SAFTY AND SECURITY IN SADHANA

It is important for the sadhak to topsy turvy safe and secure position. This is an opportunity to train and develop good qualities like firmness, stability, inner happiness and equanimity during struggle and difficult times. The sadhak who thinks and understands that this is an opportunity and is ready to take advantage of it with clear awareness and untiring effort, gets all the benefit. The soul that prefers to stay in safe and secure position never progresses in sadhana. One who prefers to be safe will definitely get tangled up in ordinary life. Sadhak should never get satisfaction whenever he has that tendency. He should rebel against that tendency and try to come out of it. It is not possible to progress in safe and secure position.

Pujya Shree Mota
Jivan manthan
Edition 3; page 207.

TRY TO REMOVE DISTORTED NATURAL INSTINCTS

There are innumerable inner natural tendencies within us that try to satisfy itself in variety of ways. When it fails to do so and there are hindrances in its way, it has a tendency to distort or pervert itself. This in turn perverts our lives. We should not just sit and do nothing. We have to find the root cause of this perversion and remove it from the roots.

Pujya Shree Mota
Jivan manthan
Edition 3; page 206.

My two cents --  As for an example, when we try to deal with the anger and try to control it, it can come out in a distorted way in the garb of sarcasm, unfair criticism and feeling of revenge.
Naam-smaran is the way to purify all the aspects of prana rather than dealing with them individually.

GOD IS RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR ACTIONS -- BUT WHEN?

Trichinapalli,
9/21/1942.

My dear sister,

The experiences that you talk about should produce the condition where one keeps the attention of one's mind focused towards the God all the time. So if we have such divine experiences and our mind and life do not reflect the divine, then there is a problem. Either the experience is an illusion or our base is not developed to reflect the experience.

"All the actions are directed by Bhagwan" may be 100 percent true from the philosophical point of view. But we can say that only when we are in touch with divinity all the time and carry out our actions as per its will. If we have not done so far, we need to understand the fallacies of the mind, chitta, intellect, prana and ego. It is true that God's divine energy is present in everything and yet the person who wants to be the instrument of God must have a clear vision of himself, his surroundings and all his contacts. We want to perform the actions with clear understanding, knowledge, love and devotion. Our actions should not be directed by certain beliefs and fancy. Even though the belief that God directs us to perform all the actions, sadhak cannot afford to say that. We can never say that our actions are directed by God when our minds keep busy with all our thoughts, inner natural tendencies, unreasonable actions, habits, insistences and beliefs. There is a clear danger of being delusional. We will never have clear and true understanding of the real facts. Just because we believe that we have walked a hundred miles when we have walked only five miles does not make it true in realty.

Pujya Shree Mota
Jivan darshan
Edition 3; pages 68 - 69.

FACE THE DISTURBANCES OF THE MIND

Kumbhakonam
April 24, 1952.

We must separate from the mind with firm determination and effort, affirming the belief that what ever spring up in the mind at any moment is not our true self. Once we stop to give attention to the fantasies, thoughts, flood of emotions arising from prana and fallacies of the intelligence there will be out pouring of these in our mind. The more we try to separate stormier are those disturbances. It is quite possible for the sadhak to get overwhelmed and loose the direction at this point. Precisely at this juncture he is truly and appropriately being tested for the strength and the conviction of his life. The soul that keeps his path of spirituality in front of his heart, takes the appropriate steps and considers it as a true way to progress survives. Others just fall by the wayside.

Pujya Shree Mota

Jivan sopan

Edition 3, pages 138 - 139.