Shiva’s First Secret
“I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” – Somerset Maughan
Do not wait for inspiration before you meditate. Meditation generates inspiration. Each session is a noble effort to transcend the inertia of spiritual sleep and awaken. If you only meditate when you are ‘in the mood’, you’re forgetting the fact that meditation can create the mood. There is a word in sanskrit, Sadhana. It means ‘effort to complete’. It describes our lifelong effort to complete ourselves, to fully express our human potential, to awaken our true Self. Some people meditate for a while, but stop again. Why? Why do people give up anything they know is good for them? People give up exercising, dieting, writing their novel. The path to disappointment and misery is strewn with the carcasses of good intentions and New Year’s resolutions.
How a Chrysalis becomes a Butterfly
“The greater the task, the mightier the obstacles. That is why the person who wants to perform noble deeds must be ready to face opposition from the very outset.” – Shrii Shrii Anandamurti
Think of your meditation project as though you were writing a bestseller.You start with a big vision, and then you chip away at it one session at a time. It may take a little effort each time to just sit and get started. Once you’re sitting you get into a flow. But to get into that flow you sometimes have to overcome a reluctance to sit down at all.
There is a natural resistance within each of us to this kind of effort. Ask any writer, song writer, meditator, or anyone engaged in a worthwhile endeavor aimed at self improvement. Obstacles and resistance sometimes come from outside of ourselves, but most are from within. The effort we make to overcome these obstacles helps us to develop mental strength, as though the obstacles concealed within themselves the key to our victory.
Have you ever seen a chrysalis crack open and the new butterfly slowly emerge? It is painful to watch the struggle of the delicate creature as it forces its way out into the world, and one is tempted to help by breaking open the hard shell of the chrysalis. But if you help the emerging butterfly, it will die. The effort it makes to escape its shining prison forces fluid through the veins in its new wings so that they can spread and stiffen and bear the little creature into the air in its glorious new form. Aid its escape and it will never fly. The struggle is what forces its body to develop so that it can spread its wings.
Shiva, the world’s first Mahayogi or Great Yogi, taught Seven Secrets of Success.The first is determination – determination to overcome resistance, to continue and succeed no matter what comes. Tantra teaches us to regard obstacles as our friends. Like the shell of the Chrysalis, they give us something to push against so that we can cast off from the shore of the mundane, and journey into the great mystery.
If you want to spread your spiritual wings and fly, remember the wisdom of Shiva. Your journey starts with firm determination.