There are people in many cultures who surrender the chance to live a social life in order that they may spend time in solitude--in monasteries or ashrams--devoting their days and hours to a spiritual life. In some cultures this is part of a system where, too, men or women who already have lived a life, maybe to the age of 50 or thereabouts, can say, I've done the family/business/social thing. I've completed my responsibility there. Now I wish to get on with what is of true value in life and spend the rest of my years here on the planet working on my relationship with God. In the Hindu tradition, for example, this can involve a gradual giving up of responsibilities and comforts, such as to give the business to be run by one's offspring, and husband and wife remove themselves to a retreat setting; then perhaps ten years later, the husband and the wife separate from each other that individually they may be able to pursue with even more of their time and energy this spiritual quest alone. What a gift it must be to have this possibility as part of one's culture, so that at least the idea of at some point being called upon to speak to the question, where do you stand spiritually, is woven into the fabric of life.
Here in the west this is not really a part of our culture at all. Yes, there are monasteries where we could become monks or nuns and withdraw from life to pursue spiritual connection, if we happen to belong to a religion of which this is a part, and if we happen to be one of the approximately 1% of the population who naturally are drawn to a monastic life, and if we think we are suited to the particular program presented by the monasteries of our religion. Those who meet these criteria turn out to be a very small percentage of the population at large. It's a hard life, and even many who try it are unable to find in it the experiences of God they seek.
Most if not all of the people in our culture who wish to have a relationship with God are not at all interested in giving up their life to have it. Understandably. It's not a realistic option in most cases, and actually, there is much to be said for the approach of living in the world and yet committed to having a relationship with the divine. Toward this end we have our meditation, which is referred to in the Vedic literature as 'the householder's technique.' This is a practice which is specifically designed to be useful to those of us with full lives, with families, jobs, responsibilities, bills, careers. We sit each morning, de-exciting and contacting the level of being within, and then we perform the actions of our life, of our job, of our relationships--spouse, partner, child, parent, friend, coworker--always seeking more and more to have an experience of or at least an idea of the divine present for us to whatever degree is possible on any given day. Then we go back to our meditation, dropping in once again to that place of being, grateful for our day and grateful for the opportunity to let go of the stresses of the day, letting our connectedness to nature align within our mind our experiences of that day so that we easily are able to see what we did right and what we could have done better, and without having even to think about it, what we are to do tomorrow.
It's actually a brilliant system, for in meditation, we fill up with what we might call adaptation energy, the energy by which we easily may be able to adapt to the changing demands and expectations of any given day. As we go through the day, adapting to the world rather than insisting the world adapt to us, we are using this energy up, and in the process we are stabilizing in ourselves an ever-expanding consciousness from our daily commitment. Then we fill up again, and go through the process for the rest of our day. We live our life, we seek God, we do things the best we can, and where we fall down, we try to use it as an opportunity for growth and finding compassion for ourselves and others.
And as exemplars to each other on this path, we get so much more from watching each other try and fail and try again than to hear advice or spiritual homilies from someone who sits in silence 23 hours a day and never has to deal with L.A. traffic or rude coworkers.
The Bhagavad Gita says:
Yogestah kuru karmani
Established in being, perform action.
Professor Amit Goswami says,
One more trick that helps [in our seeking of a conscious way of living]. We have to be in our doing mode, our ego mode, and in our being mode, alternately. It's neither do do do, nor is it be be be. It's do be do be do. Alternate doing and being.
What a gift we have in this easy way to be. And what a gift in this daily responsibility to do. Do be do be do.
Today I will for just a moment imagine myself as an undercover meditator, a spiritual aspirant disguised as a member of the world of commerce, and I will imagine that my connection to the place of being will help to smooth a situation that needs smoothing.
