Sincerity in Spiritual Practices

Description

Practices are necessary to redesign and re-culture the mind so that you can choose and aspire more consciously. Instead of drifting with the circumstances of your life, you consciously redesign it.

Why are spiritual practices necessary? Through practices you become master of your own mind. Then your mind is no longer ruling you. You created your mind with your will and now it is like a computer filled with the data you have put there. You are under the sway of your mental modifications, your choices. You allow yourself to drift into a chain reaction from the choices you have made, the habits you have created, and their results. This feels easy because it is recorded like grooves—the roads and paths you walk with your mind. These grooves in Sanskrit are called samskars.

What you are not seeing is that because of these samskars you are losing your renewal and refreshment, getting into monotony and boredom, doing the same things over and over again throughout your life. Practices give control of the mind and more control over your destiny. Not only so, looking back you will see how you made your own destiny and that you can remake it again. According to Raja Yoga, discipline of mind is called samyam. Through a disciplined mind your will becomes conscious action. Practices, sadhana, make you siddha, perfected. When you are consciously willing, consciously acting and consciously designing your life, you are a yogi.

Without practices you would not even think of your True Self; intellect alone cannot do this. Practices make that very craving for Self Realization crop up naturally. Then you will see that Enlightenment is the goal for which all these practices were necessary. Practices are simply to counter-effect the degeneration that we have accumulated during the course of desires and karmas. When practices have served their purpose, when they have freed us from degeneration, misery and sorrow, they are no longer needed.