How Can We Integrate Spirituality into Our Daily Lives?

In this UK talk from 1980, Gururaj Ananda Yogi responds to a question about one's balance between a spiritual path and the responsabilities as a householder.

Transcript

Guruji, It appears that traditionally the path of the householder has been distinct and separate from the path of the serious spiritual seeker. Now it seems to be a challenge of this age for us to try and bring these two together. How can one fulfil one's responsibilities to both areas successfully so that neither suffers? Now firstly, The statement is not true. You cannot differentiate between the path of the householder from the path of the spiritual seeker, Because householding in itself is a spiritual path. Now what do we mean by a spiritual seeker? It means that one who is on the path to achieve that total integration within himself. And by total integration we mean where the mind, Body and spirit functions in unison, In oneness. Now to become a spiritual seeker does not mean you have to be away from this world, You have to indulge in any form of escapism. For as I have said before, That so-called spiritual seekers that want to find that divinity and run away from this world might not do so because they are seeking something higher than themselves. For if they were seeking something higher than themselves, Then that higherness, All that divinity is all-pervading. It is everywhere, And if it is everywhere, Why not can it be in the path of the householder? In spiritual seeking you don't need to become a recluse. Some believe that by being a recluse you could focus all your attention in that search. Now that is very true. Now how about looking at it from a different angle where all that concentration could be in the householder's path, And the householder's path is the most easiest path? You can ask any psychiatrist that a person if he has not the temperament of being a recluse and if he locks himself up in a cave, He could very well become demented. I have come across many such seekers who thought that by just going away, Away from it all, That they would find what they are seeking, But this has very, Very seldom worked out. Because firstly they are deprived of what they have been used to. They are thrown into a kind of loneliness and they would indulge in certain practices for which the nervous systems are not ready. Now we people that live in the world have certain patterns in life and it is those very patterns that makes you and me what we are. So we have to begin from where we are, And where we are is on the householder's path. We have our responsibilities. Now first step in this search is to accept that responsibility, And if any responsibility is carried out to its fullest and done to the best of our ability, Then automatically that becomes a stepping stone to stir up that which is within us. For in the responsiveness of life you meet many challenges, And without challenges there could be no such. You become complacent. So when we have challenges in life and we attack them responsibly, Then automatically we also develop the quality of acceptance. Now when we accept our present position and being responsible, Then to alter the adverse circumstances we start doing something. We start acting, Acting in a way that would alter the circumstances and we try and find opportunity in every adversity. Now I would wish that for people to progress faster they must have more adversities. But let me add on to that, Let me qualify that. To have adversities and view them in their proper perspective. So really speaking it is not an adversity. For example you have a job and you earn a thousand pounds a month. So you earn a thousand pounds a month. So what are you going to do? It might be a lot of money. So you will have nights out at various restaurants and all the kinds of so-called mundane temporary pleasure giving enjoyments. Now you come into a position where you lose the job. The job becomes redundant. Not because you have not the ability but the job becomes redundant. So you find another job. Now you have responsibility, Wife and kids at home. So in order to make do you take on a job for five hundred pounds. Now what a blessing that is. Responsibility is a blessing. Because in that blessing and making do with five hundred pounds you are developing discipline. That you are going to budget now. All those nightclubs are going to be forgotten. So responsibility, Acceptance and discipline comes about. You discipline yourself. You discipline your mode of life in such a way that it automatically becomes a search. So these are the prerequisites on the spiritual path, A sense of responsibility, A sense of acceptance. Now how does this help? By exercising that discipline you are altering the patterns of your mind, Altering the old grooves that have been taking you downhill. And by this discipline you are going up, Up, Up. That's a spiritual search in itself, Perhaps couched in other words. You don't need to sit in a cave cross-legged. When life becomes regulated you will find that a lot of physiological and biological and psychological changes will take place in you. Before, Because of that lot of money you used to eat junk foods. Now you will balance out by eating