If you want to deepen your spiritual life, one of the most important things is to make God your partner.
You need to get away from the thought, “I am doing it,” and into the thought: “He is doing it through me, and we are doing it together.”
This is not easy. The ego is the soul identified with the body. But that’s all it is – an instrument for the soul to function in the body.
Our job is to break that identification and bring and realize that we are that which is in all bodies.
Some people think of getting rid of the ego by suppressing it. They say, “I mustn’t accept this job or that job, because it might feed my ego.”
(Photo: In work, relationships, planning, and enjoying friends, asking God to act through us is the secret of highest success. Women talk after a ceremony at Ananda Sangha, Palo Alto, California.)
On the other hand, not accepting the job might be going against something in your nature that you need to express in order to expand your awareness and grow.
How are you to decide? The answer is to do everything not only for God but with God, and to offer everything that you do up to Him.
When you act in this way, bit by bit you begin to dissolve any thought of separateness from God, and any thought of ego.
When Yogananda spoke about solving problems of all kinds, whether it was healing ourselves from illness, getting answers to prayers, and other problems, he always emphasized a very delicate line between doing it ourselves and just letting God do it for us.
Neither way works by itself. There was a time, when I was a young monk, and I was giving a talk in my Master’s church in Hollywood. In the middle of a sermon, I stopped talking and stood there, waiting for God to continue. And I waited a good two minutes to see what He would say. But I found that He didn’t say anything. You see, I was testing the idea that God would act through me without any conscious volition of my own. Friends of mine who were in the audience that day told me afterward that they were sweating, thinking I had frozen. But I was simply waiting to see if God would use me without my helping Him.
To do things with God doesn’t mean being being passive! You must be wholly engaged, and act with great enthusiasm and love for Him – but without the thought that you are doing it.
When you do it rightly, there’s a sense that comes: “Okay, so I did it, but it wasn’t me.”
It’s only when we act to the best of our ability, and also ask God to act through us, that we can draw His power to act through us.
That’s why Yogananda said we should use “our own, but God-given power.”
The way out of ego-affirming action is always to feel that you are using God’s power. Yogananda taught us to pray, “I will reason, I will will, and I will act. But guide Thou my reason, will, and activity to the right path in everything.”
The ego wants to claim credit for everything. But the egoic approach doesn’t work. A lot of New Thought people have this idea – they think in terms of manifesting things by their own power. Often, the great goal of their mighty power is to manifest a parking space, for some reason.
They think, “If I have the right positive thoughts, I will make it happen.”
The ego can make a lot of things happen, but somehow in the end things don’t turn out in the right way. What you achieve with the ego is always just a little bit short of what you wanted. Or you end up getting what you worked so hard for, but it wasn’t good for you after all, because it wasn’t in the flow of God’s will, and it blows up in your face.
Ultimately the egoic approach binds you, because you are left with the thought, “I made this parking space appear with my mighty power of will.”
You then think, “Maybe I can make two parking spaces appear.” And you go on and on, and you forget that there’s a wonderful sweetness and truth when you God into the picture.
But the ego doesn’t like that. The ego wants to claim credit for everything. But when you can say “No, God really is the doer,” and you give it all to Him, suddenly you find an extraordinary freedom and happiness in that relinquishment.
There’s a great joy in knowing that you’re part of something much bigger than your little self. The soul wants to be a part of the universe.
Don’t box yourself in. Many highly creative people rise to a certain height, and then they find it impossible to rise any farther. In fact, many rise to that point and then they begin to lose their creativity.
Why? The loss always seems to follow an increase of egotism. Their thought is “I’m doing it all myself,” and it blocks the energy physically at the seat of ego in the brain, and prevents it from flowing upward to the seat of superconsciousness at the spiritual eye, whence comes the highest inspiration.
When you say, “I did this. I made it happen,” even if you’ve done a good thing, you gradually box yourself into a corner where you are limited to only that. Why go to your grave thinking of yourself as an artist or banker? Why go to your grave thinking of yourself as anything? God wants us to become the universe, and to know that we are in everything and a part of everything.
You’re not bound when you can say, “Yes, it was done through me, but I am not that.”
The ego thinks, “Well, I’ve got to be responsible for myself. I’ve got to think about how I am going to get ahead. I can’t expect God to pay my bills.”
And, of course you can’t, in one way. And yet, if you will make Him your partner and draw on His energy in everything you do, you will find, to an amazing degree, that He does pay your bills. He does take care of you. When you do things with Him, then you find that the flow is right and remarkable things can happen.
You will find, also, that you can do a great deal more. Make God your partner in every undertaking, and offer the fruits of your self-effort up to Him, seeking to please only Him, and acting above all out of love for Him. In this way you will soon learn that you are, in truth, a child of the Infinite, and that dominion over all things is your divine birthright.
By: Swami Kriyananda
If you would like to learn more about the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda and Swami Kriyananda, we invite you to visit the website of Ananda India.
Here is a schedule of Swami Kriyananda’s forthcoming public appearances:
March 9 - 11 - Mahasamadhi retreat, at the Ananda Pune Community. If you would like information regarding this event, please write to ananda@anandaindia.org and sign up to receive our newsletter. You can also call Ananda Pune: +91 8308401111
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