Self-help social help and spiritual help – understanding how they work together

Transcript

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Self-help, social help and spiritual help. Understanding their respective roles. The word self-help is increasingly mainstream and appealing and it refers to a whole genre of books which people use to improve themselves.
Now, the idea of self-help is immensely popular because all of us know and admit, at least in the privacy of our own hearts, that we need improvement. Yes, undoubtedly there are a few people who are so egomaniac that they think they need no improvement. But most of us do feel the need for improvement.
And how do we go about doing this? It is by self-help as is the promise of this genre of books and the genre of human activity also. Now, the word self-help embodies a paradox because at one level, self-help, how does it work? It means that there are two parts of the self. One part which needs to be helped and one part which helps.
Now, this, of course, there is objectively speaking only one self. But subjectively speaking, the self can come under different influences and whichever influence it comes under, that becomes the functional self at that time. So that’s why thinkers often talk about the higher self and the lower self.
So we can say the higher self refers to the intelligence, the part within us which is rational, thoughtful, careful, purposeful. So thoughtful, careful, purposeful. Thoughtful means we think before we do things.
Careful means while doing things we exhibit due caution. And purposeful means we know where we want to go. So we all need to be, we all will be helped if we are thoughtful, careful and purposeful.
In contrast with this, there is the mind which sometimes compared to the lower self which is thoughtless, careless and purposeless. This division, conceptual division of the self into two categories is talked about in Bhagavad Gita 6.6 where Krishna says that uddhare dātmanātmānam nātmānam avisādayet ātmayvayātmanau bandhurātmayvaripurātmanah So he says uddhare dātmanātmānam. Elevate yourself with the mind.
nātmānam avisādayet Don’t degrade yourself with the mind. ātmayvayātmanau Actually if you look at the Sanskrit word, it’s ātmā, so it’s the self. Commentators such as Śrīla Prabhupāda translate it as the mind so that we are clear in what is being talked about.
The literal translation would be elevate the self with the self, don’t degrade the self with the self. ātmayvayātmanau bandhurātmayvaripurātmanah The self is also the enemy of the self. So when we understand that the self is what we need for our spiritual growth and that the self cannot grow unless it is inspired, it is impelled by something within, then change cannot happen.
So the door to personal change has a lock that can be opened only from inside. No one can change us if we don’t want to change ourselves. So in that sense, self-help is valid that our higher side needs to be activated with the inspiration, the conviction to change.
We should feel like changing and we should have the confidence that we can change. So now self-help in that sense is important, but self-help is not necessarily simply self-help because if we consider, when we read self-help books, we are taking help from the person who has written the self-help book. So it is the self who is helping the self by taking the help of some other self who has written that book.
So in that sense, self-help is never really self-help alone. There is another aspect that is social help. Social help refers to the fact that we need somebody in our social circles who inspires us to change.
That could be our guide. Even when we read a book, we learn from that book what we need to do and that is helpful in moving onwards towards improving ourselves. When we get the inspiration, the conviction, the intention from someone that this is what I would like, this is what I need to do, then social help can inspire self-help.
Social help can refer not just to a teacher who guides us, a guru who impels within us the desire to change, but it can also refer to some people in our friend circle who encourage us to move on, who act as our accountability partners, who enable us to move towards Krishna, to move towards life’s ultimate purpose which ultimately is to attain God, who manifests His full sweetness as Krishna. So social help can refer to our spiritual guide, to our guru, to our spiritual mentors. More specifically, it can refer to our social circle.
Our social circle needs to be supportive. Otherwise, we cannot sustain the change. Social circle being supportive means that we need to feel the need to change and we need to push along by that need.
We need a supportive environment. Suppose an alcoholic lives in a community of alcoholics and then that alcoholic, if he or she wants to give up alcohol, it’s not going to be easy. On the other hand, if an alcoholic lives in a community that is sober, then that alcoholic will feel more inspired and compelled to give up alcoholism.
So in that sense, there can be a general social environment which can be supportive and there can be a specific accountability partner who can help us to move onwards, who holds us accountable when we do something wrong and who helps us to choose wisely, to pick ourselves up when we fall, who reminds us that we should not fall and who helps us overall to keep moving. So by thinking thus, by contemplating that, we at our core are meant to be spiritual, that we at our core cannot but be wholehearted in our devotion unless we cannot be wholehearted in our determination to change, unless we have a social environment that is supportive and specifically an accountability partner with whom we can share the joys of our success, the pains of our failures and the torments of our struggles beyond self-help and social help, we also need spiritual help. That is, we need to recognize that ultimately it is not our power alone that enables us to change.
It is God’s grace, God’s power, which is channeled in our heart by our willingness to the extent we stay determined, to the extent we stay committed to the cause of changing ourselves, to that extent we’ll find that circumstance that if we prayerfully connect with Krishna, we’ll be able to move upwards towards Him, we’ll be able to rise in our efforts for self-improvement, in our efforts of bringing out our best, why did we learn to take things one step at a time, take things objectively, take things faithfully, take things determinately. So objectively means, so taking things objectively, faithfully, determinately, that means we objectively take a look at ourselves, these are my strengths and these are my weaknesses, and we often have tried to overcome our weaknesses and have struggled to do so. So we know that it’s not an easy task.
And then we have our own faith that by Krishna’s help everything is possible, and then we have further the understanding that by Krishna’s help we all can move forwards in our journey towards Him. So there’s faith we have and then we have determination. We need to access that determination by holding on to Him, we need to access Krishna’s power by our determination to hold on to Him.
So for example, if we are lost in a particular place, and we decide that, oh, now at least objectively understand I’m lost, I’m not where I’m meant to be, then say, or say if we have fallen in a ditch, fallen in a well, we need to objectively accept that, you know, this is a dark, dirty, deadly place, I don’t want to be here. So that’s the first step, objectively accepting. Then we have to faithfully, somebody has thrown a rope inside, so we have to have faith that that person will pull us out and has the strength to pull us out.
And the third step is determinately, we have to, the person may pull us out, but we have to hold on ourselves. If we don’t hold on, then we will not be pulled out. So spiritual help is often one which is most efficaciously provided by the practice of Bhakti Yoga.
When we learn to steadily move towards Krishna by our sincere practice, then we find that the sincere practice of devotional activities, then we find that actually we are empowered by a power far greater than our own. And by this combination of self-help, social help and spiritual help, we can all bring out our best, we can all push out our worst. Thus, we can fulfill our destiny becoming that which we are meant to be by the will of God.