Your Limitless Capacity

The inward spiritual journey requires as much from you as the world ever has. Exploring your potential can bring resistance and stress. Yet, as you go deeper, you realize that you are more than you think you are. This journey is not easy, precisely because it is unlike anything you have undertaken before. Someone else’s experience may inspire you, but you won’t know how it feels until you venture within and discover your own capacity.

We know so much about the world, but do we truly know ourselves? We accept that we must eat, sleep, and earn money to survive. We carry out these actions automatically, never questioning whether there is more to life. Even when we decide to go beyond our daily routines, our attention stays on material things; we aim to be the first at something or the best, to earn or own the most. Then there’s the socializing and the desire to experience the world. But what is all of this for? Life’s only certainty is death, and with it, the loss of everything we have gathered. We have all heard the aphorism: “Nothing will go with you,” but who is the ‘you,’ and where will you go?

These questions turn our focus inward. In a poem rendered by the poet Coleman Barks, Rumi states: “Don’t be satisfied with the stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” Saints from past and present have repeatedly reminded us that our true self is a soul experiencing a human life. This can be hard to accept because, throughout our lives, we tend to believe that the body and the mind are all that is real. But what about this thing we call a ‘soul’ which is said to be part of the one and only source from which everything in existence originates?

Mystics have not only asked this question but have also answered it through direct experience. They have shone a light on a possibility we couldn’t even imagine in our wildest dreams: to realize oneself and, in doing so, to realize God. In Science of the Soul, Maharaj Jagat Singh writes:

The microcosm contains the macrocosm, and the Creator has seated Himself within the human body. You can have a full and clear view of the macrocosm and all that it contains by gaining access into the human body, at the eye centre.

If such a breathtaking possibility exists within us, why isn’t it easier to reach? Because just as we make an effort to survive in this world, we must also make an effort to turn within. Nothing of real value – least of all self-realization – comes without sustained commitment.

And this brings us to the heart of the matter: the inner commitment. Just as we devote years of energy to succeeding in this world, we must bring that same dedication to the journey within. The difference is that here, the effort benefits our soul eternally rather than being drained by something we will eventually lose. Consider this: on average, we spend fifteen to twenty years in education and another ten to fifteen years before a modicum of maturity sets in. Even after all this time, few of us would claim to understand life fully. All we have done is build a foundation from which to continue learning. Why then, would we expect the inward journey to be any shorter? Self-realization demands the same investment: time, commitment, patience, and trust in the process.

At the time of initiation, we promised to undertake two-and-a-half hours of meditation each day for the rest of our lives. This may seem a more daunting commitment now than it did then. We don’t always recognize our own potential, but the Master does. He can see what we cannot – that our capacity is limitless.