lies beyond the grasp of your mental faculties.
I am saying, “Live by what you already know.”
First of all, you have no other option. Secondly, what you already know is very sufficient, to make a beginning. And you said that you are a beginner.
The trouble with most of us is not that we do not know some transcendental, ecclesiastical Truth. The trouble is: we just don’t live by that which is within our mental province.
It is not as if we have come to the boundary of our knowledge, and our limited realisation. We haven’t. If we come to our own boundaries, then the beyond cannot be far enough.
The boundary of the little self, is where the Truth stands to greet you. So you don’t have to really search for the Truth. You just have to come to the boundary of your own province. Come to your own boundary, and there you will find something of the Beyond.
But, do we care enough to come to even our own boundaries? I am not telling of leaping out of your self. You don’t need to leap out of your self. But, at least, putting in a very cliched way – do the best you can.
If you cannot go beyond your self, at least do the best you can. And when you have come to the utter limit of your personal resources, there you find something, a bit magical happening.
Our situation is strange!
We do not do what we can, we cannot challenge ourselves enough. We do not make the best, utter, and desperate use of our own, personal, limited resources. But we want some kind of a helping hand to descend from the heavens.
It won’t!
And this is good news.
Because it means that each one of us, as he or she is, is fully capable of helping herself or himself. May be we cannot see beyond the hills. But there is nobody who does not see clearly enough, to take even the next step.
And that is all that you need.
Inspiration, energy, and clarity- just to take the next step. What after the next? That’s not our business to ask. Sitting where we are, let us not demand the whole blue-print, the road-map of the entire state. Then we are transgressing.
One step is sufficient. And that one step, each one of us is endowed enough to take.
That one step happens to be so simple and obvious, that it does not appeal to us. We want things – big and glamorous. Just as in the material world, size and shine appeal to us. Similarly, in the spiritual domain, we want things – colossal, magnificent, sensational, to happen.
Instead of those things, if we are advised to take one little, baby step, it appears like a bit of let down.
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