Overcoming Ignorance
“Ignorance is darkness,
We must overcome it with the light of Truth.”
The 11th step on the Ladder to Heaven is Overcoming Ignorance. If somebody told me 8 years ago that we should overcome ignorance, I would scoff at them and ask them to explain what ignorance they were talking about. I was an ego-driven man and my arrogance reigned supreme. I thought I knew everything. I was rich, famous, and successful. I had faith in God, and I believed that God was protecting me. In my own way, I was unstoppable! I am grateful that I had a Spiritual Master who provoked me to go on a quest and realize the Truth.
Throughout my life, I thought it was enough to believe in God, to pray sincerely, to live with faith and hope, and to trust God. To me, being enthusiastic was loving God. While I did not know where my God truly was, I did not even start a quest to find out. As they say, “Ignorance is bliss!” and I blissfully lived in ignorance.
It was only when I was 46 years old that my Guru provoked me to go on a Talaash or quest and I set out to find answers to 9 existential questions. Little did I know that the questions that I set out to answer had answers that were completely different from my philosophy and belief system.
To me, Lord Shiva, my God, was God. I never really bothered to delve further. I had a general feeling that all Gods ultimately are one and we recognize them with different names based on our religion. But I had no clue about the reality of God. I was ignorant.
While people spoke of heaven and hell, I did not bother to find out where they truly are. I was ignorant about what happens to us after death, just as I was ignorant about how life is actually created on earth.
I knew the biological truth about childbirth. But little did I know about the reality of the Soul or what the human body actually was. I was ignorant that we had a gross physical body that was different from the subtle body that was invisible. I had no clue what the Soul was, though I believed that we all have a Soul. What was the connection between death and rebirth was something that I never pondered upon. All I knew was that there was some connection between our Karma and our rebirth.
I had heard of several terms like Moksha, Nirvana, Enlightenment, but never bothered to find out what these truly meant. I continued to live in ignorance. My biggest ignorance was that I did not know the purpose of life. Why are we human beings alive? Are we meant just to eat, to sleep, to earn, to spend and to die? It didn't seem logical, but I was completely ignorant about this and it was this very ignorance that became the trigger of my Talaash, my search for Truth.
Most of us human beings are busy chasing success. We believe that success is happiness. We live and die with this myth. Very few realize the truth that in fact, happiness is success. Why do people want to succeed? It is because they think that success leads to achievement, name, fame, money, and ultimately joy. If success created happiness, then the rich and famous should be glad, but if we look around, we will find that many of them are sad. Human beings want to be happy, but most of us experience misery and sorrow. Even those who pray to God and have faith and trust, ultimately suffer as they age, experience disease, decay and die. We human beings experience ‘triple suffering’. First, we experience physical suffering of the body. Then, we experience misery of the mind and finally, the agony of the ego. Little do we realize that all our suffering is due to the ignorance that we live in.
It is most unfortunate that we human beings are ignorant about our ignorance. We are overconfident and we think we know everything. Thus, we do not go in search of answers. Those who seek God and heaven, and start climbing the Ladder, ultimately reach a point where they realize their ignorance. When they go on a quest, their quest starts with acknowledging their ignorance. And if they are sincere in their search, along with being blessed to have a Spiritual Master, they can overcome their ignorance and realize the Truth.
What does one have to do on the 11th step on the Ladder to Heaven? One must become conscious of their ignorance. One must become aware that we are not the body, nor are we the mind.
The mind is our biggest enemy. It makes us believe the myth just as it stops us from realizing the truth. If we have to overcome ignorance, we have to use our power of discrimination. We have to activate our intellect and choose right over wrong. Otherwise, we will live and die in ignorance, and we will suffer. We will never be able to climb the Ladder to Heaven.
This world is all Maya, or illusion. Maya has two powers. It conceals the truth and projects the myth. Because of our ignorance, we are unable to see that everything in this world is Maya or illusion. While we know a dream to be a dream, we think this waking world to be real. Although at death, we know that nothing will be ours, we still get attached to people and possessions and this stops us from climbing upwards. Everything that happens on earth is a Divine drama or Leela. The Creator has written a storyboard and things unfold as per the storyboard based on our cumulative Karma. If we don't overcome our ignorance about this, we will never realize the truth and we will not be able to move onward and forward.
One must realize that there is a larger purpose for us on earth. When we realize our ignorance and we overcome it, it leads us to a very important step on the Ladder to Heaven - I call it Going Beyond Karma. We all know what Karma is. To climb the Ladder to Heaven, we need to go beyond Karma. How does one do that?
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Our greatest Ignorance is that
we are ignorant of our Ignorance.
Overcoming Ignorance
TAKEAWAYS