nutritional foods. No more of those restaurants which are a waste of time. So here you are forced now to cook at home. And you will see that for your family you will get the most nutritional food at a quarter of the cost. That's how it helps you physiologically. And that of course is connected to the biological self of your selves. You have developed now an attitude of service to your family. Before then the money was plentiful, That service to the family was not there. It was superficially, But it never came from inside. Now you say, I make do for my family. You are a householder, Remember that. And by doing that what a great psychological reward you are receiving. That I am doing something. When you start doing for your family and your environment in the householder's path, The surest way to achieve anything is by doing. Because to think of something would leave impressions on the mind, But by doing something those impressions are strengthened in the mind. With that sense of service and by doing you develop a greater closeness in your family. And by developing that greater closeness in the family, Greater love is expressed. Nice love, Not a spiritual path. So now you start loving more. There's a greater togetherness in the family. So here what we thought was an adversity from losing a job of a thousand pounds and coming down to five hundred pounds. Look at the opportunity. What is the householder's way of life? Now when this love develops then we become dutiful. We observe all our duties to our wives, To our husbands, To our children. That is the householder's path. Now embarking on the householder's path you become a karma yogi. As the responsibility, Acceptance, Duty, Love, All that increases then you reach a stage where you act for the sake of action. You do for the sake of doing. And as you progress further you want no reward for what you do. And this is in the family life, Not home. But it is like throwing a pebble in a pond and the ripples expand, Expand, Expand, And expands to your neighborhood where you are serviceful. The neighbor's car is stuck in the morning in this lovely cold English weather so you are not going to ride fast, You are going to stop and help pushing. But when you have that pride of all that money you need no one. I used to know a businessman in Pretoria. He had a beautiful limousine and his driver used to drive him because he comes from Pretoria. And he sat at the back and he never used to look left and neither right. Just used to look ahead of him or perhaps read the paper. But when he lost all that, When he lost his business, Now he takes a walk and everyone he passes, Hello Mr. So and so, Good morning Mrs. So and so. Look at the advantages, Look how his heart has opened. So what I am trying to tell you is this, That in the household spot there might be difficulties but those difficulties are to our advantage because by developing these qualities we have a change of heart and a change of attitude towards life. Then we start living. Now if you recluse yourself as a spiritual seeker you would be missing all this. Look how much you are losing and I tell you in this age we don't need these yogis or these sadhus roaming around the streets without doing any hard work and living off the fat of the land by other people's charity. We need workers. We need people to do and that will bring about a greater sanity in this world. Because the minds are occupied, Fully occupied in all these various aspects I have talked about. Now this does not mean that while you are performing your duties that you do not have higher thoughts, Good thoughts, Uplifting thoughts because every thought you think is forever emanating a force and that force is so powerful that it affects the whole environment. You come from home, You come from work, Come home in a terrible state of mind. You are going to make everyone feel awkward in the house without even saying a word because the atmosphere that you have built up around you is not conducive to peace. So here consciously we try and think uplifting thoughts. We read good books, We listen to words of wisdom over which we marvel. Now there is something there, First you hear, Then you maul over it and then you practice it. In Sanskrit it is said, Shravam to hear, Manam to maul over it, Pengo over it and adidyaasan to put it into practice. So in living the household's life this can be combined. This can very easily be combined. You can do it on the football field, You can do it in the toilet. That's where I do my best thinking. I'm trying to say the mind can be completely occupied with good thoughts wherever you are. Is that not the spiritual path? Spiritual path is nothing unusual if you separate the spiritual path from your daily active life then it is not a spiritual path. So daily activity with the introversion of meditational and spiritual practices there has to be that extroversion because you build up the great amount of energy within yourselves. So drawing deep within the powerful force which has to be expressed. If you keep on filling the bottle with gas all the time the bottle will bust. So it requires release and there is no greater release than activity. When the mind is troubled in daily living as the old saying goes, You can