Swami Shivapadananda on making spiritual life ‘natural’

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

DAILY READINGS

Taken from Mother Radha’s
notes, written at Swamiji’s feet.

Day 311

 

Never think you will not suffer. You will, a thousand times, and so you
need a strong body and mind.

Where love is, there is no fear. Where fear is, there is no love.

You take one step towards God and He will take ten steps towards you.

I beg you to meditate and to love one another. Whilst you [hold a] grudge [against] another
you cannot be simple. And you have to be simple. Faith and determination
are the secret. Never leave your meditation, if you do, there is something
wrong with your sadhana [spiritual practice]. Check it up.

Spiritual life must become natural, like breathing, then you will not
get tired of it. We get tired of the unnatural things, but now we are trying to
reach our natural state. You may ask, ‘Is this sitting in the temple unnatural
then?’ The answer is, ‘The fact that we get weary of it shows it is not
natural.’

Natural things bring eternal peace, joy, knowledge. But first you have
to learn to be a “gentleman”. It is no use talking about God-realisation when
you are not even a gentle man. It is like a blind man looking for the light,
not realising that first he must have eyes, otherwise he will pass by the
light. So become pure, loving, saintly. This means that you are getting your
eyes, your sight. Only then will you recognise God. How do you get this? By
following moral and ethical laws. God-realisation is like ice-cream on the palm
of the hand of the blind man. He cannot see it, so he is saying, ‘Give me some
ice-cream.’ But when he gets his sight he will see he already has it.

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