What might we call the “turning point” from an ego-centered life to one that is grounded in the principle that all is God—and therefore unshakable goodness is our essential nature?
My best answer of the moment is this: the turning point is when we become willing to entertain the possibility that we are the cause of our every response to life: opinions, judgments, actions, feelings. Which is to say that any and all are the result of how we define reality for ourselves.
Here’s why I find this the most realistic turning point.
What I shall call “the ultimate reality,” that all is God, is reasonably impossible to fathom for many of us, since it means that all worldly-world experience, beginning with our sense that we are human, is delusion. All people, places, things: delusion, for the ultimate reality is the eternal vibration of existence, of which our True Self, our soul, is part—the vibration of God. To be flip about it, there has never been, nor will there ever be, a hamburger. Not really. There’s only God.
So if, in our present immaturity, we find it practically impossible to grasp that reality, the question is: What reality might we grasp that will serve us as it pulls us in the direction of not just thinking or believing, but consciously experiencing, that God is all there is?
The principle that I find most useful to that end is this: How we define our world actually creates our world.
The so-called turning point is not our acceptance and employment of this principle, but something that comes before that: our willingness to entertain the possibility that it is a defining force in our self-awareness. To entertain that my joy, rage, blame, fear, and so forth is self-created based solely on how I define reality is a step toward the earth-shattering awakening that fuels the birth of not just saints, but of any truly healthy person. True health—growing our ability to respond in a life-enhancing manner to whatever comes our way—is impossible so long as we believe we are a victim of external circumstances.
Among the gifts of realizing our ownership of our every response to whatever we encounter is the encouragement to clarify for ourselves ever-more deeply just how we do define reality. Of course, this includes how we define the ultimate reality. As ever, it’s not so much that there is an ultimate reality that we’re all going to realize sooner or later—an ultimate right answer to all questions—but that, in any given moment, there is our answer: our best sense of things.
Understanding what that is, while appreciating that it is not in stone, but is ever-evolving, is a sacred jewel on the journey to enlightenment.
It is not the pumping in from the outside that gives wisdom.
It is the power and extent of your inner receptivity
that determines how much you can attain of true knowledge,
and how rapidly.
~ Paramahansa Yogananda
As always, thank you!!