August 15, 2026
Seeker: During these days of retreat here I received exceedingly rich spiritual gifts. I am not too shy to call it a spiritual fruition. The spiritual growth is clear enough to be felt. From here I could go straight to a hermitage in the bliss would continue. But we all have to go back to our daily lives, which for some of us is hard. For this going back we need a word of strengthening.
Swami Venkatesananda: Every sincere spiritual seeker has felt this at some time or other, until we discovered that the ‘hermitage', when it becomes one's home, might fail to further one's spiritual growth. It is not the fault of the hermitage but the inevitable fruit of the problem one transports to the hermitage!
The problem is one self, the self, the 'me' at the door of the home. I remember the words of Gurudev Swami Sivananda, "you will find good and evil even on top of Mount Kailas”.
When will ‘I’ leave 'me'? But why should I pick it up at all? Why do I pick it up? On account of ignorance, of selfishness and the foolishness. Ofttimes we wake up after we have been trapped in a rat will not be trapped if it sees the trap — it only sees the cake! We seek the pleasure and awake to find itself trapped. If we keep awake all the time we shall see the trap away, and not rush into it. This is done daily and if possible hourly, spiritual renewal, whatever be the method or the non-method you wish to adopt.