Modern man with all the material progress at his disposal, to help him live a rich, easy and secure life, is finding it difficult to manage the stress, unfulfillment and perpetual sense of insecurity, his lifestyle brings along, as a baggage. If he listens to his ‘heart’, which looks for peace, fulfillment, connection and ignores the earlier mentioned demands of the socially conditioned ‘head/mind’, he appears at odds and seldom gets validation and encouragement from his community. Ultimately majority of us end up living a ‘socially correct and spiritually incorrect’ lives, and reconcile to be okay with the mental suffering the modern lifestyle entails. Only a few freaky ones dare to challenge this so called ‘normal’ and chose to live a spiritual life, even if it means being branded black sheep,  impractical and even unscientific by their community. As in the following words of Kabir;

“Kami krodhi lalchi,inse bhakti na hoye,
Bhakti karai koi surma, jati varan kul khoye.”
(The lustful, angry or greedy cannot have devotion, Only a valiant who has sacrificed caste, creed and race can have devotion.)

What is a Spiritual life? How is it different from the life we’re used to living? A Spiritual life is living the existing life more ‘Consciously’. Being more conscious of our actions, strengths, uniqueness, core values, life purpose, safeguarding our humaneness, empathy, relationship with all that’s around us-which includes bonding with humans and other elements of the biosphere. It implies seeing everything as our extension and cherishing this interdependence. Spirituality is about cultivating the capacity of ‘seeing things as they are’, beyond our conditioning, biases, beliefs, prejudices; collectively speaking learning to be in tune with the harmony of the universe and ‘living in the light of truth’.
What blocks us from living such aspirational and fulfilling life?

Our desire for security and fear of change (expecting the transients in our life, which includes us and everything around us, to remain constant). This impractical and fanciful way thinking is bound to cause suffering and heart burn, as in the practical world, nothing works that way. Change is the only constant ruling our lives. Dates are changing, we are changing, the society is changing, we are losing the loved ones, jobs, pets, heroes, lifestyle… and just about everything that exists. Paradoxically, this change is so incremental or subtle that our grosser side (ego) seldom notices it, hence finds it difficult to accept. But friends, there is a finer dimension to all of us, apart from the one that I just described. It is termed ‘Higher Consciousness’ by the spiritualists. This ‘Higher Consciousness’ becomes available to us once we manage overcome our fears and desires (I want it this way), and accept the unreasonableness of our ego.
So, all we are left with is, raise our ‘Level of Consciousness’.

The above can be achieved by sitting in seclusion, contemplating, observing the patterns of self-sabotage, and gradually, by knowing what we’re not, we realize ‘who we are’. By not doing what we should not do (to preserve our higher state) we come to know ‘what we need to do’. As the saying goes ‘First stop yourself from doing what you want, then do what you love’. The moment we surrender to this higher wisdom, we start seeing things in a new light, and our orientation to see life shifts drastically. This brings about substantial, at times even radical change in our behaviour, decisions and life choices in general.

Curious to know friends, what was the starting point of your spiritual journey?