In the Western Christian tradition, more emphasis has been placed on prayer as a means of communication with God, while in Eastern spirituality, meditation has been held paramount.
Sri Chinmoy expresses these two pathways in the simplest terms: “In prayer, I speak and God listens. In meditation, God speaks and I listen.”
It’s a common notion, that prayer is an ardent request formulated into words: our lost, weak, helpless self, beseeching a higher, all-knowing, all-powerful Being to fulfil our desired outcome. Words, and the desires they express, typically arise from our mind, so such prayer will inevitably be conditioned by our mind’s limitations and preconceptions. Our mind almost never knows what is actually best for us or for the world, so there is every chance our mind’s prayer may be misguided and not in our best interests. Yet it is infinitely better to pray with imperfect intentions than to not pray at all, for prayer creates momentum, which leads to progress. Our prayer reflects us; as we grow spiritually, so our prayer matures and blossoms.
Why the need for words – does not God already know what we need for our fulfilment? Yes of course God knows what we need, and is already offering all we need and infinitely more. It is we who are not accepting or receiving the bountiful spiritual wealth with which we are continuously being showered. The words of spoken prayers are for our benefit, not God’s. They help us become more conscious of our needs, more aware of our opportunities, more conscientious in our responsibilities, more disciplined in our practise, more receptive to our progress, more surrendered to our transformation and more grateful for the continuous blessings flowing towards, within and all around us.
You are a small child. You have a very special friend, a most intimate, closest friend who loves you most, and who you love above all. You love playing with this friend more than anything else in your world. Your friend is forever happy, delightful, sweet, inventive, thoughtful, funny and kind, knows all the best games and leads you on ever-new, thrilling adventures. Just being with this friend, is your complete heaven.
Right now you are alone in your room. Your mother calls out that your friend is here, and wants to see you. Your friend also calls out your name, imploring you to come and play. How do you respond?
You ignore your mother’s and your friend’s calls. You stay in your room, doing some stupid thing, or nothing at all.
Why? Why? Why?
Your spiritual heart is your mother, the one who is urging you to come and play with your most special friend, your soul. The eternal game and matchless adventure, is your meditation.
Our soul is always eager to enwrap us in peace, immerse us in light and flood us with delight. Our soul has only us on whom to lavish its attention so it waits, and waits for us to heed its call. Our soul shows every move and guides our every step. Our part is only to open the door and allow our soul in, our best, closest friend, playmate, lover, tutor and guide.
Stop whatever you are doing. Give it up and be still, be silent, be empty, be receptive.
Surrender to your soul-friend. As the meditation-game unfolds, enjoy the game, love the game and become the game. You will make yourself ever-increasingly happy, your heart ever happier and your soul, your lives-long eternal friend, ever the happiest.
“The moment I say and feel
That I am an eternal beginner,
I become the possessor
Of boundless joy.”
– Sri Chinmoy
In our meditation and spiritual life, we need always to feel we are just a beginner.
For no matter how much we know, there is always infinitely more that we do not yet know: no matter how much we have experienced or attained, there is always infinitely more we are yet to experience and to attain.
In the spiritual life, we can only move in two possible directions: forwards or backwards. There is no standing still. We can move forwards only when our mind and heart are open and eager to learn and to progress, for our journey is from the known to the unknown, from the finite to the infinite, from what we are to what we are yet to become.
When we close the curtains of our room, we shut out the light. When we feel we know enough or have attained a sufficient height, our mind and heart tend to contract and turn inward. As they close, so we shut out the possibility of further progress. As soon as we stop moving forwards, we start to slide – at first imperceptibly – backwards.
The spiritual universe is ever evolving. In the spiritual life, we can never rest on our laurels: my yesterday’s achievement will count for nothing if I am not seeking to build upon it and transcend, today and tomorrow.
So the attitude of an eternal beginner is essential not only to ensure our further progress, it is also our necessary safeguard against sliding backwards and veering from our chosen Path.
To remain always a beginner, breathe in humility, simplicity, sincerity, cheerfulness, enthusiasm and gratitude, and focus ever forward, inward, onward and upward.
“Sleep is sleep and meditation is meditation. If it is beyond what is necessary, sleep is friendship with ignorance. Meditation is always friendship with illumination.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Meditation is our heightened, intensified and expanded conscious awareness. Sleep is the suspension of our conscious awareness. Meditation and sleep are incompatible and mutually exclusive. Certainly we can experience spiritually significant, inspiring and uplifting dreams while asleep, however such dreams and their messages must still be assimilated by our conscious meditation for us to gain any lasting benefits.
