A student once told me how he was having beautiful experiences in meditation but was distressed because his experience of his daily life wasn’t beautiful or good. I asked this student to explain what his meditation experience was like. His reply was, “Well, I experience an intense vibration that feels very good. But, I don’t seem to fit into either ashram life or my everyday life. I’ve tried everything. I am almost at the end of the rope.” And then he asked for my advice.
I replied, “Well you began with something nice—an intense spiritual experience and now you are at the end of your rope. So what kind of spiritual experience was it?” You see, when you have a true spiritual experience there is no longer any sense of “me.” There is no longer any desire. You rise above all these things and you are always peaceful and blissful—whether you are in an ashram or outside you feel comfortable everywhere.
My advice to him and to anyone else who is in this situation is to analyze your own mind well. The best thing is to sit quietly and watch your own thoughts. See your mind as you would see a movie. Let all the thoughts arise. Don’t get involved in them but see them and then you will see what sort of ideas your mind has. It’s all about your mental makeup and it needs a little self-analysis. Either do that or have complete faith in a Higher Power, which some call God.
Having faith means that through that faith, you link yourself with the Higher Intelligence. It is something like putting yourself in the hands of somebody who is able to help you when you cannot do something yourself. If you cannot fly you put yourself in an airplane and the plane flies you. That is what you do with your faith. You put yourself in that big plane. The Higher Power flies you and all your worries are taken care of. The only ticket you need is faith, that’s all. It’s not a question of having money for the ticket. If you have that ticket of faith you will be put in the plane.
We can’t really achieve much with our limitations, with our little capacities alone. If we can link our little capacity with the higher capacity we can do much more. But when we limit ourselves, we are limited in every way. It’s like putting up a small fence and saying, “This is all mine” and then you can’t go out beyond the fence; you are imprisoning yourself. So, we have undo our limitations.