chop a log of wood. It is very true. It is very true and it works. So the spiritual path is not devoid of daily practical living and you can be very serious about it but not so serious that it becomes an obsession. I've known of people that would neglect all their duties. The soup on the stove would burn up while they're busy meditating. It's not necessary. Making that soup could become a meditation because you are pouring your entirety into the soup. So meditation is not only the half an hour in the morning and half an hour at night, But only refuels you, Recharges the batteries. But daily living with conscious effort to live in such a manner that the apparent adversities are done away with, Where the path is smoothened and smoothening the path of life is the spiritual path. After all, What are we seeking? We're seeking for happiness, Aren't we? The man that sits in the cave, What is he seeking? He's also seeking for a joy to become one with divinity. But I personally would not like to become one with divinity alone. Let me become one with divinity amongst a crowd. How nice, How beautiful. So when we practice these very simple injunctions which all the theologies of the world have been teaching, You are practicing Karma Yoga. And Karma Yoga does not mean it is serious or not serious. It is the medium between both. The ease of seriousness, There is a yearning to find that which is within. There is this aim to find totality in one's life. There is this aim to find that joy and that joy can be found as a householder. As you know, I've been saying this over and over again, That I'm a guru for the householder. I am not a guru for monks. So to live well and to live well does not mean you deprive yourself, That you go on severe austerities. It does not mean that. Enjoy everything, But enjoy it in such a way that that very enjoyment becomes goodly and godly. Now what do we mean by that? We sit down to a lovely dinner, Enjoy the dinner, But always have that consciousness, That thought deep down within, That this is an offering, An offering through me to the divine. And that food will taste much nicer because there is that touch of divinity in there. So if you regard that food to be divine and you know that divinity is within you, So here divinity in its dualistic form assumes a oneness, The divine to the divine. I was at a temple one day in India. So this person naturally in the temples you have those idols of Buddha and Krishna and Rama and all that. They normally take flowers. So this person went to the garden and picked some flowers to offer at the feet of the deity. So, Being a good friend of mine, I spoke to him, You are taking the flowers from God to offer it to God. What are you doing? He says, Well, This is tradition, You know, We normally do that. I said the flowers growing there is more closer to divinity than putting it at the statue because the flower there is in its natural state. It is in the ground. It is rooted with all that which the earth is composed of. And then you pick it from there and you put it at the feet of this. Well, I don't know, They have been doing it for thousands of years and I do it. So I told him, I said, Let me tell you what this really means. I do not deny that you must do this or not do this. Take the flowers and offer it there. But what is happening here is your devotion. That is what has to be taken into consideration. The devotion you have of offering flowers to your deity. Think on the lines not of the ritual but think on the lines of the devotion that is brought into you. Now, If you do this mechanically, It is of no value whatsoever. If you do it just because it has been done for thousands of years, It has no value whatsoever. But how devoted do you feel at that moment of plucking the flowers to put it at the feet of your deity? That is what counts. So in the householder's life you develop that devotion as well. Now this devotion does not go as far as temples. I have met the most finest religious people that don't even go to churches. They just live a good, Honest, Sincere, Devoted life. And yet you find people that go to churches who are the biggest hypocrites. You do find that. I mean this happens everywhere, Throughout the world, In all religions and everywhere. It is the motivation, The devotion that counts how you feel inside. Now as that devotion increases and you are performing the act with devotion either to your deity or your wife or your husband or your children, That is what will open your heart. Now in the householder's path you have all these opportunities of opening the heart, The core of your personality. And by strengthening the core of your personality you change your personality. And so-called unholy person, You become a holy person. And yet so ordinary, So ordinary, No robes and no paraphernalia. You don't need that. We need this change of heart, The opening, The expansion of heart to become closer and closer to the core of our personality where that divine force resides. And then the bodies are strengthened, The mind is strengthened, Becomes whole, You are healed. You are healed by yourself. Therefore, When Jesus was asked, He said, Thy faith has healed thee. And this is what it means in the daily art of living, In the daily