I see that many of my colleagues and friends have started following the one or the other path of spirituality. I think, by the time we reach our 40s, most of us have the realization of the futility of the targets that we set for life as a student. We get jobs, marry, and have kids. Then we start developing a mid-life crisis. Now what? Many of us accept that we will live a routine life for the time left. Some more adventurous ones reset the target and develop ambitions in terms of money, positions, power, or knowledge. Fewer of the remaining feel the pain of society. They devote their life to the service of society in different forms.
Very few out of the remaining start their adventures into the world of spirituality. I am calling it to be an adventure since in the beginning, it looks like an adventure. Reading every book and listening to every discourse in the beginning fills us with curiosity. We want to know more and more about the world of spirits. Reading books like "Search for Secter India" by Paul Brunton or "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramhansa Yogananda fills our imaginations.
However, generally, spiritual pursuit starts as a time-pass activity, or out of curiosity. We remain hooked on ourselves. Our body, self-image, materialistic possessions, ideas, and opinions. We take little time out of these fixations and start our adventure into the spiritual world. Initially, we had a lot of queries about the world of spirits. How we are born in this world? Where do we come from? Is there anything like soul? Where does the soul go after the death? We try to seek answers to these questions.
However, we keep judging whatever we listen to and filter whatever we get to know based on our ideas and opinions. We do cherry-picking. That is why initially this journey is quite slow. We generally discard what does not make sense to our logic. Our logic in turn is based on our limited experiences and exposure. We get more driven by the certainty of what we already know rather than the trust over the "path to the unknown".
In the process, something wonderful happens. We keep facing different circumstances in which our existing ideas and beliefs are challenged. That gives a little opening to the soul from the prison of the ego. However, that little opening too seems like a threat to the ego and it forms all the logic to keep us trapped in the prison. However, that little opening has its own sweet temptation that is difficult to resist. Slowly that little opening allows us to take a short flight from the prison in the form of sabbaticals and meditation camps. However, the ego is not so easy to go. It brings us back to the same prison.
However, once we taste the freedom from the known, the restlessness within the prison increases. There is a continuous battle between the attachment of the known and the temptation of the unknown. We keep getting the moments wherein the temptation of the unknown overcomes the attachments, however, generally, the force of the attachments is too strong to resist. The attachments to ideas, opinions, self-image, materialistic possessions, etc are so deeply rooted that they do not give space to the unknown so easily. There is a long battle. The ego uses different weapons and warriors, both in the domain of the conscious and the unconscious, to protect its dominance. However, sooner or later, darkness has to give way to the light. Once the light enters the prison, darkness can not stay for long.
That is the reason that Hanumana entering Lanka to find the whereabouts of Sita is the first step. Finally, a bridge needs to be built over the ocean. That's not easy. The stones are not going to float over the sea of emotions unless we have a constant remembrance of Rama. Even after building the bridge, there is a long battle in the unconscious world of Lanka. Our knowledge and logic will faint getting trapped in the Maya. Finally, We have to look through the things with concentration for wisdom. Hanumana has to bring the Sanjivani of wisdom. Without the help of the past samskaras of the divine, we are not going to know that the strength of ego lies inside ignorance. That is the naval in which an arrow needs to be hit. Once that arrow is hit, the ego melts and merges with the divine and becomes as pious as the divine itself.
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