From Seeking Protection to Becoming the Protector
Human beings often seek protection from God because they experience themselves as vulnerable. But what makes a human being vulnerable is not merely the external world. Much of the suffering is created within oneself through duality, emotions, feelings, attachments, and expectations.
These inner movements gradually give rise to fear, anxiety, worry, and insecurity. When they become stronger, they can develop into negative characteristics such as jealousy, anger, hatred, vengeance, possessiveness, and the tendency to hurt others. Thus, the very qualities through which a person experiences himself as a separate individual also become the source of his suffering. Yet, with all these qualities within him, a human being asks God, “Protect me from my suffering.”
There is a deeper way of looking at this. If the fear within a person is destroyed, what is there left to protect? If anxiety disappears, what is there to protect? If hatred, jealousy, anger, vengeance, and attachment are dissolved, what remains can make the person feel threatened? Therefore, the destruction of these inner negativities itself becomes the protection.
A Simple Analogy
Consider a person standing inside a dark room. He is frightened because he imagines that there may be dangers around him. He asks someone outside to protect him.
Now imagine that the darkness is removed and the room becomes completely illuminated. The light does not need to fight with every object in the room. It does not need to chase away every imagined danger. The presence of light itself removes the condition that created the fear.
Similarly, when the impurities of the human mind are gradually dissolved, the person does not merely receive protection from outside. He reaches a condition in which the very causes of his vulnerability are disappearing. This is the transformation from human consciousness towards Divine consciousness.
Human and Divine
Duality, emotional turbulence, fear, anxiety, attachment, jealousy, anger, and vengeance are characteristics through which the ordinary human identity operates. As long as these qualities dominate, one remains identified with the human mind and therefore experiences himself as someone who needs protection.
When these qualities are progressively removed, the mind becomes quieter, purer, and less vulnerable. The person begins to experience an inner security that does not depend upon external circumstances.
In the Chivality understanding, when these human qualities are completely dissolved, the individual reaches the state of Chivam. Chivam does not seek protection because Chivam itself is the protector.
The ocean does not ask for protection from its own waves. The wave feels separate and vulnerable only as long as it identifies itself as a wave. When it recognise that it is nothing other than the ocean, the question of protection disappears. In the same way, the human being feels vulnerable because of his identification with the separate self. As that identification dissolves, he moves towards the state of Chivam.
Why Is the Master's Energy Necessary?
Knowing this intellectually is not enough. A person may understand that anger, fear, jealousy, and attachment are the causes of suffering, yet still find himself unable to remove them. The transformation requires an energy capable of working upon the mind.
In Chivality, Chivam is that transformative energy, and the Master represents and transmits that energy. Therefore, the constant remembrance of the Master is not merely remembering a person or repeatedly thinking about a name. It is a means of maintaining an inner connection with the Chivam energy.
Another Analogy: The Iron and the Magnet
Imagine a piece of ordinary iron kept near a powerful magnet. Initially, the iron has no magnetic strength of its own. But when it remains continuously in the magnetic field, it gradually becomes magnetized.
Similarly, the human mind is filled with its own impressions, emotions, fears, and negativities. Through constant remembrance of the Master, the practitioner repeatedly exposes himself to the Chivam energy.
The transformation may not be visible immediately, but gradually, the inner condition begins to change. Fear loses its strength. Anxiety loses its grip. Anger becomes weaker. Jealousy diminishes. Vengeance disappears. Attachments become lighter. The need for external reassurance reduces. And slowly, something very important happens: the person begins to feel protected without constantly seeking protection.
This does not mean that external difficulties will never occur. It means that the person's inner vulnerability to those difficulties is disappearing.
From Protection to Inner Security
Initially, a practitioner may think, “Master is protecting me.” As remembrance deepens, he may begin to experience, “I am protected because the Master is always with me.”
At a still deeper stage, the distinction between the protector and the protected begins to lose its importance. The fear that demanded protection has itself disappeared. The mind that constantly looked outside for security has become silent. The qualities that created vulnerability have been largely removed.
Then the person experiences a completely different kind of security—not the security of having someone constantly protecting him from the world, but the security of no longer being internally disturbed by the world.
The Final Transformation
A human being seeks God for protection because he experiences himself as separate, vulnerable, and incomplete. Chivam does not seek protection because there is no vulnerability in Chivam.
Therefore, the purpose of spiritual transformation is not merely to ask, “God, please protect me from my suffering,” but to allow the causes of suffering within oneself to be dissolved. When those causes are sufficiently removed, the need to seek protection gradually disappears, and the protector is no longer experienced merely as someone outside oneself—the condition itself becomes protective.
This is the significance of the Master's remembrance in Chivality. We remember the Master not merely to ask Him to remove every difficulty from our life, but so that the energy of Chivam may transform us to such an extent that the inner causes of fear, anxiety, worry, anger, jealousy, vengeance, and attachment gradually disappear.
When the human qualities that create vulnerability are dissolved, the human being moves towards the Divine. When the transformation reaches its fullness, he does not need protection, for he becomes a state of protection itself; he does not seek Chivam, for he becomes Chivam.
Namaha Chivaya