One incarnation is still considered short
Master Choa Kok Sui, in his book, The Existence of God is Self-Evident said “It is necessary to read this book, over and over again. A person can rapidly achieve illumination and divine oneness within a short period of time. The time factor may vary from several years to a lifetime. One lifetime is still considered short because other yogis take many incarnations just to achieve this state.”
In this blog I want to focus on the phrase “one incarnation is still considered short.” Why is one whole lifetime short? Won’t we become better people in next 30 years? Maybe yes. Maybe no!
By spiritual growth, I mean becoming a better person. It is not a religious or some yoga specific thing. If you want to develop better habits then consider that spiritual growth for the sake of this article.
One incarnation is still considered short. Incarnation means lifetime. Read why one lifetime may still be a short time:
We rely on time
Maybe we are in our mid 20s or 30s and we look at the next 30 years in front of us. “Surely, I’ll progress a lot!” we tell ourselves. Our achievements are always numerous in the future.
But here could be one of our first faults. Years naturally do not give us our spiritual growth. It is true we mature with age but the exponential growth we are seeking in the next 20 years will not come if we sit idly. We must make effort consistently these remaining years.
Change takes time
A part of spiritual progress is to improve yourself. From weakness to self-control. To develop virtues and good qualities. A lot of us in this generation have personality flaws such as laziness, difficulty in maintaining diet and exercise, addictions, unresolved trauma and behaviors, people pleasing, lacking consideration for others, impracticality, relationship issues.
Resolving these weaknesses will take time. This can vary from some months to several years. Considering there are many areas to get better at, we may not have enough time. This is another reason to believe that one incarnation is a short period of time.
Learning takes time
The easiest way to understand this is whenever you re-read a book after some months, you gain new insights. If you read the same book some years apart, you again get different set of insights.
After you go through some painful or rewarding life experience, the words related to that experience will stick with you.
These insights were always there but you never noticed them.
This means “higher quality” spiritual teachings may be right in front of us but we will miss it. We will miss it because we are not mature enough for that piece of information. What if the ultimate teaching is silence? How will we understand that when all we’ve done is talk? We will not be able to relate to some of these teachings because we haven’t gone through necessary experiences of life.
Not enough time
Sickness, family, work, personal aspirations. We don’t have 30 years to become better. We may have 10.
Yes, in each of these events you can practice virtues but that doesn’t happen for all of us — at least not easily.
You have a presentation so you skipped your Arhatic Yoga practice for two days. You travelled back home and you’re exhausted for two days. Your body got sick and you’re resting for 15 days. Your sister’s wedding is here and now you’re totally busy. Things will keep coming that will steal your time needlessly.
Ideally you should develop discipline and self-control to practice even in the midst of this chaos. You can build self-discipline to maintain your practice. But sometimes you just can’t.
We become inflexible as we grow old
The mud hardens with age. As young people, freshers on the spiritual path, we are receptive to all things. We wish to do this and that, go all places, learn all the virtues and meditations. This enthusiasm will gradually wane. What was easy will now become hard.
Relationship issues when you’re with your family is somewhat easy but suddenly forgiveness becomes harder when it’s your boss. A long list of mistakes in your past will slow you down. You will grow to like some virtues more than the others. Taking in new feedback and criticism becomes difficult — we mentally tell ourselves “oh, but I did that good thing there in the past and no one pointed it out…”
We develop selective hearing. Our close ones will stop providing us feedback though they notice our flaws. Trying to become better in all areas will simply be too uncomfortable.
At the same time, we are also conditioned by our culture, friends, society, and general state of humanity. The pop culture, the media, the books, the social media viral content all define your threshold, they define your boundary. You also pick up some things unconditionally. When all your friends are busy revolting but you were taught to pray for those who make your life difficult, it’s easy to forget what you were taught.
All these will gradually shape you and the student whom the teacher wanted to sculpt in all the different wonderful ways is harder and harder to change.
Maybe in next life we will reset and start again.
Karmic consequences
As we are avoiding some parts of our growth, the seeds we sow will lack those. If we have been building discipline but have ignored our relationships, our friends will leave us. Gaining them can take a lot of time. Some relationships you can’t have back.
Because you desired a good amount of money, you made some financial mistakes such as cheating your company or bank. This will create consequences that may take months or years to recover from.
Sexual stealing. Pride. Abandoning others. Greed.
The once innocent person is now no longer the same. What was supposed to be a smooth life now has suddenly slowed down because of his own actions.
Maybe the same power he caused his failure (of whatever scale) with can be used constructively. Maybe. Good if it happens.
But for now, one incarnation is considered short because we are all human and we make mistakes.
We give up
We have been hearing to be punctual, to do service, to be truthful, to be courteous but over time we take these for granted. We’ve heard it a couple of times.
Our reverence to the messages, teachings become weaker and lighter. We assume we’ve learned something because we’ve heard it before. The virtues we were so attracted to and made sure we met all times, now we take them lightly.
We went to office super early first two months and now we’re 20 minutes late. We donated money to everyone we saw in the streets and now we shy away. We read all the books first two years and now we don’t. We were so excited to go to the center or the foundation first few months and now it’s just another place.
Hope
Yes, one incarnation seems like a short period of time. Yes, we are not perfect. Yes, yes, yes.
Is there any hope? Why try?
Presenting you a simple answer:
Will you give up simply because it seems hard?
These above paragraphs are just words. They are ideas. Observations of experience. Despite the spiritual path being an amazon jungle, the master told you can progress if you make effort.
What will you do now?
Thank you for reading this blog. Please do share your thoughts.
Closing notes
- We should set higher spiritual targets. You should aim to go to the next level of your spiritual practice and periodically asses yourself if you’re making the necessary progress. Maybe you need check-ins with your mentors — the kind you have with your manager in your company. Just as you have a set of requirements for your promotion, you should also have a set of requirements and expectations for your spiritual progress. We must avoid envy when someone talks spiritual growth because we’ve been denied ours and we didn’t fight back.
- Being close to a spiritual school or a member of it does not necessarily guarantee our progress. We don’t “just grow.” Our god can’t save us if we don’t ask for their help. Being a student of a teacher does not necessarily speed our progress. Entitlement and pride prevent us from progressing. Jesus from the series The Chosen said, “You may be the people of covenant, but that will not bring you my salvation. If you do not recognize that you are spiritually poor, then I can not save you.”
- Waiting for the next level of spiritual teaching while ignoring what you already have. This part is mostly theory and I haven’t experienced it enough myself. I seek to get to the other side of the river again and again until the master reminds me I’m already on the other side. — My summary of a popular Zen story.
Siddhartha Neupane, 12:22 PM, Feb 26, 2025
