Exploring eighteen fundamental principles to living the Spiritual Life

Dear Serge. I am starting out on my spiritual path. But I am finding it difficult. I have a demanding job that takes a lot of my energy and doesn’t allow me to take time off and visit ashrams or go to spiritual retreats or workshops. I also feel more attracted to spirituality as a whole as opposed to any particular religious tradition. There are so many questions I need to ask, but I don’t know where to go for support and guidance.

Can you advise me please? PAUL

SERGE.  As a matter of fact, Paul, I can, as I have been teaching a ‘Do-it-at-Home Spiritual Training Program’ for people exactly like yourself, where you may embark on your Sacred Path, without  ever needing to leave your armchair! How it works is that we talk together twice a month ( or once a fortnight), and more if you wish, for an hour on  ‘SKYPE’, during which time we explore all the issues pertaining to your quest, and we work with whatever material you wish to bring up. After each session, I will give you particular ‘homework’ to do.

For example, I may suggest you practice a particular kind of meditation, study a certain sacred text from a particular tradition, or  read more poetry, listen to certain pieces of sacred music, practice going about your day from a space of loving kindness, or write a short essay, etc!  In this way, you will be given a spiritual direction and be increasingly supported to take ever greater responsibility for your own unfolding. We will also have an e-mailing relationship and you may email me questions which I will do my best to answer.

Please note, Paul, that the Spirituality that I embrace, centers around recognizing the importance of the following eighteen points. If interested, it is important you read them carefully to see if what I offer, corresponds to what you feel you need. Here are my points:

1. There are many paths to God and each of us, according to our culture and soul inclination, needs to find a way that works for us.
2. We may discover our Spirituality without necessarily being a member of any particular Religion.
3. Divinity is both transcendent and immanent, and thus exists both beyond all things, while at the same time is present within all things.
4. If we wish to grow our Spirituality, it requires dedication, discipline, sincerity and the willingness to ‘work on ourselves’ in different ways and at different levels, as according to the kinds of issues and challenges we may face at any particular time.
5. While becoming more Spiritual may  initially start off with the need to use Spirituality to ‘feel better’ about ourselves - that is, to prop up our wounded egos - the deeper aim is ultimately to  go beyond our egos and enter more into  trans-egoic (beyond ego) states of being! This deeper aim will only be put into practice much later, when we are ready for it.
6. This does not mean, however, that we need to deny or seek to transcend our ‘personal egoic self’ – that is, the us that wants to be successful, do well, be liked, etc. Rather, the name of the approach I advocate is an integrative one - about our trying to ‘bring down’ a higher energy into our personal self, so that more and more, this aspect of ourselves will be ‘lifted up’.  Thus,  our ‘personal us’  is continually being moved in the direction of wishing  only to do that which is aligned to what our  higher  or ‘Impersonal’ Self desires. Put another way, we all have two main ‘us-es’ (the personal and the impersonal) and the name of the game is for them both to merge and support each other. Just as the Impersonal us must not be used to drown out our personal needs, so similarly, our egoic self must not hijack our spirituality and try to use  sacred energy to serve its own ‘seperative/egoic agendas’!
7. Spiritual work will always include psychological work. (For example, if we are angry with, and have ‘unfinished business’ with, our own personal father, it will most probably affect how we see and relate to, our idea of God, and therefore, if we are to come closer to the divine, it may require working at healing our relationship with our personal father!)
8. The aim of being spiritual is not to feel high but to be free.  Therefore, going through periods of ‘feeling unhappy’ may not necessarily mean we are off track.
9. Spirituality also has its dark face and if we are sincerely on our path, we need to be willing, at times, to confront that dark face, if it chooses to erupt into our lives in some particular form or other!
10. Becoming more Spiritual and being more fully human, are to be seen as one and the same thing. Therefore, if we wish for some yardstick to try to ‘measure’ our Spiritual growth, it will be by how human we are becoming. I regard it as much more  important that we be able to act wisely, be courageous  or relate kindly to difficult people and be  able to open our hearts to our world, than, say, achieve  some fantastic yogic posture, develop some ‘great psychic ability’  or quote some long sacred text by heart!
11. It is important that we discover an appropriate code of Ethics for ourselves, and do our best to live by that code. (e.g. Buddha’s Noble Way or the Ten Commandments, etc).
12. It is important that we honor the pace we are going and neither try to run before we can walk - that is, not try to embrace states of consciousness we are not yet ready for ( a practice known as ‘spiritual by-passing’)- nor remain overlong at levels that we are now ready to transcend and leave behind.
13. Being Spiritual today is no longer, as in the past, a solitary activity.  As we enter the 21st century, we are entering collective states of consciousness, which means that as a species, we are seeking to ‘evolve together’. As part of the larger whole, therefore, each of us are challenged to embrace that ‘I’ within us that is slowly becoming a ‘We’!
14. Our personal development, therefore, needs to be aligned to human-collective and world need. Our Spirituality will open up for us much more quickly as we attempt to live more and more as the solution to the problems of our world (as opposed to still being part of those problems.)
15. It is therefore important that we seek to ‘make a difference’, and so practice difference-making as best we can. We do not need to wait until we are perfect before being able to be of assistance to our planet. Each of us has his or her unique ‘Service Work’ to do, in those particular areas of life which our souls have drawn us to concern ourselves with.
16. There are two forms of Spiritual Practice that always need practicing, both of which are equally important. The first is engaging in practices (e.g., meditation, yoga) which are not of themselves ‘Spiritual’, but which are designed to put us in states conducive to our spiritual self opening up.  The second is practicing expressing the fruits of that work, by seeking to relate to ourselves, our fellow human beings, our society and our planet, in increasingly conscious, loving, kind, supportive and intelligent ways.
17. The great challenge for each of us is to walk our talk and discover a way of living conducive to allowing what is truest and best about us to surface. There is a strong link between our living ‘holistically’ and being Spiritual. Our spirituality needs to be well anchored in the world and not only may we not need to abandon our everyday work in order to grow our soul life, but it may be a powerful medium through which it emerges. (For example, if all the good financial advisors went to live in the Himalayas, it would mean the world of finance would remain solely in the hands of the sharks!)
18. Thus, the fabric of our everyday daily life, with all its many difficulties and challenges (paying the mortgage, dealing with problematic relationships, etc) is the medium for our spiritual development.  Put simply, most of us need to find ourselves, not by abandoning our world, but by trying to live in it as gracefully and as abundantly as we can.  We cannot be effectively spiritual unless we are well embodied in life. The art is to discover how to ‘Be in the world but not of it.’

