Page 14 - All India Magazine Nov-2022

Offering your will to the Divine
You have a will and you can offer that will. Take the exam-

ple of becoming conscious of your nights. If you take the at-
titude of passive surrender, you would say, “When it is the Di-
vine Will that I should become conscious, then I shall become

conscious.” On the other hand, if you offer your will to the
Divine, you begin to will, you say, “I will become conscious of my
nights.” You have the will that it should be done; you do not sit
down idle and wait. The surrender comes in when you take the
attitude that says, “I give my will to the Divine. I intensely want
to become conscious of my nights, I have not the knowledge, let
the Divine Will work it out for me.” Your will must continue to act
steadily, not in the way of choosing a particular action or demand-
ing a particular object, but as an ardent aspiration concentrated
upon the end to be achieved. This is the first step. If you are vigi-

lant, if your attention is alert, you will certainly receive something
in the form of an inspiration of what is to be done and that you
must forthwith proceed to do. Only, you must remember that
to surrender is to accept whatever is the result of your action,

though the result may be quite different from what you expect.
On the other hand, if your surrender is passive, you will do nothing
and try nothing; you will simply go to sleep and wait for a miracle.
CWM 3: 19

Spiritual discipline
The number of hours spent in meditation is no proof of spiri-
tual progress. It is a proof of your progress when you no longer

have to make an effort to meditate. Then you have rather to make

an effort to stop meditating: it becomes difficult to stop medi-

tation, difficult to stop thinking of the Divine, diffi cult to come

down to the ordinary consciousness. Then you are sure of prog-
ress, then you have made real progress when concentration in the
Divine is the necessity of your life, when you cannot do without it,
when it continues naturally from morning to night whatever you

14 All India Magazine, November 2022