Spiritual Development

In the course of our life, most of us have recognized–through experience and at the cost of a lot of suffering–that the freedom of saying no is a mere virtual freedom that is only good for reinforcing our Ego. As separate Egos we often tend to forget the basic fact of life that existence is dialectic. That is, no joy may exist without sorrow, and no happiness may exist without suffering.

This forgetfulness is, naturally, understandable, since we all strive to be happy, to enjoy life, so we bravely say yes to these, but our answer to suffering and unpleasant experiences is generally no. This behavior appears to be perfectly natural and human.

But how would we know that we are happy at a specific moment without ever experiencing sorrow in our life? Would we be aware that we are joyful at this moment, when we have never experienced sadness?

Pleasure and grief, happiness and unhappiness are equally parts of the same thing, they constitute the two side of the same thing; that means that if we fail to experience one side, we will not be able to learn about the other. If we reject unhappiness, we will not have the opportunity to experience happiness.

Only when we are able to recognize this basically dual nature of existence, the fact that happiness is rooted in unhappiness, shall our inner freedom enable us to say yes with pleasure to the things that are happening to us.

Once we have achieved the ability to say yes, our internal resistance to the things that happen to us will also cease, and we become conscious and alert to the present moment, and events emerging from that moment. We shall readily accept anything and everything the moment brings to us, let it be joy or sorrow, because we will be fully aware that all these are parts of the same game. That is the only way of remaining quiet, open and ready to accept things, and in this way we shall be presented with peace of mind and the ability to concentrate our attention.

In that state of tranquility, our concentrated attention will show us what we need to do in the specific moment concerned. Our reaction will therefore be an intelligent deed. Only the readiness to accept things, rooted in inner freedom, and surrender to the circumstances may become the foundation of our spiritual development.