Thank you for your inspiring reflections and for highlighting the messages of hope in Easwaran’s article. We’re continuing to explore the question: How can we contribute to a sense of hope for ourselves and others? While contemplating this question keep in mind Easwaran’s statement from last week’s reading: “My approach to the scriptures is entirely on this basis: that they are practical manuals to the art of living, and the truths in them can be verified by anyone prepared to undergo the necessary disciplines.” This week we’re diving into Part 2 of Easwaran’s “The Candle of the Lord”.
After reviewing the article, please share your reflections in the comments section below. We’d love to hear about your experience of Easwaran’s message of hope. Please feel free to type a line or two that really stood out to you, or write any thoughts or questions that arose. Again, your contributions inspire all of us and we appreciate reading them!
Also, in the spirit of the New Year’s Mantram Relay we’d like to suggest a practical exercise for this week. Try giving extra effort to applying the mantram to negative thoughts or feelings that may come up for you. You might consider catching the negativity before it arrives, by making some extra time to repeat the mantram, or giving extra effort to noticing new mantram moments throughout your day. You might look at this as another pathway into understanding how you can contribute to a sense of hopefulness in yourself and others.
It can be helpful to give some thought to what you would like to try in advance, as you’ll be more likely to remember to do it! Below are a few practical suggestions. Feel free to choose or modify one from the list below, or make up your own! Keep it simple by choosing just on experiment.
Keep a mantram journal or series of pages in your journal titled “You Are a Force for Peace” and write some mantrams there every day.
Repeat the mantram every time you brush your teeth.
Repeat the mantram during exercise, or for a specific time during your regular exercise.
Repeat the mantram when you find yourself reacting negatively to a news article or a TV story.
Repeat the mantram before going online.
Identify a situation or word that usually triggers you into a string of negative thoughts. Plan ahead and resolve to use the mantram in these instances.
We’d love to hear how this exercise goes for you. When and how were you able to apply the mantram? What impact did this have on negative thoughts or feelings?
This is Part 2 of the article “The Candle of the Lord” by Easwaran from the Special Issue Blue Mountain Journal, Winter 2018.
Light in the Darkness
“For thou wilt light my candle,” says a Psalm of David: “The Lord, my God, will enlighten my darkness.” To anyone in whom this candle is lit, spiritual leadership comes — entirely through the grace of God. In the Bhagavad Gita, the Lord promises that he will rescue the world whenever righteousness declines and violence threatens to overpower us. Traditionally this is understood as divine incarnation. But it applies equally to the miracle of transformation, when some personal crisis turns an apparently ordinary person like Mohandas Gandhi or Francis Bernadone into a beacon figure who lights a path back from the brink of self-destruction.
In Indian mythology, this recurring saga is dramatized vividly. When the suffering of the world becomes unbearable, it is said, Mother Earth herself goes to the Lord and throws herself at his feet in an appeal for help. The Lord responds by coming to life in a human being whose consciousness is ready for service as an instrument of peace.
In my interpretation, the Lord’s promise to come to our rescue can be understood in a third way too. Little people like you and me may not be a Gandhi, a Saint Francis, or a Saint Teresa, but if we do everything we can to still our mind and subdue our self-will, the Lord can light the lamp of wisdom within so that we, too, can contribute a little light instead of adding to the darkness of our times.
Prayer from the Depths
In any human being, a profound personal crisis can open a channel into the depths of the unconscious.
I would hazard the guess that this is what happens in cases of serious addiction, when life becomes so unbearable that an ordinary man or woman suddenly finds the strength to reverse the deep-seated self-destructive habits of a lifetime.
We see the same miraculous transformation on a grander scale in the lives of many great saints. In spiritual terms, this is the Lord within responding to a wholehearted appeal from the very depths of the heart.
Spiritual psychology would explain the myth of the Lord coming to the rescue of Mother Earth in a very similar way. When the world is sick to the heart with violence, that revulsion opens a channel deep into the collective unconscious, the race-old consciousness of our common humanity. Little people all over begin to find the will to make deep changes in their lives to fulfill that longing for peace. Then, when a beacon figure comes to show a way out — Jesus or the Buddha, Moses or Muhammad, Gandhi or Saint Francis — the ground is ready. Our hearts are open for them to teach.
The prayer of Mother Earth in this myth is the collective cry of countless ordinary people like you and me around the world. Prayer from the heart really means prayer from the depths of the unconscious — not oral prayer, but prayer without words. When prayer arises from the depths of the unconscious like this, tremendous forces — life forces that operate beneath our fragmented, superficial, egocentric awareness — are touched and moved and brought into action. These eternal laws, which are as operative as the law of gravity, open their doors to those who have no personal irons in the fire, who do not seek any profit or prestige but depend entirely upon the Lord.
Faith Burns Brightly
Gandhi tells us from his own bitterly-tested personal experience that there is no prayer from the heart that will not be answered. But the Lord will answer it, he says, not on our terms — that is the heartbreak — but on his. We cannot see more than a small corner of the vast stage of the human drama, on which consequences already set in motion have to be played out. But always, at the eleventh hour, rescue comes.
“My faith is brightest,” Gandhi says, “in the midst of impenetrable darkness.” I can assure you that Gandhi knew intimately what it was like to stand in darkness and alone. This is how faith is tested. When everything looks dark, when there is no silver lining on the horizon and the earth is pitch black from pole to pole, faith will burn brightly. That is the kind of faith that Gandhi had, that my grandmother had. With that kind of faith, prayer of the heart can bring into operation those eternal laws which ensure that good prevails and evil disappears.
May the Lord of Love grant us all that faith which can never be put out by any storm that blows.