Begin from where you are, and what you realize

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner: Sir, I am only a beginner on spiritual path, and my experience complicates things. Which tool can I adapt for myself to take the right decision?

Acharya Prashant: The response is hardly spiritual in the classical sense. I will not say that for life’s decisions, kneel down in front of the unknowable. I will not say that what you need, lies beyond the grasp of your mental faculties.

I am saying, “Live by what you already know.”

First of all, you have no other option. Secondly, what you already know is sufficient, to make a beginning. And you said that you are a beginner.

The trouble with most of us is not that we don’t know some transcendental, ecclesiastical Truth. The trouble is: we just don’t live by that which is within our mental province.

It is not as if we have come to the boundary of our knowledge, and our limited realization. We haven’t. If we come to our own boundaries, then the beyond cannot be far enough.

The boundary of the little self, is where the Truth stands to greet you.

So you don’t have to really search for the Truth.

You just have to come to the boundary of your own province.

Come to your own boundary, and there you will find something of the Beyond.

But, do we care enough to come to even our own boundaries? I am not telling of leaping out of your self. You don’t need to leap out of your self. But, at least, putting in a very cliched way — do the best you can.

If you cannot go beyond your self, at least do the best you can. And when you have come to the utter limit of your personal resources, there you find something, a bit magical happening.

Our situation is strange!

We do not do what we can, we cannot challenge ourselves enough. We do not make the best, utter, and desperate use of our own, personal, limited resources. But we want some kind of a helping hand to descend from the heavens.

It won’t!