This week, as we read pages 50–55 in The Constant Companion,* Easwaran begins by illustrating how self-will traps us even in our most intimate personal relationships: “We go about saying ‘He did this to me’ or ‘She said that to me’ or ‘It’s not my fault!’–all simply because we lack detachment and get blindly wrapped up in our own pursuits.” It is a familiar and terrible predicament.
But the Lord is Shanti-Da, the Giver of Peace. Last week Easwaran ended his commentary by describing how meditation slowly enables us to break through this self-will, which has accumulated like geological layers: “Drilling through these strata in meditation means overcoming limitations, all the obstacles created by self-will.” And through the power of meditation we can finally go beyond self-will: “The biggest leap in meditation comes when we run headlong and throw ourselves over the rim of all duality to land in the unitive state, where nothing is separate from the Lord.”
Is there a relationship in your life that you wish you could improve? Read this article for tips from Easwaran. Try applying those tips, even if you can’t apply them directly to this particular relationship.
We are taking this book study as an opportunity to give special attention to our practice of Spiritual Reading. In what ways do you find these stories are helping you see the Lord in others around you?
Let’s turn again to The Thousand Names Talks** in the Easwaran Digital Library for our spiritual treat, this time with Talk 2. The full talk is 33 minutes, but you can listen to part of it now and when you return the player will resume where you left off. If time is short, consider starting with the first five minutes, where Easwaran recounts a thrilling conversation from the Mahabharata, where Yudhishthira asks the great sage Bhishma, “How can the human being attain supreme joy which knows no change?”
* For those using electronic versions of The Constant Companion with different page numbering: this week’s reading is Easwaran’s commentary on the names Giver of Peace and The Eternal. (Please note that the latest edition of our ebook is titled Names of the Lord.)
** You’ll need to log in for the link above to work. If it’s your first time, use the button Create new account from the login page.