120. One‘s Growth due to One‘s Experience at the Present Moment
Whatever views you might hold on your present life you can still expand and improve them. Never think that you cannot become better any more and by this also improve your life itself. You must not think either that you are good enough so that you could not become still better and at the same time that your life would also become much better. Even though you must always be calm yet do not entertain a feeling that you have achieved everything in your life so that you would not desire to strive for something more.
This stand, even on a spiritual path, is very dangerous and is leading to putting your own self in such a position when man loses the taste of the salt of his current living – such a man stops seeing a meaning in his daily living and his thoughts are ever more tending to the future, even to that future that will be only after the resurrection. However, it might be still a long way to go to this future since the body still has plenty of unused energy and can move mountains and its inner self has already lost a desire to do anything in this form and is already designing ever more as to how much it would like to act after the death of this form. This inner state is such as if it were ahead of both events and time. And it is also wearing out the man who has found himself in this state. He has faith, he has a wonderful attitude to the environment and service but he is missing the turning point of the driving power of love to the present moment. It is all focused onto the future while it is disposed to the present moment merely as much as it is necessary to sustain the very action so that it would at least proceed.
When this very driving power of love is turned to the past, when all the energy is spent on the research of history only, on revering the ancestors only, on cherishing traditions only, on reminiscences only, this sort of man does not use up his present potential of his own self either, the potential that he is capable of using for the benefit of the whole, and he is similar to the one who is turning his present potential only to the future. By this attitude they come very close to each other. However, the situation that the two are not using their present potential has absolutely different motives and different causes. But the outcome is very similar – neither of them is feeling any satisfaction at the present moment of the spiritual growth of his own self. And one‘s spiritual growth without relishing the very process of growing can only cause one‘s dissatisfaction with and even despair in this very moment and due to this it can lead one to one‘s isolation from one‘s ambience.
It is namely due to this that one‘s spiritual growth, even as one‘s physical growth, cannot be either speeded up or slowed down in the ultimate sense. It is merely as such as to correspond to an individual‘s desire to grow by his participating in this very moment that surrounds him during his growing. One‘s spiritual growing is that individual‘s desire to grow. And this very desire can either slow down, postpone, that very spiritual growth or outstrip this very moment. However, the very process of one‘s spiritual growth is unstoppable and it is progressing only in the manner of acquiring experience by that very individual growing spiritually. And he cannot acquire his experience by even having his strong desire to grow faster, to get more perfect faster, or to be more spiritual faster. He is growing, getting more perfect, getting more spiritual only during that moment of his experience and he is that spiritual as spiritual he is at that very moment. It is only that moment that determines a spiritual level of every individual in all the creation.