The Fruit of Hurry
It’s all too easy to fall into a tendency to hurry through the extraordinary experience of being a disciple. After all, don’t we hurry through so much of life? In our eagerness to ‘do well’ – in focusing on all kinds of desired and imagined results – we rush through the present moment. But by doing that, we actually undermine our progress.
We hurry when the ego over-exerts itself, full of its own ideas of what spirituality may entail. This may lead us to approach our own individuality as a curse that is to be overcome as quickly as possible. But that is not conducive to finding our ‘comfort level,’ and it certainly pushes up stress levels.
Overcoming the ego does not mean that we must deny what we are, however flawed. If we deny our reality, pretending to be, or rushing towards, something else, then we are building our spiritual life on shaky ground. Hurry breeds a surrogate, fickle faith and poorly hides this shaky foundation. It’s better to acknowledge our true condition and start from there.
Each of us has his or her own style and pace. Only when we consciously behold the Master inside and see nothing else do we go beyond our individuality. Until that time we should recognize our natural selves, find our balance, and seek to walk this spiritual path with appreciation and patience.
If you think about it, hurry comes with rigidity and dogmatism, with stagnation and standstill rather than progress. If we’re mentally at some other place, how can we listen properly to the Master? Unable to be fully alive to the present, we’ll doze off or drift away in satsang and remain very definitely in the power of the mind and the senses.
In daily life a sense of hurry may lead us to draw quick, superficial conclusions, to be judgemental and dismissive. This kind of hurrying often rubs off on others as well, when we persistently demand that they do as we do. In disregarding their right to go at their own pace, we may generate a negative reaction. The fruit of hurry has a bitter taste.
Why not make good use of the opportunity to turn every single day into a precious time by doing our simran, focused and wide awake? Regular and punctual bhajan and simran is the practical form of devotion or bhakti. We should do this spiritual seva with loving, faithful, and hence patient attention. Waiting at the eye centre is an opportunity, a gift of grace. The application of patience to meditation and to daily life is building a foundation for receiving God’s love. Walking the path slowly and steadily allows the mind to take one step at a time toward spiritual liberation.
Having once understood the direction we must face, we need not keep our eyes on the horizon but simply look to the present; the future will take care of itself. In a logical, unforced way, the point will eventually come when we realize our separation from the Supreme Being – that we are lone souls away from home – and surrender our individuality quite naturally. No bitter fruit for us then, as we taste at last the sweetness of the fruit of patient love.