You see, the mind is like a young plant which keeps on getting stronger and stronger. As the plant grows stronger, you need to care for it less and less, but in the beginning, we must be very careful.
When you start doing any work in the world, it takes time to reach perfection. No one becomes an instant expert in anything. When you first learn to ride a bike, you fall so many times. You make a lot of effort, and still, you fall so many times, but with practice it becomes easier and easier. And eventually, what happens is that you become such an expert rider that you use only one hand on the handlebar and carry a bag in the other. There may be a bus in front of you and a car behind you. You are aware of the bus in front of you, and simultaneously you are aware of the car behind you. It was not always this easy. You are doing all this very easily and effortlessly. But in the beginning, when you were first learning to ride, you used to have both hands on the handlebars and both feet on the pedals. You had to have your full concentration on the bicycle.
So, in other words, we must practice in order to attain perfection. Practice is needed. In other words, we must always make an effort. We have to make an effort, and yet we should not easily become disappointed that we always have to make such an effort.
You see, effort is needed because we have practiced wrong things so much that we have developed bad habits. So effort is needed in order to break these habits, otherwise, the Saints and the scriptures, and Shree Krishna Himself says,
“There is no effort involved in God-realization.”
Effort is needed only to rectify our wrong thinking, our wrong way of thinking, because otherwise why would Lord Krishna say in the Bhagavad Gītā,
क्षिप्रं भवति धर्मात्मा शश्वच्छान्तिं निगच्छति | …
Kṣhipraṁ bhavati dharmātmā śhaśhvach-chhāntiṁ nigachchhati…- Gita 9.31
“The moment you make a complete surrender to Me you will attain your eternal goal of supreme happiness. I will take you across the ocean of māyā (illusion) that very instant, spontaneously, and fill you with happiness, fill you with supreme Divine bliss.”
Otherwise, He would have said, “No, first you have to make an effort, you have to practice for so many years - do this, do that.”
No. He says, “If you surrender to Me now, this very moment, I will bless you with My unlimited grace!”
क्षिप्रं भवति धर्मात्मा…
Kṣhipraṁ bhavati dharmātmā…
So the effort is needed only to rectify our wrong thinking.
