Discard the Ego (and be Nothing)
Excerpt from DISCARD THE EGO (AND BE NOTHING)
GURURAJ ANANDA YOGI: We are all children, children of God, made in His image, made in His Divinity. Nothing can distract us from that except ourselves, if that is we want to do. The path is not always easy. But as we gradually go along the path, we find the burden becoming lighter and lighter. That’s what the guru does. As you climb up the hill with that bag, that heavy load of samskaras, that burden, the guru comes (along) behind you. You don’t even notice him, but he’s got a lovely long pin and he pricks the bag; and all that heaviness, all that sand of samskaras. trickles out slowly, slowly, slowly. And as you reach higher and higher on this climb towards Divinity, your burden becomes lighter and lighter, until you realize, ‘I came with no bag, there’s no weight in it…it’s so light!’ Do you see?
The greatest tool that the guru has is a big pin! And sometimes I miss the bag and push the pin in a bit lower down! So, my beloveds, you have your job to do. The more you do it, the better for you. If you put a quarter teaspoon of sugar in your tea, it will not be so sweet; half a teaspoon, a little sweeter; a full teaspoon, much, much sweeter! And then of course, there was this other guy who used to put six teaspoons of sugar in his tea, but he never stirred the tea. So I asked him, ‘Why don’t you stir the tea?’ And he said ‘That will make it too sweet’!
A guru can be a catalyst to show you who you really are and what you (really) are. He will show you what you are now and he will also show you the potential of what you can be. That is his job. A true guru does it by words and by imparting the spiritual forces of which he’s only a channel. And being that channel, his mirror has to be clean, so that you could look into the mirror clearly and recognize the spots on your face. Once you recognize the spots or the marks on your face, you will not need to use all these powders and all those things that you cover up marks with. What for? Those spots you have on the face, they are my spots. Why must I cover them up? Why must I hide behind a mask? How many people in this world can truly say that they are not hiding behind a mask? A façade?
People do not live as they truly are. People live in an idea (they have) of themselves. They don’t live as themselves but (instead) they live in an idea, and an idea is a mental conception.
But the ‘I’ in ‘idea’, is similar to one’s ego self, in which the ego-self conceives of being far greater and better than what it is. Ask a woman, when she looks into her mirror and she says ‘Oh, I am pretty‘. If you ask a man, he will tell you, ‘Don’t I look much more handsome today than yesterday?‘ We live an ideological way of life rather than a pragmatic and practical way of life because of one reason: we fear ourselves. We fear ourselves, while the guru with his big pin tries to pin you on the backside, so that you don’t fear yourself. Take off the mask; be yourself. That is the true message, and that is how to live.
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