About a month ago I’ve read something which seems to be a common belief in the New Age circles and modern spirituality. The author basically stated that she does not recommend going against our desires (such as lust and gluttony) in a way that we abstain from them, because, as she believes, such will be naturally abandoned once the Spirit sees no more meaning in them. I partially agree with her, in the part that the Spirit within needs to gain enough experience of life through suffering in order to turn itself towards the highest goal – liberation from the physical existence and incarnating the spiritual within.

However, this certainly does not mean that one day a person will just naturally abandon things such as lust, and will have no problem in overcoming it, just because the Spirit is ready. When the latter is ready it means that you will have a strong interest and aspiration to carry out the spiritual work, but it won’t be easy. It never was.

There are many people with partial interest in doing the spiritual work, but soon after they realize it’s too difficult to go against ones own inner darkness, and that such work is not for them. The Spirit within these people was simply not ready enough to push them to do what it takes to attain the highest. They will find another spirituality which is more suiting to their current level. And that is fine.

But if you have a strong interest to carry out the Work, and you find yourself overcoming inner opposition, despite this sometimes being a very difficult thing to do, it means you are ready for it and can attempt to carry it out fully. Do not fall into false belief that it is an easy thing to do, and that if you do not find it easy you should wait for a while longer. There will never come such magical rosy time. Even if your Spirit has tremendous amount of experience and knowledge, you will still have to face a full blown subconscious elements such as lust, fear, pride, anger and many other egocentric states which will try their best to kick you out of the path of transformation, so that they can survive and continue imprisoning you.

This is the inner war which leads to graduation from this physical plane, and thus full liberation and divinization. It is the war in which the light of consciousness must be extracted from the darkness, and the latter eliminated fully. This is done by conscious and continuous effort. A simple act of abandoning or ignoring something will not make drives such as lust or anger go away.