QA222 QUESTION: There are situations that occur in my life where I make commitments to do something or I start a physical task to do something, and a tremendous burst of energy comes through me, which I can describe as an unbridled enthusiasm. It seems pervading: “I must do it.” And then pretty soon there’s a wane. It usually ends up where I leave the task either half way and drop it forever or the commitment is never even carried out to any kind of fruition. I would like to know two things. One, what is the spiritual significance of this? And two, what may I do to try and help myself to stop it?

ANSWER: The significance is that there are two parts of you that express themselves in this issue. First, your higher self, your positive attitudes come out when you really see something beautiful, and you want to give it the best. Then the lower self manifests that wants to withhold, that does not want to give, that is resentful, and also that does not want to go through the follow-through difficulties: sustaining the effort, being organized in sticking to it, and following it through.

There is perhaps the tediousness that on the long-run basis, the lower self rejects. The lower self wants the beauty and the glory and the quick result and perhaps goes into it a little bit unrealistically at the beginning and hopes to get all the pleasure that is hoped for, that is looked for, but does not see there are sometimes highways and byways and tunnels that have to be gone through. When they come, the lower self that wants it always easy, rejects it and gives it up, and then becomes negative and says No.

My advice how to go about it is that you try to get in touch with exactly that aspect in you, that you can bring it to the surface, that you can own it up, that you can expose it openly, and that you can confront it and then choose not to give into it. Not by repressing it but by making another choice, by saying, “Will I do such and such even if I know realistically this may mean a long-term effort? Am I ready to take that effort?”

If you are, then you make that commitment, again and again. When the difficulties come, you say, “Well, that is the price that you know a priori is to be paid.” Look for a realistic assessment at the beginning. On the other hand, you are perfectly free if you see that this is not commensurate with the efforts and the energies at your disposal, that you do not undertake it. Then save your energies and consolidate them for those areas where you want to give.

Another aspect of the same thing is that you may sometime involve yourself possibly in too many things, so that you do not give your wholehearted self to anything completely. It is like a trick you play on yourself from your lower self.

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