The Way of Joy

This path of Sant Mat, or Surat Shabd Yoga, is profound and life altering. It is a practice in realizing the divine, an answer to our deepest seeking, and, if we imbibe the teachings in our daily life, this path becomes our greatest strength. It is a simple way, and the masters remind us that it is to be walked with joy.

Each of us face countless challenges as we move through life, and with its complications, we worry about our future and obsess over the past. It is rare for us to live in the ever-present now, to settle even for a moment in a place of clarity and ease. But the American Quaker Thomas Kelly, who writes extensively about the beauty of being present, reminds us that it is only in the now that we are truly free, and it is here that we meet God. The author of the book Awareness of the Divine quotes him:

Between the relinquished past and the untrodden future stands this holy now, whose bulk has swelled to cosmic size, for within the now is the dwelling place of God Himself. In the now, we are at home at last. The fretful winds of time are stilled, the nostalgic longings of this heaven-born earth traveller come to rest.
_{Testament of Devotion}

Is it possible to be content no matter the changing weather and the twists and turns in the script of our lives? The truth is that we have very little control over the circumstances that each day brings us. But we can learn to control our state of mind, attitudes, and reactions. On the spiritual path, we can learn to live in the will of God. The subject of God’s will is vast, and its understanding varied; ultimately, the masters tell us, we cannot truly know what it means to live in his will. It is beyond our intellectual capacity to understand. All we can do is accept the effects of our karmas with a balanced and steady heart. His will is the here and now, this moment, the very stuff of our lives from hour to hour and day to day. Whatever life brings us, that is his will. What is important is how we face it. Maharaj Charan Singh explains in Spiritual Discourses, Vol. I:

If you can take what comes to you through him, then, whatever it is, it becomes divine in itself; shame becomes honour, bitterness becomes sweet, and gross darkness clear light. Everything takes its flavour from God and turns divine; everything that happens reveals God.

Can we imagine, even for a moment, living this way? It is most likely hard to imagine finding sweetness in the bitter blows of life, honour when all we feel is shame. Can the gross darkness we find when we close our eyes become clear light?

We are programmed from birth to put things into boxes. We interpret success, material wealth, and good health as blessings, and we neatly preserve those experiences in a jeweled box of all things good. But then, inevitably, we encounter failure, heartbreak, maybe ill health. Wanting to move on and far away from those experiences that we think of as bad, we quickly pack them away in the box marked “bad.”

But the masters ask us to look again, with a clear mind, so that we can find another perspective. Contrary to the ways of the world, the saints teach us that there is no good and bad, and that our way of categorizing the shifting events of our lives is merely a habit of the mind.

Our aversion to anything we deem bad and our attachment to what we consider good are actually part of a deep-rooted pattern embedded in society. And because we are human, we naturally feel sad and overwhelmed when uncomfortable situations arise in our lives. In fact, the teachings of the saints do not ask us to bypass the pain when life brings us suffering, or not to be upset when someone we love is hurt or when things don’t go the way we expect them to. But Sant Mat does give us a method of meditation that, when we practice it consistently, begins to lift the veil of illusion clouding our ability to perceive reality accurately. Then, our state of mind becomes more accepting. Gradually we can see clear light in the gross darkness of this world.

Imagine how pleased our Master would be if we were joyful, if we underwent our karmas cheerfully, as we are told it is possible to do. With meditation and devotion to the way of Shabd, we come to see that his strength and love carry us through them. Then the only thing that’s left for us to do is to live each day with resilient positivity and to cherish every gift he has given us.

In a translation of the Bhagavad Gita by the spiritual teacher Eknath Easwaran, Lord Krishna advises his friend and disciple Arjun that knowledge of the self within destroys ignorance:

Those who cast off sin through this knowledge … are not elated by good fortune nor depressed by bad…. Not dependent on any external support, they realize the joy of spiritual awareness. With consciousness unified through meditation, they live in abiding joy.

This abiding joy comes when we still the mind and contact the Shabd with the practice of meditation, and ultimately when we realize the self within. With time, the mystics say, we slowly see the fickleness of the world and the mirage of the sense pleasures, and we become less attached to seeking particular outcomes. We realize the transient nature of relationships, and, with fewer expectations and more humility, we love more freely.

With meditation we strengthen our awareness and our ability to pay attention to the beauty and flow of life. The effect of this practice bestows wisdom, which allows us to make peace with our circumstances. As Krishna says, we find the middle path between elation and sadness. Then we notice God’s love in the blooming flower, the unconditional kindness that life offers us every day, and we find joy in the holy words of simran that join us to our Master.

Our meditation practice is a transformative journey of a lifetime. On this path it is non-negotiable, and we are asked to be faithful to our practice until our last breath. There will be times when we are tired and doubtful, when we are filled with the never-ending stories and antics of the mind. It is then that we can remind ourselves that with our diligent efforts and our Master’s grace, we have absolutely nothing to lose and joy, at the very least, to gain.