Absorbing Spiritual Light
Just as darkness is the absence of light, negativity which manifests as vices and weaknesses inside us is merely the absence of spiritual light. Through the influence of negativity, the sense organs waste away the light. The question of vice, or sin, has been of a lot of importance in religion. No matter how much political or religious control has been imposed, nothing has been able to block the internal wasting away of the light of the soul. Light has a source but darkness does not. Darkness is not created by any source but is rather the absence of a source. In the same way, the negative forces do not emerge from the real nature of the self, but are simply symptoms of a lack of spiritual power or light. As spiritual power declines, symptoms of negativity such as anger, greed, ego, attachment, hatred, jealousy and related vices appear. On the other hand, as the soul's power and spiritual light increases through a union (meditation) with the Supreme, the vices automatically disappear. In fact problems are not fundamentally caused by a particular vice, it is a question of the extent of one's power. If I am weak, the sanskars mostly related to vices dominate my experience. If I am strong they do not have a chance to affect me.
The negative forces have often been personified as Ravana, Maya or Satan but in fact there is no such entity. Maya describes a level of consciousness. There is no outside being whom we can blame. The vices are symptoms of individual ignorance and loss of power, which appeared only when our original creative powers subsided as we came into the process of birth and rebirth. When the soul's power fell below the level necessary to control matter and the senses; then the vices emerged inside the soul. The soul was more and more propelled by them through many births, until today when they appear to be a basic part of our real nature.
we should not keep the vices bottled up inside us like prisoners. Prisoners are always plotting to escape. If we change them into our friends they can help us. For example, the energy required to be stubborn is almost the same as that required to be determined except that one is positive and the other negative. The soul learns
Just as darkness is the absence of light, negativity which manifests as vices and weaknesses inside us is merely the absence of spiritual light. Through the influence of negativity, the sense organs waste away the light. The question of vice, or sin, has been of a lot of importance in religion. No matter how much political or religious control has been imposed, nothing has been able to block the internal wasting away of the light of the soul. Light has a source but darkness does not. Darkness is not created by any source but is rather the absence of a source. In the same way, the negative forces do not emerge from the real nature of the self, but are simply symptoms of a lack of spiritual power or light. As spiritual power declines, symptoms of negativity such as anger, greed, ego, attachment, hatred, jealousy and related vices appear. On the other hand, as the soul's power and spiritual light increases through a union (meditation) with the Supreme, the vices automatically disappear. In fact problems are not fundamentally caused by a particular vice, it is a question of the extent of one's power. If I am weak, the sanskars mostly related to vices dominate my experience. If I am strong they do not have a chance to affect me.
The negative forces have often been personified as Ravana, Maya or Satan but in fact there is no such entity. Maya describes a level of consciousness. There is no outside being whom we can blame. The vices are symptoms of individual ignorance and loss of power, which appeared only when our original creative powers subsided as we came into the process of birth and rebirth. When the soul's power fell below the level necessary to control matter and the senses; then the vices emerged inside the soul. The soul was more and more propelled by them through many births, until today when they appear to be a basic part of our real nature.
we should not keep the vices bottled up inside us like prisoners. Prisoners are always plotting to escape. If we change them into our friends they can help us. For example, the energy required to be stubborn is almost the same as that required to be determined except that one is positive and the other negative. The soul learns
to transfer such energy. Anger becomes tolerance. Greed can be transformed into contentment. Arrogance, or the respect for false identity, can become self-respect. Attachment can be changed into pure love.
The more I inculcate the Supreme Soul or God's virtues, the closer I feel to Him, but if I allow inner disturbances due to any vice, my high stage is grounded. All the power stored up until that moment will leak away. I must recognize that I really do not like being body-conscious. As I wish for higher experiences I choose to live the life of a meditator with purity in thought, word and action. Obstructions come within and without, but through my connection with God I am drawing so much power so as to remain unaffected. This needs soul-consciousness. So in discarding the rubbish of the vices I have gathered over many births, I become my original form and maintain it through my closeness or companionship with God.
How many times do we hear phrases like - Oh, he is always in a bad mood... or It is my nature to be irritable... or He will never change..., etc. This shows the extent to which the soul's own light has faded and been replaced by the dark curtain of negativity. Therefore it is better that we do not try to deal with each vice and defect individually. As the soul fills itself with the power of spirituality, its overall condition automatically improves.Another significant point is that there is a deep-rooted awareness within the soul of God and His sanskars, however much it may be covered by dirt and weakness. This is because each soul is the child of God and being his children we inherit his sanskars. These sanskars are present in us when we start playing our part in the physical world, but gradually they fade away as we take more and more births. As these sanskars are brought to the surface of the consciousness, automatically our thoughts and behavior patterns change.In modern psychology it is stated that we must express all our negative emotions and note suppress them. But the fact is that letting it out leads the soul further into slavery to that emotion. Remembering that thoughts, decisions and actions are formed on the basis of sanskars, which are deepened by repetition, the soul can only cause harm by expressing any defect or vice. On the other hand, the psychological effect of suppressing negative emotions can be quite drastic. Suppression can lead to severe personality problems, even madness or insanity. The right path is that we emerge our positive sanskars with the help of meditation and other self-development techniques and the negative ones automatically vanish away.
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