Acceptance and Passivity
Dear friends,
One of the attitudes necessary for living a truly spiritual life is acceptance. Railing against what might have been, or what ought to be, wastes more time and energy than one can imagine. And my experience has been that when we fight reality, reality usually wins!
A friend of mine tells a story of her child who woke up at 3:00 a.m., crawled out of bed, and was quite disappointed to see that the world was still asleep. He was ready to play and get on with the day! He stood at the top of the stairs and shouted, "I want it to be day!" I am sorry to report that shockingly, the Earth did not change its rotation to accommodate this demand.
But passivity is to be avoided, however. The Serenity Prayer has it quite right:
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Note the "courage to change..." part. I will add to that: energy is also needed. And then of course there's the crucial, "...wisdom to know the difference..." That's where the calm heart we have spoken of before comes in. The agitated heart is caused by egoic desire and fears. The calm heart can see and feel what is right to happen, thus the wisdom to know.
This is where the path of yoga comes in. Yogananda said that our connection to Spirit is found within our own nervous system. Meditation, devotion, and selfless service quiet the heart and enable us to experience the Divine Presence. Once centered in ourselves even the question of active or passive dissolves. We do what is asked of us by the Divine Architect, as our one desire is to cooperate with that flow. But as a field needs to be tilled, fertilized, and cared for to become productive, so too our own minds and hearts. Passivity out of fear or mental paralysis is no better than action caused by an agitated heart. We seek to be, as Yogananda put it, “Center everywhere and circumference nowhere.” May we each find that inner center and live in it more often and more strongly every day.
Blessings,
David G., manager
For the staff at East West