A Friction-Free Spiritual Process

Q: I have been on the spiritual path for some time now. Initially, everything was fine, but then, there have been some outside disturbances, especially from the family. I don’t know how to face all this. I keep up the practices, but I feel I need Grace in my life. 

Sadhguru: One dimension of the spiritual process is to put your life on fast-forward. You want to accelerate the process of evolution. Once you put it on fast-forward, your joy, your pain, your suffering – everything becomes more intense. With certain spiritual practices, you are setting your energies in a certain direction. When you are doing your kriya, you are setting your energies on the path of the ultimate. Once you do that, it is very important that your body, mind and emotions cooperate and align themselves to it. If your energies are going in one direction while your body, mind, and emotions are going in other directions, there will be struggle.

Align With the Divine

When you come and sit with me, I assume that you want to grow, that you want to go all the way. Once we direct your energies towards the ultimate, it is up to you to align your body, mind, emotions – everything in the same direction. If you do, you will travel joyfully. If you do not, you will still travel and move ahead, but hollering and crying. Do not entangle your mind and emotions with little things. This does not mean you have to leave your family or whatever other arrangements you have made in life. Family, street, ashram, mountain, forest, city – live wherever it is suitable and conducive for you. Your spirituality has nothing to do with where you live. 

If your pain, joy, and whatever else you experience become intense, it is not because there is no Grace. The spiritual process is on. That is the Grace. Grace does not mean treating you like a sweetie pie all the time. Grace means constantly hurrying you up, not letting you settle anywhere. If we were just looking for solace, then all this would not be necessary. We would just tell you pretty lies, like “God will take care of you,” and “everything will be okay” – the kind of things they have been telling you in almost every religion and community for a very long time. Haven’t you heard enough of these stories? 

So, just stick to your practice. Your energies are always on the path of the ultimate, but with the spiritual practices, we have hastened the process. With the natural process of evolution, it was going slowly. Now it is going quickly. Even when your process of evolution was going slowly, there was suffering, but you did not feel it that much because you were traveling at a snail’s pace. Now that you are moving fast, if one wheel turns another way, it will cause more trouble. It is like your car – only if all four wheels are in one direction, will it run smoothly. If one wheel goes in another direction, there will be friction. That is all that is happening right now. If that is happening, one simple thing that you can do is volunteer at one of the Inner Engineering programs. Be absolutely alert, simply listening to everything and taking it in. This will put your mind and emotions back on track. 

If your mind gets entangled with something, it is like when a car is moving, you put your hand out and held on to the branch of a tree. Something has to tear – either the branch will break, or your arm will tear off, or the car will spin. Some friction will happen. 

Only if You Want to Grow

Sit with me only if you really want to grow. Your perception of what you receive, don’t make it according to your convenience. Once, a cannibal chief wrote a letter to the Pope thanking him for the missionaries sent to perform religious duties for the cannibals. He said, “Reverend Pope, I thank you very much for the three missionaries that you sent. They were very kind, gentle, compassionate and knowledgeable. They taught us the sweet ways of Jesus. They were soft and utterly delicious.” 
Do not base your perception of what you receive on what is convenient to you. If convenience is what you are looking for, you should join a sports club or a social club where you can gossip. You do not enter a spiritual path for convenience. You get into this because you want to open up a greater possibility of life.
Align your mind and emotions with the basic energies – your experience of life will be beautiful.