Choosing your fuel

This is something that has been on my mind since, well, always I suppose, but more sharply so since January this year. For context: soon after I received my Kriya initiation early Jan, I went to pay my respects to someone I hold in very, very high regard spiritually. I will always feel boundless gratitude to this person because he was the channel through which our Guru came to us in this life, and he has been a friend of the highest order to my whole family. We can never repay what he has done for us. Ever. Naturally, I pay more attention to his words than I would for other human beings, because I see him as more than an ordinary person, as someone who is more deeply attuned to the Source of everything than anyone else I know.

In this conversation with him, I got the sense that probably we approach the spiritual path differently. That the motivation for why we do our practices is not identical. I sit in meditation because I seek to love God the way I am loved- unconditionally. To learn to love unconditionally is my goal on and off the meditation mat. Atleast till date, I do not care for the wonders that a Kriya yogi is supposed to eventually encounter as she makes the journey from chakra to chakra. That isn’t enough to become a source of motivation for me. To him, love is an emotion, and something more than that emotion is required on the path of the yogi. Or atleast, that is how I received his words to me that day. And that was very upsetting.

If my motivation was misguided, then where did that leave me?

Love is the only factor and motivation that works for me, in all aspects of my life- it is the needle of the compass I follow in evaluating and correcting my behaviour, my actions, my thoughts…everything. Duty, responsibility, social correctness, prudence bla bla means nothing to me shorn of love. You do what you do out of love. A sense of duty that originates out of anything other than a desire to love well is misplaced, in my world.

The approaches of some God-realised individuals have emphasized the importance of prioritizing the love-aspect of motivation and behaviour, and the writings I have grown up on, Paramahansa Yogananda’s writings, have held love to be the highest motivating factor. So I know I’m not just stroking my ego in fixating on love.

The strength of this knowing got tested quite a bit after this January conversation. The desire to defer to the position of a person much more advanced than me is strong, and yet, and yet. It doesn’t feel right. Just as his position that I ought to pray for a life partner does not feel right, and yet I’m frequently assailed by the thought-how can he be wrong? Am I just being stubborn? Have I misinterpreted the many internal responses I have received thus far on this question? Is my steadfastness in believing I only ought to do what I’m shown I need to do, misplaced?

Oof, it is exhausting arranging these thoughts into words.

I’m realising that as the journey of life unfolds, people are faced by such situations, where they have to weigh their inner convictions against contrary advice/guidance by other, often valued, people in their lives. One has to choose where one puts one’s faith. And two, it is fucking exhausting going against the grain all the time, walking one’s own path, if it defies not one but multiple conventions of being. Sometimes I think about how much easier my life would have been if I would have just been satisfied by the things I’m supposed to be satisfied by.

But, who said it’s supposed to be easy? What are my ideals worth if I’m not willing to put up a fight for them?

All that to say that despite the seed of doubt infused in my mind (by that part of my mind that thinks other people will always know better than me) about what I need to use as fuel, I need to go with what I know works best for me. I need to fuel myself with love as motivation, and I need to surround myself with other people-real life people and online people- who have a similar motivation. I will continue to seek out and be fueled by other peoples testimonies of the power of love.

This isn’t as coherently written as I’d like, but it’ll have to do for now.