Confidence Absorption

It is required that for those advanced students there be a check on the investment of confidence. Confidence is an energy that travels with the core-self. In normal usage it is regarded as faith or expression of reliance, the need to depend on someone, some feeling or something. It is an eternal facet of the limited self and will never leave the self.

In higher yoga, a student is required to take stock of where his or her confidence energy is invested. Then one might have to reroute the energy and redefine its applications and usage.

There is a lethargic energy of the self which usually captures and uses the confidence energy. This allows for a belief system where the person feels that merely by efficiently investing confidence in a certain religious system, everything spiritual will be taken care of.

For instance a sincere Christian, who to his or her mind, gave over the life to Jesus Christ, the Savior, the investment of confidence energy may be captured by the lethargic force, such that it cripples the person and cause the person not the strive for any improvement but to feel that the work of improvement will be done miraculously by Christ’s divine agency.

This same routine is followed as well even in Eastern religions, like for instance a person who says that he or she is s devotee of Krishna and who claims to have given over the life to this Deity.

Some devotees feel that blind acceptance of an authority of a Krishna sect is the way to achieve the quickest progress. Once when I lived in a Krishna community, I raised an objection because the founder of the Sect said that murder in the Ten Commandments of the bible meant murder of animals and human beings. I said to one devotee there that even if the founder said this, it is not true according to the biblical text. I explained that Moses himself, the person who received the commandment was himself a killer of animals. Moses sacrificed animals to the deity who gave those commandments. He did so with the deity’s approval. Therefore murder in the Ten Commandments applied only to human beings.

Indirect evidence of this is that in the legal system of the Christian based judicial system, murder is particularly defined as the criminal killing of a human being. If an animal is killed in the same way, it is never termed as murder.

This devotee became irate. She went to another leader of the sect who told me later that I should not contradict the founder who said that murder applied to animals just the same as to humans in the biblical text. This is from people who claimed that they always towed the line of scriptures and did not distort or change anything.

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What this means however, is that the woman whom I make the objection to, had invested her confidence fully in the founder of the religion. She could not withdraw even a tiny part of her confidence, even when it was obvious that there was a mistake in the system.

She had an all or none approach to investing her confidence. Thus because she could not withdrawal even a tiny portion of her confidence, even with sufficient proof about a mistake in the doctrine, she had to remain with her full confidence invested in it.

In inSelf Yoga™ the student should not haphazardly or lazily invest the confidence energy. He or she should instead collect this energy and carefully budget its application to the yoga process and to the yoga gurus who are actively assisting in practice. This investment should be checked on a daily basis so that it can be reformatted as the process unfolds.

Over the years, some students badgered me to let them invest their confidence in my religion or in my process or in me particularly. I have resisted this because it is not in the long-term interest of the students. Subsequently some students became angry or resentful towards me, because the task of formatting and budgeting the confidence energy is a painstaking one. They were and are lazy people who do not want to continually redesign the investment of the confidence energy. Thus their progress instead of being in leaps and bounds, creeps day after day.

Krishna spoke about the confidence energy. He did so in response to a question of Arjuna. Here are two of the many verses which Krishna spoke of confidence:

श्रीभगवानुवाच

त्रिविधा भवति श्रद्धा

देहिनां सा स्वभावजा ।

सात्त्विकी राजसी चैव

तामसी चेति तां शृणु ॥१७.२॥

śrībhagavānuvāca

trividhā bhavati śraddhā

dehināṁ sā svabhāvajā

sāttvikī rājasī caiva

tāmasī ceti tāṁ śṛṇu (17.2)śrī bhagavān — The Blessed Lord; uvāca — said; trividhā — three types; bhavati — there is; śraddhā — confidence; dehināṁ — of the embodied souls; sā — anyone; svabhāvajā — produced from innate tendency; sāttvikī — clarifying; rājasī — motivating; caiva — and indeed; tāmasī — depression; ceti = ca — and + iti — thus; tāṁ — this; śṛṇu — hear

The Blessed Lord said: According to innate tendency, there are three types of confidences of the embodied souls. These are clarifying, motivating and depressing. Hear about this. (17.2)

सत्त्वानुरूपा सर्वस्य

श्रद्धा भवति भारत ।

श्रद्धामयोऽयं पुरुषो

यो यच्छ्रद्धः स एव सः ॥१७.३॥

sattvānurūpā sarvasya

śraddhā bhavati bhārata

śraddhāmayo'yaṁ puruṣo

yo yacchraddhaḥ sa eva saḥ (17.3)

sattvānurūpā = sattva — essential nature + anurūpā — according to; sarvasya — of every person; śraddhā — confidence; bhavati — becomes manifest; bhārata — O man of the Bharata family; śraddhāmayaḥ — made of faith, trend of confidence; 'yaṁ = ayaṁ — this; puruṣo = puruṣaḥ — human being; yo = yaḥ — who; yacchraddhah = yac (yad) — which + chraddhah (śraddhaḥ) —faith; sa = saḥ — he; eva — only: saḥ — he

Confidence becomes manifest according to the essential nature of the person, O man of the Bharata family. A human being follows his trend of confidence. Whatever type of faith he has, that he expresses only. (17.3)