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Fighting with our failing means being preoccupied with shortcomings, trying to appear as someone else, someone better, thinking we need something from outside to improve us. In fighting with our failing, we fall into quantitative striving. In denying our vulnerability, we imagine our flaws are the cause of our suffering whereas in fact they are the golden string that would lead us out from it. If embraced, our flaws could show us who we are. But fighting with our failing is ignoring the entrance to the shrine itself because the shrine is the sanctuary for the orphans of the heart, and the deity there is called, ‘Acceptance’. The poet concludes:
If only we could give ourselves
to the blows of the Carver’s hand,
the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers
feeding the sea
where voices meet, praising the features of the mountain and the cloud and the sky.
Our faces would fall away
until we, growing younger toward death
every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration
to merge with them perfectly,
impossibly,
wedded to our essence,
full of silence from the Carver’s hands.
Gather our flaws in celebration? How would we ever celebrate what we most dislike in ourselves?
If overcoming illusory bondage finds its entry in investigating what is not yet perfected, the Ramana way begins with vichara. Vital and vibrant enquiry depends on a heart that is self-accepting. We gather all our flaws in celebration not just because they lead to the core of us—the Self—but in allowing ourselves to receive benediction, we are able to give benediction in return, thereby enlarging our capacity for acceptance.
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