The Test of Spiritual Life

[Guest guest]

Namaste all, I got this article from school of Bhagwad Geeta, and I would like to share with you all. Regards Manju Ambady THE TEST OF SPIRITUAL LIFE When we enter the spiritual life, by our very nature we will normallyfollow one of our Guru's paths to perfection. Either we will Serve, dokarma-yoga; we will Love, our path will be one of devotion; or ourpractice will be to Meditate; or we will try to Realise the truththrough enquiry and discrimination.In any case, no matter how different our basic paths may be, as timegoes on, if we are being successful we will have a sense of theoneness of all life. Either through our intellect or through ouremotions we will come to an understanding that it is all one.

Indeedit may lead us to very profound experiences of the unity of all lifeand that we are That.And so we all come together in that understanding. But is thatexhalted understanding the purpose of the spiritual life, or is itpossible that we're missing something? Or perhaps the question is: howare we living our life? No matter how little or how much we haverealised through our spiritual practices, does our life reflect whatwe have learned, what we have experienced? We have seen or understoodthe oneness of all life. Does our day-to-day life reflect thatunderstanding?When we are talking to someone else, do we feel that it is theUniversal talking to the Universal? God talking to God? If we areserving someone else, is it God serving God? If we are having toadmonish someone else, is it the Universal admonishing the Universal?In other words, are we bringing what we have seen in our spiritualpractices into our

day-to-day life?If not, why not? If this isn't our experience, if we find that in ourday-to-day life we are acting much the same as we always did, it isperhaps because we haven't understood that the whole purpose of ourspiritual life, the whole purpose of our spiritual practices, thewhole purpose of realising the oneness of all things is to know thatwe as a separate individual, as an ego, don't exist.Therefore, if we're still acting the way we always acted, it meansthat that ego is as alive as ever, and we are missing the whole pointof the spiritual life. The whole point of our spiritual practices, thewhole point of realising the oneness of all things is to apply it inour day-to-day life. We are meant to work upon ourselves moment bymoment, hour by hour during the day, applying what we have learned inour spiritual practices to our day-to-day life.This is the only test of our spiritual progress. Otherwise,

we willwake up after 5 or 10 or 20 years with the terrible shock that we haveaccomplished nothing over those years. We may have had manyexperiences, learned a lot, but basically we haven't changed at all.The same arrogance, the same anger, the jealousy, the same negativequalities are still manifesting in our life.This is one of the points that Swamiji is continuously trying to maketo us. How is your life? What are you doing hour by hour, day by day?This is the test. The whole of the spiritual life is to eradicate ourego. This we must keep in mind continuously, and thesis how we musttest our spiritual life.

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