OVERCOMING CONFUSION
(Sri Swami Atmaswarupananda)
Every seeker goes through difficult periods. Sometimes they are simply dry periods. Other times they can be a crisis of indecision—we don’t know whether we should go in one direction or another direction. It can be a crisis of understanding. We seem to be faced with different choices, none of which seem to be reconcilable to the others.
Ultimately, the way out will be some form of surrender. We are hanging on to something that we are meant to let go of. It can be something physical. It can be a relationship. Most often it is an idea in our mind—often an idea that has served us well in the past, but now we have reached a point where we are meant to let it go and function from a higher understanding.
Usually our crisis is not as severe as the one that Arjuna faced. But still, his problem is symptomatic of our spiritual life. Arjuna was doing what he thought was the right thing to do. He was engaged in the preparations for a righteous war. Suddenly he saw what the battle was going to involve in human terms. In order to win the war he was going to have to kill elders that he revered. His whole being rebelled. He broke down and came up with the only solution that he could think of—drop the idea of war, go to the forest, and renounce all the things of the world.
However, Lord Krishna wouldn’t allow him to do that. He said that that is not proper Arjuna, you have a duty to perform. But Arjuna thought that he knew best. As far as he was concerned, there were only two alternatives—fight the battle or walk away from it. Thus it took 18 chapters before Arjuna would finally say, “I have recovered my understanding. I will do as you say.”
There is a very beautiful prayer that considers this type of conflict and shows the way out. It is called the Serenity Prayer: “O God, grant us serenity to accept what cannot be changed, courage to change what should be changed, and wisdom to know one from the other.” What cannot be changed it is wise to accept. What should be changed, we have a duty to try to change. But from where do we get the wisdom to know the difference, to make the right choice? It is trying to solve the problem at our own level that creates our confusion, that creates our inner turmoil, that can even give us a dry period where we refuse to look at it.
It is only Lord Krishna, the Indweller, who has the wisdom to properly discriminate. True surrender is not giving up something using our own wisdom. True surrender is to the Indweller, a constant attitude of knowing that we don’t know best but that the Indweller does, and knowing that frequently Its guidance will not be what our thinking mind, our conditioned mind, would think is right. But the secret of success in our spiritual life, the secret of breaking through our confusion and dry periods is in the delicacy of our surrender to the Indweller, of considering all alternatives and waiting patiently for the certainty of Its inner guidance.
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