. IS DENIAL OF SELF-EXPRESSION DOING VIOLENCE TO ONESELF?

[Ms Tercy Lonan]

55. IS DENIAL OF SELF-EXPRESSION DOING VIOLENCE TO ONESELF?
Worshipful homage unto the supreme, eternal, unchanging Being, the one transcendental
and absolute Cosmic Reality, that is the Being worshipped in and through all the living religions of
the world, the Being glorified in the scriptures of all the living religions, the Being who is honoured,
adored and worshipped in all places of worship, the one non-dual God behind and beyond all
religions. May His divine grace guide you in your life’s journey to its destination and destiny. May
He ever make your entire life and all the movements of your life a constant, unceasing,
ever-progressive process of trying to approach nearer and nearer to that Being in awareness.
For this is an inward journey of the Spirit. Its direction is not outgoing. It is an extraordinary
journey whose destination is already there where you start your journey. For He is the omnipresent,
ever-present, immanent Reality, who is more to be discovered and experienced than to be reached.
It is a journey that has no arriving or reaching, but a journey of knowing, a journey of progressing
degrees of awareness of ever-presence. It is a journey without movement.
It is a journey only in the sense that it covers a time period as all journeys do. There is no
linear dynamism here. It is a growth of awareness. It is like a dim light that gradually becomes
brighter and brighter and brighter until it reaches its full potential of dazzling radiance. It is like a
sleeper awakening. When he awakens, he is not fully out of sleep; sleep still persists. There is half
awareness, drowsiness, and then gradually, ultimately a state of full awareness when there is no
more sleep.
And that process may take place or it may not take place—as you will it. If you start with the
awareness that there is a need to awaken, then you are on the road to fullest wakefulness. If you hug
your slumber, then not all the forces in the universe can awaken you.
But then, the seed of this urge to awaken was sown by the Supreme—yamevaisha vrunite
tena labhyah (He whom the Self chooses, by him the Self can be gained. To him this Atman reveals
Its true nature). It is not anything that you can do that brings you this wakefulness. That Being
reveals Itself to one It chooses. So even subheccha, aspiration, jijnasa, seeking, is a gift of the
Divine. This awakening, this urge to satchidananda-consciousness is the movement of the God
within you, not you.
As long as you persist, you hamper the movement of God within you. Therefore, it is not
without reason that Saint Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of Italy, ended his simple prayer with
the most significant line, “It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” That is, it is in dying to the
little self that we attain to everlasting life. Death of the little self is indispensable and essential for
everlasting life, which means that the life of ego-consciousness is not life. It is a contradiction of
everlasting life. Therefore it is that the great master Jesus said: “Whoever clings to his life shall lose
it, and whoever loses his life shall save it.” Thus, let us pray that we may die to live.
Beloved and worshipful Holy Master Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji had this to say about this
gradual process of dying to oneself: “Within you is hidden God. Within you is Immortal Soul.
Within you is fountain of joy. Within you is ocean of bliss. Kill this little ‘I’. Die to live. Lead the
divine life.”
Who is this that has to do the killing of the little “I”? It is your own inner being, vichara
yukta buddhi, vivekatmaka buddhi, the higher self, the higher understanding, the awakened
intelligence, the purified intelligence, suddha buddhi, the pure mind. Therefore, they insist upon
chitta suddhi (purification of the mind). There is within us both light and darkness. We must usher
in the dawn of day within our consciousness, our interior, make it perpetual day through awareness.
There is a very popular and significant saying among the young people of the West
nowadays: “Let go and let God.” When that is yoga—the renunciation of the constant and
continued manifestation of the age-long ego-process— that constitutes renunciation as well as
restraint. The ego constantly seeks manifestation, seeks expression, wishes to affirm itself, make
itself felt. And denying this expression is the commencement of the process. “Let me be a servant of
Your servants.”
Is it not doing violence to oneself if you refuse the natural urge to self-expression? It seems
so. But, it is violence if you do it in spite of yourself, if you do it unwillingly, if you do it
half-heartedly, if you are compelled to do so. Then it is violence; it can bring about psychological
conditions. But if it is done joyfully, knowing that the greatest thing that can happen to the jivatman
is the cessation of the ego-consciousness, this is the greatest renunciation.

The erroneous notion that one exists, one is, and the failure to perceive and recognise clearly
that God alone is, that there is nothing else besides that Being constitutes the essence of the ego.
And the renunciation of this false notion is the essence of renunciation, tyaga. Here there is no
violence, because you want to do it. You know that it is your highest good. You take keen interest.
You do it with great enthusiasm, with immense awareness and understanding. You do it with an
awakened insight that herein lies my highest good—that I cease to be and God is.
That, therefore, is a greater self-expression of an awakened awareness, of a higher
I-consciousness—I am part of God. The more I refuse to recognise this, the more I shall ever be
apart from God. The more I recognise this, the more I will know that I am a part of God, I am never
apart from God. It is the expression of the awakened consciousness, the real “I”, the real identity.
So, far from being a denial of self-expression, far from being a negative state of restraining
oneself from self-expression, it is, on the contrary, real self-expression. It is the real expressing of
one’s own higher Self; it is the manifestation of the real You. So it is fulfilling, and not denying
fulfilment. It is a creative religious process; it is a positive spiritual process. So, it can only lead to
elation. It can only lead to rejoicing. It cannot lead to any negative state of denial or frustration. It is,
in fact, liberation not restraint.
Therefore, it is not doing violence; it is not suppression; it is not repression. It is liberation; it
is the higher state of expression of one’s awakened consciousness, one’s true Self, one’s real
identity. Therefore, all along it is a positive and creative process. It is a movement forward not
backward. It is not stagnation, not a denial of movement. It is dynamism in a higher sense, but not
upon the human plane. It is a vertical ascent of the Spirit towards ultimate, true fulfilment. Knowing
this, one engages in the process. One is ever in a state of fulfilment.
This has to be engaged in with patience, with diligence moment by moment, movement by
movement in and through our actions—verbal, mental and physical. Life must become then a
glorious movement of the Spirit towards its fulfilment.
This is sadhana. This is yoga abhyasa. This is the life spiritual in its deepest depth—a
journey without movement, a journey that is inward, a journey which is of the nature of a growth. It
starts from the point where you have to arrive, because both coexist. God is now, here, not
something to be reached, remote and far. God is something to be known, someone to be known and
experienced wherever you are at any given point in time and life.
May this vision be bestowed upon you by God, who is grace, and may we obtain all the help
that we can from the wisdom teachings of sages and seers who have come here to make us aware of
the ever-present fact of the oneness of Being. May the benedictions of the saints as well as the light
of their wisdom teachings make us aware of this truth, the Reality. This is sat-vidya, the science of
Reality.