The underpinning of the spiritual path, in my observation, is persistence. And persistence is required, simply because no one is in a position to judge for themselves, to evaluate in their own mind, where they are at. You don’t know if one minute from now or tomorrow or next week something that has been trying to get clear for your entire life will suddenly get clear. You don’t know; you can’t predict it; you can’t second guess it. The only thing you can do is persist—to keep going no matter what your ideas or judgments are about where you are and where you’re headed.
It’s as if you’re walking down a road blindfolded. You aren’t the best judge. That isn’t a criticism; that is simply everybody’s situation. You aren’t able to see objectively both yourself and the road. So, any time we are evaluating (and you hear this from people all the time), “Oh, I wish I had grown more this year. I feel I could’ve gone farther. I feel I could’ve gone further down my spiritual path, and I feel I didn’t make the progress I should. I tried really hard, and I went to this, and I did that, and I’m kind of disappointed in myself that more didn’t happen.”
You don’t know what happened. You don’t know the actual inner effects that the mind of a person cannot judge. You don’t know what actually took hold inside and will flower in a month, in a year, or in a decade, because this isn’t like anything else, where you set a goal and you figure out what you have to do to try to meet the goal and then you go try to do it. This isn’t goal-oriented in the same way.
The spiritual journey can’t be mapped out ahead of time. It doesn’t mean people don’t have maps in their mind, or ideas of how it should feel, where it should end up, how they should be when they reach what they think they should reach, but all of that’s in your mind. All that is your own thinking, your own idea, and it has nothing to do with the actual spiritual journey, because the actual spiritual journey is a journey deeper and deeper into reality.
We did not create reality; you and I did not create reality, so our own judgment isn’t going to be an accurate measure, or a wise evaluation. It’s going to be whatever judgments we carry upon ourselves in general, superimposed onto the spiritual life. You aren’t going to notice that in general, because it’s going to seem real.
So, my advice (if you want to call it that) is: Don’t believe what you tell yourself, what your mind says to you, what your own ideas and perceptions suggest to you about your own “spiritual progress.” You can’t measure your spiritual progress, because you don’t know, and can’t really say for sure, what is making a difference and what isn’t.
You can feel a certain way; you can say, “Oh, that seemed to make a big difference,” or “I had a breakthrough about that,” or “I know this that I didn’t know a year ago,” but that won’t tell you accurately where you are really going, because you may think that you are going down the road as if you were driving in a car and for all you know you are in a supersonic jet.
You may be in no position at all to really say what the meaning of any of it is, and anything you tell yourself along the way is going to be, at best, partially right.
But even that partial rightness, I’m saying, is unlikely because the tendency is there for most of us to judge ourselves, to see ourselves—even in the middle of success—as somehow falling short. The nature of goal orientation is that the horizon keeps moving as you get closer to it. So the way the average mind works, the way it is programmed to think and self-monitor, isn’t programmed to see accurately. It is set up as a judgment machine, not a success-identifying machine.
I see the possibility for you in every way, and I know that that possibility is highly likely to become an actuality if you persist, and I see no evidence that you aren’t persistent.
The best way to be persistent, in the right way, is to stop judging whether or not you have made enough progress.
The best way to be persistent on the spiritual path is to recognize that you have committed yourself and you aren’t likely to go back. For many of you right now, even if you tried you wouldn’t be able to. So once you recognize where you really are—which is simply that you are going no matter what—maybe it’s hard, maybe it won’t work out, maybe you won’t like it, but you are probably still going to go. Once you accept that, once you see that this is the context that you have developed for yourself, then you are seeing the reality more; you are seeing what is really going on more clearly, because you aren’t telling yourself something that isn’t true.
You aren’t telling yourself, “Well, we’ll see how it works out.” That is probably not your attitude. Your attitude is probably already based on persistence more than you might realize. Again and again, I have seen that a person who persists gets there by sheer persistence.
Why not assume—if it is true for you—that this includes you? Why not assume that you already have in place the factors that get you there, the factors that succeed? The main one, I am saying, is persistence.