If these eighteen points mean something to you, this program may be useful to you. For all further details, see my Spiritual Training Course.  If not, good luck, Paul.

WHAT TO DO WHEN MEDITATION DOESN'T SEEM TO WORK FOR US

Question: 'I find my thoughts are forever leading me this way and that. I have tried a number of Buddhist practices to try and calm my mind, but none of them seem to work for me. Do you have any suggestions as I often give myself headaches and insomnia with these never ending trains of thought.'

Serge. It is often difficult to answer a question , without having more data about a person . So all I can go by is the  specific things you say: firstly, that no practices seem to work for you, and secondly, that your mind is so 'monkey-fied' (  Buddhists  describe our restless mind as 'monkey mind'  as it is always jumping all over the place) that you get stressed to the point of not sleeping! So OK, here is my response.

Often we blame methods or are critical towards spiritual practices, either because we don't do them properly or  we are not ready for them and so cannot do them, or conversely, we don't get instructed properly. (My first yoga teacher was terrible and so I felt I could never do yoga!) Also,  meditation is not for all of us.  In addition, we feel that  spiritual practices ought to be easy and that we should 'get it' at once. Practices aren't like that.  They need a lot of discipline and a lot of determination. And Meditation is not easy.  Not if we want to learn to do it properly. Our ego self that is so attached to keeping us  restless  -  as it won't have the same control over us if we  start to quieten down - will do anything to try to stop us doing things to  help us become more peaceful. In fact ,our whole dysfunctional system of  power politics, big business,  large multi-national  drug companies -  all that corruption -  it all survives through our minds remaining unquiet.  

Unquiet minds lead to war and  the system needs war to sell  its weapons and  so not go bankrupt. ( Isn't that insane?  Our planet holds itself together by producing the very things that will blast it apart!) In a nutshell, unquiet minds lead to  all our  many dysfunctional behaviours that so many of us are so addicted to.  Indeed, we swim in this drama every day and because it constitutes such a large part of our reality, we often think there is nothing else. My point is that there are all sorts of forces  out there in the world, geared to making us  remain in higgledy piggledy  states and not  be moved to do anything to try to  move beyond them.

So these could be some of the reasons why  Buddhist practices may not  work for you.  The fault is  certainly not with the practice. They have been passed down through many traditions, and if we can do them and are ready and able to do them, they  certainly work.  It also greatly helps if we find ourselves a good teacher. Have you  done that ? And do  you persevere? Are you committed? Do you put as much energy and attention into your inner work as to your outer work? These are all questions to ask yourself.

The other question that is important, is to inquire if you are ready for meditation? Not everyone is.  Not necessarily because one is not evolved enough, but  because one may be carrying a lot of emotional junk that needs clearing out first of all. Put simply, Meditation is not a panacea for all of our discontents.   Nor is it a substitute for psychotherapy.  It may help bring up  hidden emotions from the depths of our unconscious, but it may not  necessarily help us to heal them. So if, say, we are  still very angry with our parents;  if we will have been traumatised in some way,  or if we have certain kinds of personality disorders,  any of these things  can make us feel  very disconbobulated and resistant to meditation . Indeed, it may not be what we need in order to feel more peaceful.

The East and the West represent two different approaches to healing and self development.  In the East , we learn to heal ourselves through expanding our awareness and developing  greater insight into what is. This is the way of Meditation.  In the West,  on the other hand,  our focus is more on the power of investigating.  So if  something is  making us feel  very anxious, it may be that we will initially need to  adopt a Western approach and explore what is going on with us emotionally, and 'go into' the painful feelings, and in this way try to release them. Many of us are not yet ready for  deep, insightful, meditative work  until we have completed quite a lot of investigative work first. 

And perhaps this is what you need. I would be happy if you wanted to ring me and we might talk this issue over. I am now doing a lot of sessions with people using SKYPE and we could do a session that could help you see what your real issue is. I think that if  we can see our issues clearly, then we are much better placed to handle them.  One of the arts of being on a spiritual path is   being able to stand back and observe ourselves and so sense what is right for us at any time or what  it is we  really need. 

Often, what may be helpful at one stage of our development, can be counter productive when we move into a new phase.  So it just may be that  Buddhist Meditation is not what you need at this moment and may be exactly what you need later, when you will have  first investigated what it is that seems to be blocking your ability to feel  emotionally at peace.


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