ONE’S ABILITIES TO PURSUE THE PATH

or

DOING THE PATH AS BEST ONE CAN

We are people of set habits. Generally, people cannot change themselves except in set ways God has created within the human being. Doing the Path is seeing what is wrong with oneself and changing it in those very specific ways created and set up within us by God. We are all made up of combinations of deeply embedded habits. To change such deeply and thoroughly embedded habits means all of their various triggers and releases within the body have to be completely reprogrammed. There are no other ways to accomplish such true change of a person except through the patterns and procedures that God has provided/ included in the disciplines that we call The Path of Liberation or The Path of Enlightenment.
 
A guide sees and/or is shown what is wrong with his charges and cannot help but tell them about it. There should be welcome reception of the true guide’s help, observations, directions, etc.

A guide is obligated to keep after all the pertinent things he/she observes. A guide cannot change his/her way of guiding a person. Or he would not be guiding. And many things are included in the guide’s manner, actions, and instructions that include necessary things the candidate will have to master. And often the candidate cannot recognize them until he/she has mastered them.

A guide is obligated eternally to guide a candidate duly assigned to him/her by God. But a guide can be freed of the obligation to guide a person if the candidate does not act correctly and decides he/she does not want to continue.

The Path has stages that are difficult for the candidate to get over. Often candidates are figuratively dragged kicking and screaming past those stages of the Path and only first realize the benefits when they have mastered those stages.

But some candidates have their limits of what they can change in themselves and how they are willing to go about it. If, after truly great efforts and diligence they realize they cannot completely master things like their weight or their emotions, which are necessary to progress to more advanced stages of the Path, there is no shame in realizing they have reached their God-given limits. If they are contrite and respectful of the Path and everything around it, they still will have the things they already mastered. And, as long as they remain true to God and their God-given guide, they will still be able to utilize all they have assimilated of the Path and even progress in it within their abilities. They can continue to remain in communion with God and whatever happens to them will be softened as much as this world makes possible by the Karma that God has written for them.

If they ever want to try to continue again, they have to be sure they can do it and are ready to do all that would be necessary to get past the things that they did not want to do and which made them stop.

God gave each of us a body and a mind. They are treasures. And everyone is obligated to perfect that body and mind to the best of his/her abilities and to the best of the options he/she was given. Those who searched for and found and asked for the Path have had the most options given them. And along with caring correctly for the body, those options especially include learning how to control one’s mind and one’s emotions. And that most important part of the Path of controlling mind and emotions means really and truly understanding, seeing, recognizing, and controlling them, and developing the ability to eliminate emotions and mental processes if necessary.

When properly guided, the work of the upper levels of the Path is with oneself and God, and no one else. Of necessity, when one reaches the higher levels of the Path one is confronted by those last things one has the greatest difficulty mastering or giving up: the things one least likes to do; the things one has the most difficulty doing; the things that need to be done very exactly and specifically; the controlling of physical functions, including food intake; and especially the controlling and finally mastering of whatever thoughts and emotions had not already been mastered during previous stages of the Path. Not just squelching them and/or not expressing them, but seeing through them, seeing when they are not furthering or when one is simply argumentative, etc. and being able to eliminate them: in other words, actually seeing and realizing their lack of value, while developing the habits that do not include them.

Rational use of body and mind is the goal, whereby “rational” means the most gain for the least effort, with no waste/loss of effort/energy

It would seem that everyone has his/her limits and not everyone was granted the ability or even a long enough life to get through to the end of the Path.

Therefore, only being able to reach some, but not all advanced levels of the Path, while continuing with correct attitudes towards God and his Creation and his Guides, has no shame.