“Relax and your meditation will be easy.”
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
I catch myself, now and again, feeling agitated and anxious about my seeming lack of spiritual progress. I've written before about the fact that our spiritual state is often a mystery even to ourselves until certain facets of it breach the surface. But there's more to the situation than just that.
The real problem is not that we backslide, not that in addition to our spiritual practice we also have to deal with many worldly concerns, not even that we must still unravel our many traumas and psychological complexes. All of these are true, but they’re not actually the obstacles that we think they are.
First, I don’t mean by this to downplay the difficulty of these things. All of them impact us more or less deeply according to timing and circumstances. I’ve had my share of anxiety attacks, for example, and days of deep depression. I’ve been physically and emotionally worn down by long days at work or difficult family situations. While I don’t know every difficulty of every person, I do at least know a lot of the every day troubles and the usual mental and physical health issues which assail us all.
In the midst of all of this, we are able to show up. Perhaps we cannot manage a full 30 - 90 minute session of puja and meditation, but we can do japa; we can remind ourselves throughout the day to turn our minds inward if even for a few minutes.
What stands in our way more than the day-to-day — which, after all, can be turned to the advantage of our sadhana when we learn how to turn the lantern back upon itself — is actually the pressure we put on ourselves and on the process.
Of course, we must take the process seriously enough to put in the time and effort it requires. But stress is the opposite of sadhana. If we are incapable of relaxing, our sadhana must be just to relax. If we are already relaxed, our sadhana is to relax yet more deeply. Only then can we go about dissolving the deeply rooted sources of tension and suffering. Relaxation is the core of sense-control; sense-control is the ground for concentration; concentration becomes meditation when it comes easily; samadhi arises when relaxation is complete.
Thanks for this. Much needed reminder for all of us.