Can The Ocean Fill A Small Hole In The Sand?

Dear Reader,

Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away. Matthew 24:35

Well, Christmas approaches again. I wonder how many of us have thought that perhaps this time should be about contemplating how (it is has been said) to “Cut the 'I' feeling clean across and let your ego die on the cross, to endow on you eternity.”

About this, the author of the following is Father Charles Ogada, a Catholic Priest of the Order of the Holy Ghost Fathers, who revealed this story a few years ago:

Many spiritual masters have said that it is with the mind that you can conquer the mind. And this is true. But nay, it is very difficult. Why? Naturally the mind does not want to die. How then can you trick it into destroying itself! How difficult it is for the thief to catch itself.
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Even when one has succeeded through rigorous spiritual exercises in emptying the mind of all thoughts and desires, yet that tiny root-seed-impulse, the seat of ego-consciousness, the sense of I–ness from which all thoughts germinate, will still persist.

Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was troubled by this problem. How can the mind know God?

One day he was having a walk along the shores of the ocean lost in silent contemplation. As he walked, he met a little boy who had made a very small hole beside the sands of the shore and was transferring the waters of the ocean into the little hole.

Augustine was puzzled when he saw this child. He stopped and asked the little child what he wanted to do. The boy told him that he wanted to transfer the ocean into the hole he has made.

The saint was amused by the child’s audacity. He told the child that it is a mere waste of time. First the hole is not big enough to contain the waters of the ocean and secondly, even if it were as big, it will take the child uncountable lifetimes to transfer the waters with the little cup in his hand.

The child then raised his head and said to the saint: “So also it is for the mind to understand God!” Immediately the child disappeared and Augustine realised it was Jesus who had come as a little child to teach him this lesson.

Dare to Let God do it

There is a simple way out. And because this way is very simple, it is very easy since it allows you be at ease and at peace throughout the process. Allow God to kill the mind. Don’t try to kill the mind. You might not succeed over a trillion million life times. Instead, allow God to do it. In the first place only God can do it because only He has the Power of mental dissolution. God is the Master-mind. Only the master can set the slave free. Secondly, it takes Him no time. When God Himself fights the war then not only will you be sure of victory, but you will also enjoy the war. The war will be fun. This is because you will be unaffected by whatever happens since the Lord is your shield. You will remain calm and equal-minded in cold and heat, day and night, sorrow and joy, loss and profit because you know you are in that Divine zone where you are totally screened from the dualities of the mind. 

This is also the message of the Bhagavad Gita. 

Please click on the image to read.

In 2016, I became much more aware also of how the teachings of peoples as far apart from one another as the Maya, the Hopi and Tibet also convey the essence of the same perspective outlined above. 

My Christmas present to you is the thought that since the essential teachings of all sincere spiritual paths are so similar there is reason to suggest that, even amidst the terrors that have been experienced this past few years by (seemingly) most unfortunate peoples, that there is reason for Hope. And that there is cause for Faith and Charity to join in to prepare for what must surely be the soon-to-arrive and welcome end of the Old and the beginning of the New, when Peace will reign.

Happy Christmas!