How practical is it to reach enlightenment in today’s fast-paced world?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
how practical is it to reach spiritual enlightenment I wouldn’t say enlightenment is necessarily a destination it is a direction so even if we progress in that direction even a few steps in that direction can make a significant difference in the quality of our life it’s not that we have to attain some mystical state of some kind of other worldly vision to become enlightened it is just if you take a few steps towards understanding that I am different from my notions through analysis, through experience and then that itself can improve the quality of our life yes everything requires time even exploring spirituality growing spirituality also requires time but the time that we invest in spiritual growth can help us in all other walks of our life because it is suppose I have to lift a 20 kg weight, it requires effort but if I have a lever and on that I apply force, that force may be just enough to lift a 2 kg weight but by that I will lift 20 kg because I have a lever so similarly when we try to grow spiritually our thoughts if my thoughts are very disorderly my desires are very disorderly the images coming from my inner screen are too unpredictable, if they can decrease even a little bit even the disorder can decrease a little bit that can help me to do so much more suppose we come for a meeting and we greet someone and that person snubs us and for the next one hour the meeting is going on how bad next time in public in front of everyone I am going to snub her and that revenge fantasy is consuming our head so at that time in our schedule it would be that we spend one hour in the meeting but actually we didn’t spend even one minute in the meeting because we were caught in there so we often think that our time is taken by our activities it is true that activities do require time but our time is taken also by our thoughts and sometimes our thoughts they encroach on the time that we have allotted for activities and when the thoughts encroach on that time then often we have to redo that activity spend more time on that activity so if we spend a little time in trying to organize our inner world then whatever we would do in the outer world we will be able to do it more effectively so for growing spiritually we talk about basically three formulas three point acronyms A, B and C A is association we need to mix with or befriend spiritually minded people our desires and our consciousness is shaped by association a lot now our desires are not just linear they are also triangular that means if some new phone comes in the market let me see an ad of the new phone some of us may get a desire to take that phone but if there is some superstar some sports star, some movie star who should say I use this phone oh you use this phone I also want this phone so by seeing an object our desire for it may or may not come but by seeing somebody else with that object, enjoying that object a triangular desire comes similarly we may have some conception of spirituality maybe I want to explore, I don’t want to explore but if we see somebody who is spiritual then we start feeling yeah, this makes sense let me explore this a little bit so if we could just make some time in our schedule to associate with spiritually minded people maybe go for some spiritual programs or just spend some time talking with spiritually minded people that itself will take us in the direction of enlightenment as I said even a few steps count B is books so we can read different books spiritual books that help us understand our inner world that help us understand what we are going to find in this direction when we explore it so the Bhagavad Gita is an ancient yoga text which talks a lot about this inner world and how to navigate that and there are various ways in which these ancient texts can be made accessible in today’s world as I mentioned in the introduction I have a daily blog on the Gita called Gita Daily where I just write a 300 word article every day along with that I have a 3-5 minute video as well as audio that’s a simple way in which many people find they can connect themselves spiritually so books give us a intellectual orientation towards spirituality and C we use it to refer to chanting so chanting as I said to rise from the level of the outer screen to the inner sea outer sea, inner screen and inner sea this rising upwards we can just do it with our analytical thinking but practices can help us to sustain that so various traditions have yoga meditation and other practices which are ultimately meant to help us do that so in our tradition I am a part of the bhakti yoga tradition in our tradition we consider chanting mantras as a very powerful way to raise our consciousness upwards so sound is a means by which the physical the emotional and the spiritual arenas can be connected so we chant some mantras and the chanting of the mantras in a prayerful way the consciousness can rise upwards so these three practices association, books and chanting they don’t require a huge lifestyle change spirituality is not necessarily about giving up certain things it is more about adding certain things in our life and not even actually adding it is about organizing what is already there in our life our thoughts are already there and we give some thought about organizing our thoughts and even a few steps in that direction can help improve the quality of our life significantly and it is progressive when we feel the improvement then we can decide how much time we wish to invest thank you any other thoughts