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Obstacles to Meditation & How to Overcome Them
One
Step at a Time: Yogananda's Vision of the Path
From The
Path, by Swami Kriyananda
from the May
2003 Daily Meditator
In a vision
when he was a boy, Paramhansa Yogananda saw himself standing in
the marketplace of a town in the foothills of the Himalayas. The
day was hot, and the dusty marketplace was crowded with squalid
stalls, harassed shoppers, and whining beggars. Dogs ran everywhere.
Monkeys stole down from the rooftops to snatch at food in the stalls.
Donkeys brayed complainingly. People were bustling to and fro, laden
with purchases, their brows furrowed with anxiety and desire.
No one looked
happy.
But now and
again some member of that milling throng paused before the entranced
boy, and gazed high into the distance behind him. After a time,
into each gazer's eyes, came a look of intense wistfulness. Then,
with a deep sigh, he muttered, "Oh, but it's much too high
for me." Lowering his eyes, he returned to the milling throng.
After this sequence
had repeated itself several times, Yogananda turned to see what
it was behind him that held such a strong appeal for these people.
And there towering above the town he beheld a lofty mountain, verdant,
serene; the absolute contrast it seemed to everything in this dusty
hubbub of festering ambitions. At the mountaintop there was a large
garden, inexpressibly beautiful. Its lawns were green-gold, its
flowers many-hued. The boy yearned to climb up the mountain and
enter that heavenly garden.
But as he reflected on the difficulty of the climb, in his mind
the same words formed themselves: "It's much too high for me!"
Then, weighing these words, he rejected them scornfully. "It
may be too high for me to reach the top in a single leap,"
he thought, "but at least I can put one foot in front of the
other!" Even to fail in the attempt would, he decided, be infinitely
preferable to continued existence in this hot, dusty showcase of
human misery.
Step by step he set out, filled with determination. Ultimately he
reached the mountaintop, and entered the beautiful garden.
For Master this vision symbolized a common predicament of everyone
with high ideals. Indeed, all men I imagine must fret at least sometimes
at the restrictions their bodies place upon them, at the constant
demand of those bodies for sustenance and protection. Man longs
instinctively for a life free from competition and worry, free from
hatred and violence. Few, alas, even suspect that such a state can
be found-not outwardly, but within their own selves, on high pinnacles
of spiritual achievement. And of those who do suspect, most turn
away with the sigh, "But it's much too high for me!" How
very few, alas, take up the path in earnest! "Out of a thousand,"
Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, "one seeks Me."
Yet the path is not really so difficult, if one will but take
it one step at a time. As Jesus put it, "Sufficient unto
the day is the evil thereof." And as Paramhansa Yogananda often
told us, "A saint is a sinner who never gave up."
The spiritual path requires courage, and dedication, and the absolute
conviction that God alone will satisfy the soul's yearning for true
happiness. Those who take up the path for what Yogananda called
its glamour, expecting only blissful visions and a soft, mossy trail
strewn with rose blossoms of divine consolation, become discouraged
when they find how often God neglects the moss and roses in favor
of thorns. But for those who cling to their purpose with devotion,
taking the path calmly one day at a time, no test is ever too great.
Obstructions then are seen to be blessings, for they give one the
strength he needs to reach the heights.
More Articles
on: Obstacles to Meditation & How to Overcome Them
from
the May 2003 Daily Meditator
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