Don’t just push the mind towards the spiritual – let the
spiritual pull the mind too by Chaitanya Charan Das Based on Bhagavad Gita
Suppose we were pushing a heavy trolley uphill. It would be
a demanding exertion. If we became lax even for a moment, the trolley would
start rolling back downwards. If someone ahead were also pulling the trolley
up, then moving it becomes much easier.
A similar dynamic applies to our attempts to push our mind
from the material level of consciousness upwards the spiritual level. When we
understand start practicing spiritual life, we know that we need to fix the
mind on spiritual reality instead of material things. Such a redirection of the
mind can seem a laborious pushing exercise because the mind has a default
attraction towards material things akin to the force of gravity.
If our conception of the spiritual is attractive, then it
exerts its own pull on the mind, making the ascent of our consciousness easier.
However, if our conception of the spiritual is largely a negation of the
material, then it exerts little if any pull, making the ascent of our
consciousness dependent entirely on our own pushing capacity. Aptly, theBhagavad-gita (12.05) warns that those who hold on to impersonal conceptions of
the spiritual make their spiritual journey troublesome.
In contrast, the next verses (12.06-07) declare that for
those who fix their mind on the personal absolute Krishna, he lifts them up and
delivers them swiftly. Krishna is the all-attractive supreme person having
unlimited auspicious qualities. These qualities in and of themselves attract
increasingly the purified mind, thereby exerting an upward pull on it towards
the spiritual. And due to the most pertinent among these qualities –
mercifulness – Krishna himself lifts us up too by his benevolent omnipotence.
By refining our conception of the spiritual from impersonal
to personal, we can make our spiritual progress speedier and sweeter.
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