Sri Chinmoy has called sleep ‘death’s little sister.’ Just as death forcibly interrupts the flow of our continuous spiritual progress, from one lifetime to the next, so does sleep, though in a briefer time scale, from one day to the next: our temporary spiritual death.
“I shall not sleep, I shall not sleep
In the sea of vast ignorance deep!
I shall now run and dive and fly.
I shall now touch my freedom–sky.”
– Sri Chinmoy
In the spiritual life, sleep represents ignorance. Whether we are physically sleeping or awake, whenever we are not spiritually conscious and aspiring, we are effectively enjoying ‘ignorance-sleep.’
A spiritual seeker must fight against sleep in all its forms: indulgence in indolence, comfort and desire-gratification; heeding the dictates of our body, vital and mind over the urgings of our heart and soul.
Sleep is not mere physical inactivity: it is the inactivity of our heart’s cry for something ever finer, deeper and higher. Sleep can be silence; sleep can be violence. Sleep can express as the wildest rage of the vital; the loudest boasting of ego; the proudest proclamation of prejudice.
To overcome spiritual sleep, tenderly nurture and fiercely treasure always your heart’s cry for peace, love, light and freedom. Let sleep … sleep.
Sleep – we need it, but how much? If we don’t get enough sleep, we become tired and exhausted, and our spiritual life suffers; if we sleep too much, we become torpid and lethargic, and our spiritual life suffers.
Sri Chinmoy wrote: “When we have established inner peace, we diminish our need for sleep, because peace itself is rest.” To reduce our sleep, it is extremely beneficial to meditate last thing before going to bed at night. Much of our sleep time is not needed by the body, but for the mind to unwind and release its built-up stress and tension. When we empty and purify the mind prior to sleeping, we can enter sooner into a deep and fulfilling sleep, and require less of it. We then awaken sooner, refreshed and energised. The deeper we meditate, the less sleep we need, the less time we are disconnected from our conscious aspiration, the more value we retain from our meditation, the faster we progress.
Then when we awake, meditate first thing after washing and energising the body. Though it may feel that we are starting our journey again from the very beginning, it is not really so. It is like returning to yesterday’s food: the meal has already been cooked and prepared, now it just needs to be reheated, like a curry that has a better and fuller flavour on the second day. The tap of inspiration needs to be carefully turned back on, the engine of aspiration re-started, the book of meditation re-opened.
Focus on breathing and simple concentration exercises for a while until you feel the presence of your spiritual heart and the blossoming of gratitude, then pick up the thread from your previous evening’s meditation to continue your spiritual journey, full speed ahead.
Regardless of the amount of sleep we get, the very nature of sleep presents a significant challenge to the spiritual seeker. Spirituality and sleep appear to be diametrically opposed: one a dynamic flow, the other a static repose. While our spiritual aspiration seeks ever to heighten and deepen our consciousness, sleep inveigles us into an unconscious state.
While there are times when we awaken feeling inspired and full of light and joy, many of us tend to wake up feeling barely conscious, scarcely able to recall that we are supposed to be an aspiring being on a spiritual Path. It seems we have been under water, as though the time we spend asleep has eroded away our connection with our deeper self and dissolved yesterday’s inspiration, aspiration, determination and bliss. We may feel inert, our only eagerness being for more sleep time. Our cherished goal has receded into the mists of obscurity.
Our finite body, vital and mind need sleep, to repair and recharge. Our spiritual heart and soul need no sleep, as they are one with infinite energy and inexhaustible inspiration. Spirituality deals with consciousness, which is never static; it is always expanding or contracting, rising or falling, speeding up or slowing down. Spiritual progress is the shaping of our conscious awareness, and cannot proceed when that awareness is suspended – just as a painting needs its canvass and a song is formed from and needs the notes of the musical scale. In sleep, our connection to conscious awareness is temporarily unplugged, so while sleep is necessary and unavoidable as long as we are here in the earthly realm, it will always be an interruption to the flow of our spiritual progress. And while we are not moving forwards, we can only be moving backwards.
Meditation is food and nourishment for our inner being. Just as we need time after eating a meal to assimilate and digest our food before engaging in strenuous activity, so time and the right environment is needed after meditation to assimilate the peace, light and bliss we have received.
Assimilation is essential to lock in the gains of meditation. We might see, smell, touch and be inspired by a fruit, but we can only enjoy its full benefits once we have eaten and absorbed it into ourselves. Similarly we might have high and beautiful experiences in meditation, but until they are assimilated, these treasures can easily be lost to us, our meditation squandered. Once assimilated, high experiences become our property, part and parcel with our consciousness: only then are they safe in us, and we in them.
