Page 238 - Basic Writings of Sriramchandra

Basic Writings of Sri Ramchandra
We should meet reverses with a brave heart and should never give way to the feeling of despondency which is the worst drawback and the deadliest poison to spiritual life.
One of the essentials in the making of a man engaged in spiritual pursuit is moderation. It is a very wide term and covers every phase of human activity. It means balance in all senses and faculties, nothing more or less than what is naturally required at the time for any specific purpose without its slightest impression on the mind. Generally, today, we find moderation disturbed in almost all cases. The reason mainly is that we attach undue importance to whatever thing comes to our view and we strengthen it by the force of our thought with the result that it grows stronger over all others. We cultivate this habit and apply it to different things with varying intensity. The result that follows is nothing but disturbance and mental conflict and it is the root cause of all our troubles and miseries. Realization is not possible unless moderation and balance are restored. It corresponds closely with the very real thing which existed at the time of creation, when everything was in a perfectly balanced state. Now after the lapse of time, degeneration crept in. Our senses and faculties lost the balance and everything went into disorder. What we have to do now is to control our senses and faculties in order to restore moderation in them. To cultivate moderation we have to pay special attention to external ways of life too, e.g., gentle and polite language,
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