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Preliminaries for Spiritual Growth...
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Not to succumb to these mood swings needs 'sustained effort'. More precisely, 'sustained effort' serves to strike a balance to build a firm ground on which a person can proceed. Elation takes a person off the ground, it makes him overexcited and produces an ego inflation. But every feeling of elation is bound to collapse and a depressive reaction will ensue. De. pression makes a person fall through the ground into an abysmal hole. Thus,
"sustained effort serves to calm such occurrences as
elation and depression." Since there is sustained effort to calm does not mean to make a person passive and without feelings. Rather, it makes him strong so that when that which might turn into feelings of elation or moods of depression is about to occur, he can cope with the situation.
This coping with the situation takes two different lines of action. The one is to pull the mind back from becoming immobilized and engulfed in utter gloom directiong it towards man's existential reality which is his inner potential, not a fantasy world of unreal goals. The other is to confront the mind with the harsh and undisputable facts of the world in which we live. This is another way of bringing a person back and putting him on solid ground. Man's existential reality is the quality add meaning life has for him. It comes to him in symbolic form as the Buddha personage, infinitely rich in qualities. It is the beacon light guiding and directing the tra . veller on bis journey to his inner strength; and as such it is heartening and comforting and energizing: it caa give what the depressed person is in need of;
"Taking a firm grip on mind is to direct it towards something which is to make it feel happy such as the Buddha personage and his qualities, when it has slipped into the gloominess of depression."
Similarly, it is as important to keep the mind in tough with reality, to put it down' when it is flying off into the
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