art of living. For life is an art and art always expresses itself, Art always blossoms on and on in greater and greater glory. Now is that not a spiritual path? That is karma yoga, A spiritual path. So for this now, To achieve all this, We require a certain amount of alertness. Now how do we develop this alertness? One could start in the beginning with blind faith. And by conscious effort in the art of living, With conscious effort in the art of living, As you see your personality changing, As you see the changes occurring within you by your own effort, Then that blind faith becomes faith. It does not remain blind anymore, Or the bandages are taken off. Then as that faith grows, Because you have seen the changes in yourself, Many people rely on the Guru, He must wave a wand, You know, And change. So yes, Meditation practices are good, Fine, But that's only 30 percent. But that little 10 percent that I always talk of, That's your business. By a little conscious effort, When these various areas of life are changed, Then you see you're encouraged by the changes. And with that encouragement, You progress faster and faster. We are all little children. When a child is in class, A good teacher will encourage the child. Child does something good, You encourage the child, And because of that encouragement, The child will feel happy, And in that happiness will try and do more. So like that, When we have these little encouragements in life by our own efforts, Backed up by the meditation practices and the grace we draw, Because of the meditation practices, The Guru Shakti, Then our path is expedited. We go faster, We progress faster, And as we progress faster, We come nearer and nearer to where our real home is. That is what it's all about. It's so, So simple. So, So simple. If we have any fault of reality, And if we do resolve, Look, I am going to change this, You can change it. And as the little will is exercised, That will is strengthened, And in the strengthening of that will, Greater and greater results are achieved. So the real seeker for spiritual enlightenment does not consciously feel that he is a seeker. Because here, The very purpose, The very idea of seeking involves a certain kind of mental activity whereby you are seeking results. And as soon as you seek those results, Those results go far away from you. Why do you want enlightenment? What for? You don't need it. You don't need to seek for it. You are out of the torch in the dark streets. No, That comes on its own. You cannot force it, But you can do something by living a good household's life. And these things just come. The other day I used an analogy that while I was sitting in a garden meditating, You remember, There were beautiful flowers in the garden. And I came to the realization when I saw the beautiful butterflies there, That the beautiful butterflies only come where there are beautiful flowers. So let our garden of life be beautiful, And those beautiful butterflies automatically come. Automatically they come. You don't need to call them. You don't need to call for enlightenment. It comes automatically. The whole idea is to live a life to its fullest and yet in its most proper moral and ethical values. This morning's talk has been more on morality and ethics. But starting off from that small little point, You see how all these virtues get added unto you. And they come, They come, They come. They snowball all the time. The true seeker, Although there is the idea in the mind that I am searching for home, I am searching for that which is divine within me, That is my goal. But I have to act to reach the goal. If you want to drive to the haze, You have the idea in mind you are going to the haze. Okay, But you are not going to think that every foot of the way or every mile of the way, Haze, Haze, Haze, Haze, Haze. No, No. You have set your course. You are on the path. Keep on driving. And you must reach there. Haze is not going to run away. It is there. Divinity is there within you. It's not going to run away as long as we act in the way we should. So there we are. So being a householder, One can also be a seeker. But don't let the idea of seeking be so dominant that it spoils your daily life. I have learned of a young man, I don't know if I told you this before, He used to sit from morning till night studying various scriptures. He used to read all the various philosophies, Yet his wife and children were starving. What kind of search is that? He is escaping into his books. By all means set an hour or two aside for your studies to read those spiritual books, But take care of your responsibility. That's the idea. So you can be a householder and a seeker and your very search lies in the actions you perform. That is not a mental search but a practical search.

Reviews

This opened my eyes to a completely different view point on spirituality.
One that I feel truly aligned to.
I will appreciate and enjoy living in the present without a feeling of unachieving in a search for something more.

So practical and so helpful!

Wonderful talk 😍😍😍

Quite a thought-provoking talk. Thank you for sharing! 🙏🏼

What a beautiful talk; so much wisdom and common sense. I will be listening again, especially when I’m in need of some grounding! 💖💖💖