Rome was not built in a day. But it couldn’t have been built if someone did not work on it every single day. Similarly, being is not built overnight. It is a combination of all the efforts, even on the mundane days. Especially on the mundane days.

Sometimes, when I make a New Year’s resolution, it doesn’t work because I aim to complete it in a year instead of every day. A year is just a collection of 365 days. I cannot simply make an aim to change in one year if I don’t work on that each of those 365 days.

When you’re climbing a mountain, in the beginning, you cannot see the top. But you trust the tour guide and keep walking, even though it seems pointless and boring. Then suddenly you see the top, and it all makes sense. You don’t find it a waste of time to do all the walking and climbing. And the moment you reach the top and see the miraculous view, it all becomes worth it. You’re not weary anymore. You’re just grateful. You don’t care about how many times you wanted to just stop and sit down. You are just grateful that you trusted the guide and kept walking. 

We need both the trust in the guide’s path and all the tiring walking efforts. Trust alone and imagining the top will not bring us to the destination. We must walk despite losing hope or feeling tired; we must stick to the aim of creating being. We must work on every little negative emotion, on every little opportunity. Choosing between our aim and momentary pleasures, which are not even real pleasures. Choosing the highest in every single time, despite every failure, every distraction, every other thought. 

Sometimes one needs to go through the process of deliberately choosing everything else. Intentionally testing one’s limits and seeing if that truly is fulfilling. Going after that dream or that job or that girl or the money. And see if that truly fulfills oneself. To see, is that what one wants? Then one may realize that none of this is real. That’s when one can decide that one wants to build being. A real deep desire to want to create something higher is the first step, and the rest is to keep working on it.

In order to create being, one needs to work on oneself. And in order to work on oneself, one needs to know oneself. 

When a man begins to know himself a little, he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself, he knows nothing about himself. – Ouspensky

But what is it that we need to work on? Letting go of what is not God. Removing the unnecessary. The higher the being, the more pure we must become. Despite seeing all the lower in oneself and the world, striving to be like the higher. We do this by working on negative emotions, externally considering others, and manifesting less from our features and false personality.

The Self is pure awareness, nothing less. – Ashtavakra Gita

Dhruvi Chavda practices the Fourth Way in India. For other articles of hers, see: https://fourthwaytoday.org/author/dhruvi-chavda/, including her recent articles on the duality of life and the transformation of suffering.