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.
“When the disciple is ready, the Guru appears.”
– a traditional saying of India
These words have proven absolutely true in my own journey and in the lives of countless acquaintances. One who is genuinely seeking spiritual truth, light, peace and happiness will never remain adrift in the ocean of ignorance – either they will search for and find the right teacher, mentor or guide, or that teacher will by some fortuitous circumstance, come into their life, seemingly by accident.
Whether one consciously seeks and finds a spiritual Master, or the Guru comes to us, the result is the same. When a child is hungry, either he goes looking for food, or he cries and his mother comes to feed him. When we are spiritually hungry, we have the same options: use our own resources to go in search of Truth, or cry sincerely from the depths of our heart. Just as the mother cannot resist her child’s cry, so our own source – whether our soul, the universal Consciousness, or God – our spiritual Mother, will always come to our rescue, nurturing and nourishing us with the peace, light and bliss for which we yearn.
The spiritual Master may be in the physical here on earth or may be represented by a legacy of teachings, deeds and a spiritual Path. In any case, the essence of spirituality, the Truth and realisation that a spiritual Master offers to humanity lies far beyond the physical, beyond time and space. All true spiritual Masters speak from beyond time, their message for all times. The Truth they embody, represent and impart lies within us: it is already our own.
Our Guru, our Path and our highest self are of one source, converging as one Goal.
There is no orphan soul in this universe. Just as every drop of water in the world and its atmosphere comes from one source – the ocean – and has one ultimate destination – the ocean; so every soul has one Source and one Goal – imagined and invoked by various names such as God, Truth, Light, the Supreme, or infinite, immortal Consciousness. As there is a river to carry every drop to the sea, so is there a spiritual Path ready prepared for you, and for me.
Our soul already knows our destined Path and tries to persuade us toward it through silent signs and subtle hints: our task is to heed this beckoning, find and embrace our Path.
The search for our spiritual Path is our deepest yearning: the quest for truth, love, light and peace, for purpose and meaning, safety and belonging, wholeness and completion.
Finding our spiritual Path is not like enrolling in a course, joining a club, attending church, starting a family or getting a job. Our spiritual Path is the means to discover our true Self – the Self who remains the same whatever course we study, whichever family we happen to belong to, whatever job we do, or sports or hobbies we enjoy, whichever beliefs we are clinging to at the moment. Our spiritual Path does not stop when the full-time whistle blows, when we clock off work, receive our degree, finish our project or close our eyes. Our spiritual Path flows in, around, behind, below, above and beyond every life activity, every relationship, every belief, thought, intention and action, every happiness and sorrow, success and failure, beginning and ending, opening and closure.
“I long to live
In nothingness-nectar,
Where my Transcendence-Goal
Is eagerly expecting
My eager arrival.”
– Sri Chinmoy
For most of us, the concept of ‘nothingness’ is anathema: something to be avoided at all cost. We devote our time, effort and aspiration towards filling our existence with activity, with possessions, sensations, distractions, pastimes and entertainments, with family and friends, with work, commitments and entanglements, with plans, desires and beliefs. We are always busy and occupied, because we choose to be so.
By enveloping ourselves with ‘things’ – material, emotional and mental phenomena – we create and inhabit a universe of ‘things’, in which we objectify ourselves as the central ‘thing’. Thus self-deluded, ‘thing-ified’, we drift away from happiness…
…for we are not things: we are the soul. Things are merely the superficial or outward appearance, not the underlying reality and as such, can never give us lasting satisfaction. We spend our life running away from nothingness which ironically, holds the answers to all our questions, the resolution of all problems, the cure of all ills.
‘Nothingness’ can only be attained by fearlessly stripping away the surface of ‘things’, listening for the silence behind the sounds, diving into the depths below the waves, embracing the stillness inside the chaos, becoming the infinite within the finite.
Only in nothingness – “no-thing-ness”, the absence in our consciousness of the superficial, ephemeral and unreal – do we find our soul, our true self. Nothingness holds the fullness of satisfaction, the bliss of perfection, the oneness of completion, our source and our goal. Hence Sri Chinmoy’s beautiful, powerful poetic term: “Nothingness-nectar”.
‘Nothingness-nectar’ does not come easily. It must be yearned for above all else – intensely, eagerly and wholeheartedly – as the richest treasure, the deepest love, the highest reward, the sole focus and goal of our aspiration and our meditation.
Imagine a beautiful, clear pool set in a forest glade. You sit on a bench fashioned from a large, fallen tree, shaded from the sun. A gentle breeze that soothes your brow, leads every leaf, branch and bough in gentle dream dance over a drone of barely murmured pleasantries.
You gaze at the pool.
According to legend, a very wealthy person, pursued by bandits through the forest at night, cast his gold and glittering jewels into a pond in this very forest, meaning to retrieve them some later day. Having escaped the bandits and returned safely home, the following morning our wealthy man passed away from an unknown cause.
Gazing at the pool, you wonder: could this be the pond wherein the fabled treasure lies?
As you peer into the water, something falls into the pool and disturbs the surface, setting into motion a series of wavelets, flowing first outwards and then criss-crossing in all directions in a subtle, captivating choreography that charms and enthralls you.
As the wavelets subside, your reverie fades and you recall your previous thought of the treasure… – is that a glistening from below? At this moment, a sudden startling of wind galvanises a brief conniption, shattering your fleeting glimmer into untraceable gloom.
Each time you are about to see clearly into the depths, something else disturbs the water.
According to legend, that wealthy person was our soul, and the pond into which the treasure was thrown, the depth of our own being. The water’s surface is our mind. So long as our mind is agitated, we can never see, feel or claim our own hidden treasure.
To whomsoever can make their mind absolutely still, in that hallowed moment the treasure appears in the limpid pool and gives itself up.
