My faith in the Divine and Guru have strengthened me so deeply that I’m able to stay attuned well enough despite the challenges of the pandemic and living all by myself in a foreign country. I thought I was doing so well but I lost it yesterday and had an emotional upset. Although I can recover quickly, I want to know if it is ok to lose it. Isn’t it part of being human? I feel I should not be so perfectionist with my progress. But can I get to a point where I don’t lose it at all?
—Pooja, Japan
Dear Pooja,
Please be reassured that everyone has their moments of despair, fear, worry, or just plain “losing it!” Yes, as we grow spiritually and mature our ups and downs will even out and bring to us ever-increasing satisfaction. While this process can happen naturally, it most certainly can accelerate for those who meditate and who in daily life aspire to be even-minded and cheerful under all circumstances. A life of faith is a life that places in the hands of God our well-being, our security, and even our happiness. And when this is done with energy, courage and joy (and not merely passively), our inner peace and inner strength grow exponentially.
It is interesting in this way: as we grow we find that events that would have devastated us emotionally sometime in the past do not have the power over us. At the same time, however, we may also find that we are given opportunities to continue to develop our spiritual muscularity with new and bigger challenges as a result of our own expanded view of who we are and what can be accomplished through us.
Yet there is no one living who has accomplished great deeds who didn’t also have a trail of “learning experiences” where on an outward level things didn’t go as they would have hoped. Yogananda encouraged us to see our failures as opportunities to learn and pick up again. This, in fact, is how we do learn: by experience!
Consider also something like the weather: always ups and downs and unpredictable. Therefore, view yourself as a sailor on the sea, sailing the ship of your life through calm or turbulent waters with confidence, faith and equanimity — requiring sometimes an enormous amount of energy and other times sunning yourself on the deck! A wave may begin to capsize your boat, and for a few minutes you may think you are drowning, but then suddenly the boat flips upright again!
So be of good cheer. You may have gotten a bucket of cold water dumped your head for a day, but now you are warm and dry again. Smile and say, “I learned a lot from that!” Okay? Keep up your meditations, devotion and joyful selfless service.
Blessings and joy!
Nayaswami Hriman
