The Purpose of Life, Part Three

Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami gives his weekly upadesha in Kadavul Temple at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery in Hawaii. It is part of a series of talks elaborating on the inspired teachings of Satguru Śivaya Subramuniyaswami as found in his book Merging With Śiva.
"Meditate on man being like a lotus flower. He comes through the mud, his instinctive mind, and he’s aware of the things of the instinctive mind: hate and greed and love and passion, and jealousy and sorrow, and happiness and joy and excitement. He comes into the intellectual mind. He becomes aware of ancient history and predictions about the future, politics, all sorts of systems, all sorts of organizations, institutions and opinions of other people. And this consumes and overshadows the soul, life after life after life, just as the desires and cravings of the instinctive mind overshadow the soul life after life after life after life. But all this time, the body of the soul is growing up. It’s getting stronger. It’s absorbing the reactions of each lifetime, drawing more energies from the central source of energy to build up and absorb these reactions; and this is food for the soul. Then finally awareness comes into its bud state. It says, “Here I am, a bud, and I’m out of the mud, and I’m out of the water.”