Breaking your habits: Living consciously

A spiritual process means you do not want anything to happen unconsciously. If you are seeking evolution, if you are seeking liberation, you have to break all your patterns

A habit is formed essentially because it brings a certain ease to your life – it makes parts of your life automatic. You do not have to think about it. You can do it just like that.

Naturally human beings form habits because unlike other animals, we have not come with many of our traits fixed. You notice a little bit of difference between one dog and the next. They have their individual personality, but most of their traits are fixed. But almost everything is wide open for a human being. Because of this, as a child, you try to form a defense pattern where you try to create your own patterns.

Every child creates certain habits for the sake of survival. But generally, children shake these patterns off as they grow, depending upon the level of awareness you create around them. Either by exposure or through education, children change dramatically – they go out for three years and when they come back, parents cannot recognize them.

It is those who are engrossed in self-preservation who cannot drop old habits. Those who are looking for adventure will drop their habits easily because they are always remodeling their lives whichever way it is needed for the situation in which they exist.

Above all, if a person takes up a spiritual path, his habits will drop because there is no such thing as good and bad habits. Once you have grown up, habits mean you are learning to conduct your life unconsciously. That may look safe, but it denies you life in so many different ways.

Spirituality is the fundamental tool to break all unconscious patterns that we have within ourselves. What we refer to as karma is also just this. Karma means you are unconsciously creating patterns for yourself, not only about your behavior but about the way life happens to you.

A spiritual process means you do not want anything to happen unconsciously. If you are seeking evolution, if you are seeking liberation, you have to break all your patterns – not good, not bad, but all.

If you demolish patterns, you will handle your life consciously. If you take every breath in and out consciously, suddenly your breath has a different kind of power. Every movement in your life has tremendous power if you make it conscious. If you want to know the power of life, you have to be conscious about it, otherwise it does not even exist for you.