Day Forty-Eight: Prove the Principles in Your Life

A student of the great yoga master Paramahansa Yogananda who was struggling to accomplish a difficult task said to Paramahansaji, “It is easy for you, because you are a spiritual master.” Yogananda replied, “How do you think I became a master?”  Instead of giving in to the student’s implied suggestion that he was somehow not as equipped to meet the challenges of life, Paramahansaji pointed him back to his essential nature, reminding him that the same potential exists within us all and it is up to us to develop it. Spiritual philosophy, principles, and practices are the tools that we use to develop our innate divine potential, to bring it into full expression. When we consider the lives of most of the saints and sages, the great mystics and healers of all times, we can see that they too went through a process of spiritual development in which they proved the principles in their lives. How did any of the great ones become great? By putting into practice what they learned.

A student studying mathematics must not only get the right answer, but must also recognize how he or she arrived at that answer. Then the principle can be applied beyond that one experience. Spiritual principles are not different. To fully realize the benefit of our study and practice we must discover how the beneficial changes we experience are brought about. Then we can apply it in other areas of life. Or, if we fall short of the goal, we must discern what the cause of our failure was so that we can correct it. This is the key to mastery.

For spiritual practices to be of real benefit we must consistently apply them, study the results, discern the elements involved and make any needed course correction. Success is a matter of dedication, application, observation, and perseverance. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra states that our progress on the spiritual path will reflect the intensity of our practice—whether it is mild, medium, or intensive (Sutra 1.22). Paramahansa Yogananda similarly affirmed that our spiritual evolution can be accelerated through concentrated endeavor.

Think About It: Results from a study that observed the brains and behaviors of monkeys to discern the effects of environment on learning revealed that success has a stronger influence overall on learning. MIT professor of neuroscience Earl K. Miller, the senior author of the study reported:

There have been a lot of studies about how the brain learns, but there is very little understanding about how feedback from the environment guides learning, and that's critical because that's the way we learn. We learn from the consequences of our actions…We found that neurons in the prefrontal cortex and the striatum, two brain areas known to be involved in learning, keep track of recent successes and failures for many seconds, long enough for it to play a role in guiding the learning the next time an opportunity to learn comes up. The second thing we found was that the neural processing in the brain improves after a recent success and doesn't improve much after a recent failure.

–from abcnews.com

Be Inspired: Practice is extremely intensive when nonessential matters are disregarded and attention and actions are concentrated on the purposes to be accomplished. 
-Roy Eugene Davis