Sincerely Ask Yourself: 'What Do I Want?' Empty Yourself of That

Yes, I want to tell all of you that this project is very difficult. Yes, so I see somewhere in all of us, we just feel like it's not that easy. I know. I'm not saying at all that it is easy. Somewhere there's a mistaken idea of spirituality being easy, which we need to really work out of our systems. It is not easy. When there are times of ease where it just flows, that is a great blessing; it is beautiful. Then those times do come. But if you keep waiting for that ease to come always, then you see, to follow God's will is the biggest project given to us by the sages. And some sages—and I've repeated that often—have said that that is the main thing: to follow His will. They would not have emphasized it so much and so often if they felt like it is easy. Once someone hears the instruction, they'll just be able to do that because we are very attached to our will, our way. And to sacrifice that—what we want moment to moment—will seem difficult. You see, we don't even come to Satsang when we don't want. We come to Satsang, we go to places which remind us of God, when we want. So the project is to be able to let go of that want. Practice that moment to moment. Ask yourself now: 'What do I want?' Try to let it go. Replace that with: 'What does God want?'

Father, see what you're saying right now—replace 'What do I want?' with 'What does God want?' I don't know how to put this into words, but it goes back to what you were saying: it's not easy, right? To do that moment to moment, it just seems like such a... I don't want to say impossible, but it's almost there all the time. You cannot, what, all the time go back and consult 'What do You want, not what I want?' because it takes a while sometimes to know that.

Correct. So sometimes I have seen with a dog, you know, that he loves chasing his tail. So he'll just go, he'll keep chasing his tail; he's probably thinking that he's going somewhere in that process. Most of our activity—actually all—do you feel like something could happen if it was not God's will? No. So when we follow 'my' will, we are just chasing our own tail until we get the point and then we make some forward movement, some deepening in the process. So the illusion of something happening or progress happening—or at least 'I'm doing something'—is very different from actually the inspired movement, which in one moment can change the texture of our entire life.

Can you say that again?

Yes. One moment of inspired movement can change the texture of our entire life, versus we may try and try and try to do things by our own effort and strength and will, but it is all chasing the tail. And those efforts are never for God anyway, although they seem to be. If the project of our life, which is to spend this life in God's presence, has been forgotten, then what is going to happen? If I keep waiting for God, what is going to happen to my life? But without being with God, what is going to happen to our life anyway? Do we know the difference between haste and speed?

Rushing, you mean?

And speed. Is rushing equal to speed?

No. And I do feel this rushing of the mind going like, 'Okay,' there is this dual mind, of course, you know, that says, 'Come on, you know what you need to do.' And then it's kind of rushing and there's this pressure, and I don't want to act from that.

Yes. So the mind is all about displacement. But if you want really to traverse distance—a deepening in our heart—it is about the heart itself, about God. Do we know the difference between displacement and distance? All my physics is coming to some use today. Displacement can be like this, like this, like this... you can measure all this and say 'displacement.' But for distance, because you return to the same point of starting, the distance traveled is zero. Unless you had some actual movement—and actual movement in this case is a deepening in the heart—until then, it's only displacement and no distance. So the mind is all about displacement: 'Do something, do something, do something.' And true distance is only divinely inspired. True deepening, true progress, is only divinely inspired.

Remember that this brand of spirituality is not easy. It is not going to make your life stress-free. It is not going to make you all blissed out. Many times it will seem like, 'What are you even doing?' It will seem like you are not cut out for this. And I'm happy if it is feeling like that. When it is feeling too comfortable, then I'm a bit concerned. Of course, those times of ease will come, but beware of this armchair, lip-service, comfortable spirituality. Either it has become all about God's will, in which case then it can be comfortable, or we've settled into a 'spiritual me' whose ideas we think are all spiritual and we're going in the right way, but we are actually still operating from our mind. So sincerely ask yourself: 'What is it that I want?' Empty yourself of that. Then you will become a vessel for the Holy Spirit, for the Atma. Whether we look at the construct of the heart temple or becoming vessels of Atma, it is the same thing.