For Our Own Good

All Masters have placed great emphasis on meditation and the need to attend to our simran with love and devotion. There is an old proverb that humorously sums up our need to put effort into our meditation: “You have got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.” We have to make the effort - no one else can do it for us - and in making the effort to do our meditation we incur the Lord’s grace, which brings more effort and then more grace.

The speed of meditation does not matter, but the amount of love and devotion does. Maharaj Charan Singh reassured us that if we cannot attend to meditation with love and devotion but only do so mechanically, love and devotion will develop slowly, as we go along. At first we have to fight with the mind, but in time love will develop automatically, as will faith. Through meditation a whole new world opens up for us. The Master tells us that if we do our meditation, he will help us, both inside and out.

For many of us our meditation appears to yield little obvious result. This may be because, for reasons of his own, our Master may withhold the fruit of our meditation from us, even till the crucial time of our death. Or else the results of our efforts may be subtle, taking the form of changes in our nature and in our attitudes.

We ourselves have to work for all the spiritual benefits we yearn for - by doing our meditation. There is no other way. We have to make sacrifices for everything we want. We have to make ourselves fit to earn these rewards. The Lord is holding in his hands all that we want, but we have to make ourselves fit to receive it.

Maharaj Charan Singh often stated that there can be no escape from bhajan and simran and that there is no other way to achieve our goal of self-and God-realization - this path is the simplest and the quickest. And when asked if the soul was aware of the mind trying to meditate, he replied that when the mind starts to do simran, the soul relaxes and is happy. Doing our meditation is for our own good, as we will eventually gain entry through the doorway that leads us to the worlds of bliss, light and love within - the doorway that leads us to the Lord.

Whatever you may get in this world, you can never be happy. The inclination of the soul will always be towards its own source, and unless the soul merges in that source it can never be happy in this world.
Those people who, from a material point of view, are fortunate enough to have everything at their command, are not denied anything by the world, who have wealth, health, honour and fame, are still missing something. They have everything at their command, but no peace of mind within. They still feel lonely. This loneliness is the inclination of the soul towards its own source. Unless you let your soul go back to its own source, you will never be able to get peace of mind, nor will you ever overcome the feeling of loneliness. So if you go on trying to improve the lot of the world, you cannot be happy at all. You can only be happy when you’re able to go back and merge into the Father.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I}