The Balance of Practice and Surrender: Cooking and Eating

So most of us in the world, when we are thinking about spirituality, we are thinking about the active doing part of spirituality: to take God's name, to do the inquiry, to do our reading, whatever the practice may be. But that is the cooking part. It's very important to cook because if you don't cook, then what will you eat? You see? But because this world is full of doership and activity and progress and ambition and things like that, we don't actually—we think the cooking part is it, you see? If you never eat the food... we were talking about it the other day, that this food must be eaten fresh. God must be eaten fresh. God must be tasted fresh. So you just kept doing 'Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?' but you never actually waited and checked. You didn't let the question propel you deep within into insight. Or you kept doing prayer, you kept doing that, but you never actually meet Spirit. Then we are tending towards spirituality, but we are not actually becoming spiritual. There's no spirituality without Atma. And also it is a sign of pride. We may not realize it, but if you just do, do, do, do, do, and you feel like, 'What can God do now? I have done,' you see? So why don't we take out at least a little bit of time and say, 'Okay, now God, You show me what is Your will'?

The question is: Does it propel you deep within, or you kept doing prayer, you kept doing that, but you never actually meet Spirit? Then we are tending towards spirituality, but we are not actually becoming spiritual. There's no spirituality without Atma. And also, it is a sign of pride. We may not realize it, but if you just do, do, do, do, do, and you feel like, 'What can God do now? I have done,' you see? So why don't we take out at least a little bit of time and say, 'Okay, now God, you show me what is Your will.' If in a relationship you're the only one talking, then where will that relationship go? So what is God trying to teach you? What is He trying to show you? So, how to do the eating? By being empty of ourselves. The whole cooking is so that we can become empty of 'me' and to remain, to abide empty of 'me' with the eating. And where He takes us is His will. But can we be empty for Him? Can we trust Him without being demanding—'You have to do this for me, you have to show me who I am'?