Like digestion of our food, assimilation of spiritual wealth is a natural, spontaneous process – there is nothing we have to do outwardly for it to occur. However we do need to be careful not to interfere with and disrupt the process, for we are dealing with spiritual phenomena, subtle nerves and super-fine realities.
For peace, light and bliss to be assimilated by our subtle nerves, absorbed and flow into and through our conscious awareness, we must be calm in our body, vital and mind. Remain silent for some time, read spiritual books, sing or hum spiritual songs, walk slowly in nature or enter into harmonious discussion of only spiritual matters.
Disputes, excitement, complexity and negativity can destroy all our meditation’s gains; while sweetness, kindness, inspiration and joy protect and nurture our spiritual wealth.
Gratitude expedites assimilation. As we bathe in and become the breath and fragrance of gratitude, our meditation treasure takes root, grows and blossoms within us as our very own.
From the moment we start going to school, we associate teaching and learning with spoken and written instruction – with words. So when it comes to meditation, we may reasonably hope and expect to learn this also from reading books, attending lectures or listening to podcasts – from words. Yet while words might convey some of the practical details, they can at best be “the finger pointing to the moon”: words can never encompass or convey the experience of the meditation-moon itself, or how to land there.
How then can we start to learn meditation, without words? The same way babies learn to walk. Babies simply ‘absorb’ the secrets of walking by identification with their elder family members – and practice.
Inspiration is the best teacher, for it awakens and reveals our own inherent capacities. An avid student of tennis learns much from watching the world’s best players, consciously and unconsciously assimilating and emulating their mental and psychic mastery of the game, along with their strokes, tactics and court awareness.
Sri Chinmoy writes: “The best way to begin to learn how to meditate is to associate with people who have been meditating for some time. These people are not in a position to teach you, but they are in a position to inspire you. If you have some friends who know how to meditate, just sit beside them while they are meditating. Unconsciously your inner being will be able to derive some meditative power from them. You are not stealing anything from them, but your inner being is taking help from them without your outer knowledge.”
Mixing with spiritual people and sitting with them in meditation, inspires us and stirs our aspiration to bring forward our capacity: we ‘remember’ meditation, and begin to recover our own long-lost, long-forgotten selves.
“Spirituality
Without difficulty
Is an absurdity.”
– Sri Chinmoy
We commenced this series on Finding Your Spiritual Path, by stating:
“There are only two essential tasks in life –
a) find your spiritual Path; and
b) follow it.”
Having found our spiritual Path, only one task remains: FOLLOW IT!
We follow a spiritual Path to reach and attain the highest Goal –Enlightenment, Illumination, God-realisation or God-satisfaction – the Goal that subsumes and transcends all quests and aspirations. Clearly we are now a long way from this Goal, so following the Path must involve radical transformation of our consciousness along the way. The limited, ignorant parts of our being – with which we presently largely identify – must be surrendered, and traded for our infinite, illumined Self.
Reaching and attaining Infinite Bliss is anything but a bed of roses. On the contrary, giving up my cherished ignorance, my present apparent identity, is perilously difficult.
Our present Nature must first be brought under our control and command. To this end, every spiritual Path requires discipline. Without discipline, nothing significant can ever be achieved in life. Until we can control our own thoughts and passions, we remain their slave, impotent to direct our progress toward any worthwhile goal.
Everything in Nature fights to preserve its own dominion and existence – including our own ignorance, weaknesses and limitations. To tread the Path to illumination, we must be ready, willing and eager to wage war against our own puny and proud ignorance-ego.
The obstacles to overcome are predominantly found not in the world around us: they are within, cradled and coddled by our own indulgence. Doubt, Fear, Insecurity, Pride, Impurity, Inertia – all we have built; all we must now dismantle.
To follow your Path, be ready to fight … for fight we all must.
[“I go to the Buddha for refuge,
I go to the Dharma for refuge,
I go to the Order for refuge.”]
– Buddhist chant
In Buddhist tradition, the Path is formed of the confluence of three interdependent channels: Buddha, Dharma and Sanga. These channels apply to all spiritual Paths, and are as indispensable today, as ever.
Buddha literally means “enlightened one”. Buddha is the Guru or spiritual Master who, having realised God, reveals the way to Eternal Truth, Light, Peace and Bliss in the form of Teachings, whether spoken, written, enacted or through silent meditation. The foundation of each spiritual Path is the Teachings of one, or sometimes a lineage of several Spiritual Masters.