Why assume—which the human mind tends to do—that something is missing? Why assume that you are not smart enough, that you are not sincere enough, that your heart is not open enough, that it’s not possible for you because something isn’t the way it should be, while believing it is possible for someone else?
Why exclude yourself from the possibility with the idea, “Oh, it can happen for other people but it’s unlikely for me”?
This is what most people do. I’ve heard this on a regular basis for well over thirty years, “Well, I know it can happen for people, but it’s probably not going to happen in my lifetime. It’s probably not going to be me who gets there, but I know it’s possible to get there. I think other people might get there, but I probably won’t.”
I’m saying that’s wrong. I’m saying that’s simply a misunderstanding whenever your mind suggests that to you.
Getting there is not about having certain extraordinary factors or abilities or anything else. It is mostly about acceptance and persistence. It is about being willing to stop that whole train of thought that is involved with constant, relentless self-judgment and self-valuation.
And it’s not that a moment comes and you go, “I have arrived; I’m there; I have found God; I’ve become enlightened; I have reached a mountaintop,” or whatever your conceptualization of it is, or your experience. It is usually not like that for the majority of people.
It’s usually that you gradually begin to see where you really are; you gradually begin to notice that something is different that you weren’t noticing before, that something is going on that wasn’t being keyed into, and that it didn’t start yesterday or a minute ago, or a week ago, or a month ago, or even necessarily a year ago.
And, more and more, you begin to recognize what it means; you begin to recognize that this has been going on without your knowing, that this has been going on in you, unnoticed.
This is the most common report from people about how they actually recognize their own spiritual advancement, or awareness, let’s say.
So how can I say it so confidently? Because it’s how it works for the majority of people, and you are always on shaky ground when you think you are the exception. Yet the human mind tends to have the idea, “I’m the exception. It can happen for everybody but not for me.” And, conversely, “Everybody will die, but they will have a cure for death before I die.” The mind tends to assume—insanely—“I’m the exception.”
This is simply what actually happens for the vast majority of people.
There are people who come for a year or two, and you never see them again. There are people who come for five years and then, one day, have some big blowout. They decide it’s all been in their head, develop some idea seemingly out of nowhere—or out of some misperception—and you never see them again.
Then there are people who go all over the place. They go to this group and that group, this teacher and that teacher. They spread themselves thin. For five or ten years they hang out with one teacher, then, in another stage of their life, they hang out with another, and they never seem to really get anywhere. They go round and round.
You listen to them talk and they say, “I’ve been in spiritual life for forty years, and I’m not sure I found anything.”
What I’m talking about is the ten or twenty percent who aren’t all over the place, who don’t come for a year or two and then disappear, but who—no matter the group, the teacher, the philosophy, or the practice—simply persist.
They have come to understand in themselves that the whole idea of stopping, the whole idea of going back, the whole idea of giving up, is a nonissue. It simply isn’t how it works for them.
And then they relax.
Then they know that the journey is a lifetime journey, that there is no point where you get to the endpoint and are done. They know that once the spaceship has taken off, it just goes deeper and deeper into space. It doesn’t arrive at some final destination and then end.
Then, gradually, if their understanding really deepens, they begin to see for themselves—and you will begin to see for yourself—that it has something to do with something eternal. It has something to do with something much bigger than your personal understanding, your personal development, or your individual result.
Keep Walking
Persistence isn’t as daunting as the association we have with the word; it means if it starts raining, you are just going to keep walking. It means if the sun gets hot, you are going to keep walking. It means if your feet start to hurt, you are going to keep walking. It means if your feet feel great and you feel energized, you are going to keep walking. It means if the weather is perfect and it couldn’t be more ideal and you would rather do nothing other than walk, you are going to keep walking. It means that no matter what the circumstances—external or internal—no matter what the feelings are, no matter what the thoughts are, no matter what the perceptions are, you’re going to keep walking. It just means, “I know I’m in for the long haul.”
🌿 Excerpt from a Darshan with Swami Premodaya, JewelTree Center