Spirituality and Materialism

These questions are always being asked: “If I follow a spiritual path, can I do my job properly and live with my family? Can I wear good clothes and eat well?” Whenever anything new approaches you, you resist. You want things to happen to you, but at the same time you don’t want anything to happen to you. This is because there are two dimensions in you. One part of you is constantly striving for self-preservation – to make you into a limited individual and protect this individuality. Another dimension in you is always longing to become infinite and expand in an unbounded way. Infinite means everything that you consider as yourself is gone.

These two dimensions are constantly in conflict. Whichever one you empower, that is how you become. If you empower the instinct of self-preservation, you are always thinking of security – how to protect the little individual. If you do this, you will feel suffocated. You may have everything, but nothing happens to you. If you empower the other, you want to break all your securities and go, but the instinct of self-preservation keeps pulling you back. It constantly keeps telling you, “Be careful, you may be doing something stupid, your life may be ruined because of this.” This struggle is happening because there is a misunderstanding in the process.

The root of all your struggle and suffering is just that nobody should even trample on your ideas, your thoughts, your emotions or your personality. What needs to be understood is, the instinct of self-preservation should limit itself only to the physical body. With everything else – your personality, your ego, your opinions, your nonsense – you must be willing to maul and grind them into pieces. You can make them, break them, re-make them and re-mould them whichever way you want. You can think one way this moment, but the next moment you can think the other way. It has happened to you any number of times in your life – today you thought this was the most wonderful person, but tomorrow you think this is the most horrible person. It is just that you will not do it consciously. Life has to beat you into shape.

So, when the instinct of self-preservation overlaps and seeps into areas other than your physical body, you will lose your perception and suddenly there is a whole confusion. This entire struggle about “Shall I be spiritual or material?” has come from this basis that you don’t know the domain of self-preservation and the domain of the other dimension. You don’t know what to do with yourself. One is seeking to protect, the other is seeking to liberate.

If you seek this one, the other will pull you. If you seek that, this will pull you. Constantly it creates a turmoil. The struggle is going on endlessly. There will be no struggle if one understands that the only thing that you need to preserve is your physical body. Everything else can be trampled upon. Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic and visionary, and a prominent spiritual leader. An author, poet, and internationally-renowned speaker, Sadhguru’s wit and piercing logic provoke and widen our perception of life. www.ishafoundation.org

- Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic and visionary, and a prominent spiritual leader. www.ishafoundation.org