Dharma is the code of life, the practises, precepts and rules to be followed by the adherents of the Path. The Dharma is established either by the founding Guru, or by subsequent disciples, and may vary to adapt for different times and cultures. The Dharma might set out rules of dress, diet, routine, ritual and lifestyle – but most importantly, the Dharma applies to inner discipline, to self-control, purification and transformation in the realms of thought, feeling and conduct. There are typically parallel codes for those committed wholly to the spiritual Life, and for ‘householders’ – those following the Teachings while raising a family.
Sanga is the community of disciples or followers, who might live together in a dedicated, regulated ashram or monastery, or separately in their own dwellings, coming together for prayer, meditation, social and communal activities in furtherance of their Path’s Teachings. Notwithstanding the solitude of meditation, we are social beings, and the camaraderie, inspiration and aspiration we share are integral to our progress on any Path.
When we see people in the street, strangers whom we have never met or know anything about, there are always some to whom we feel drawn, and some we would rather avoid. There is no explanation or rationale for these feelings, other than a sense of affinity.
While we are all unique, our conscious feelings and unconscious sensibilities intersect, interweave and interconnect. Like attracts like: much as a magnetic force, our inner nature inclines us naturally toward those with whom we share some unseen proclivity, some unknown connection of the heart or soul.
So it is with spiritual paths. The connection with our own spiritual Path is the deepest, surest and safest bond of any we will experience in this life. It is an affinity with our own core, our own essence, our own inmost being; an affinity deeper than love, truer than conviction and mightier than our personal will.
This bond can only be felt by our heart and claimed by our soul: it can never be analysed or grasped by our mind. The very nature of the limited and limiting mind is to divide, critique and reject. Until our mind is illumined, it will always find faults and shortcomings for that is its job, what it has programmed itself to do.
If you feel drawn to a spiritual Path, give yourself and the Path three months together. During these three months, dive in and follow this Path as wholeheartedly as you can. Follow your heart and do your best to set aside whatever your mind does not like or understand, for what is in the mind will constantly change, while the heart only grows and glows stronger and brighter.
As there are rogues, quacks and charlatans in almost every field, so is there an abundance of deceptive teachers and false spiritual paths to be wary of.
While ultimately only our own heart can vouch for the authenticity of a spiritual Path or Master, when scanning the field of potential candidates, there are two red flags to be sure to avoid, for they proclaim falsehood.
The first red flag is raised when a Path claims to be The Only Way.
The notion of One True Faith – with the entire gamut of all non-conforming experience, feeling, inspiration, aspiration and realisation condemned to damnation – has been responsible for the most suffering, death and destruction of any idea in human history.
The fantasy of exclusivity – and its consequent conflagration of religions and ideologies – is born of our human mind’s feeble insecurity parading as arrogant certainty. It is the antithesis of Truth and a denial of the possibility of an all-loving, all-powerful and all-compassionate God. If God is not in all, of all and for all, always – it cannot be God.
The second red flag is the charge of any fee for spiritual teachings or membership.
Spiritual Truth cannot be bought or sold. Any course in ‘spirituality’ requiring a fee in exchange for a guarantee of certain capacities or spiritual progress is a sham. Spiritual progress and enlightenment are matters of the heart, not of the wallet. They are the blossoming of the heart’s love, eagerness and aspiration, in response to the Master’s grace, love and concern. For good reason, the Christ overturned the merchants’ tables set up in the Temple. Money is needed for our outer life and activities, but has no role in our inner existence, the temple of our heart.
As there are innumerable streams and rivers flowing into the sea, countless tracks and routes to the summit, so are there multiple spiritual Paths to enlightenment. It is said there are as many Paths to Self-realisation as there are souls on earth.
Faced with such an abundance of options, how are we to select the right Path, our Path?
In this most significant of commitments, we must surely follow our heart, and not our mind, for our heart is the highest guide within our present consciousness of which we are somewhat aware. Our soul already knows our Path – yet we do not yet have an open and reliable channel of communication with our soul; it is too fine and subtle, too wide and pure for our present bumbling awareness to perceive and receive.
So we must turn to our heart, which as the moon reflects a little portion of the sun’s light, offers according to its own receptivity, glimpses and hints of our soul’s light, power and bliss.
Our Path already exists within and before us. It is not to be created or chosen, but rather beseeched, revealed and embraced.
Relying on our mind to choose our spiritual Path is to ask a snail to judge a piano competition. In this task, our heart is our only remotely qualified or reliable instrument. Our mind is for the finite; our heart is of the infinite. Whereas our mind employs judgement and analysis, our heart simply loves.
Mind – step back! Listen to your heart, and let your heart listen for the love-rhythms, light-songs and joy-melodies of its Path. Your heart cannot help but be drawn to your Path – so follow, follow, ever follow your heart.
