Awakening in the Midst of Life
I found awakening in the midst of chaos called life. I didn’t renounce it. I was in the midst of action, in the midst of work, in the midst of family and taxes and everything when I encountered this truth.
Now, as I speak today, there’ll be pauses and gaps between my words and sentences. And that is intentional because words are important, but more important is the silence or the being that they point back to.
So unless you are in touch with that beingness or silence or stillness, words will not be of much use.
And today we’ll be discussing some traps on the spiritual path.
And these are not your everyday generic traps. I’m not interested in those traps. These traps speak to the times that we are in — the digital age, the age of AI, the age of endless consumption. And I think spirituality needs to address the issues that we face every day. Two hundred years back, the problems were different. Today it’s different.
So the traps have to address that.
Also, something interesting — you’ll see here two containers, and I’ll come to this later on. So there are chickpeas in both. One of them is labeled as spiritual chickpeas and the other one is material chickpeas, right?
And why do we have these labels? I’ll talk about it in one of the traps.
Trap 1: Endless Consumption of Spiritual Knowledge
So I’ll begin with the first trap. I call it the trap of endless knowledge.
Now, we are, as seekers, in a very extraordinary time right now given the digital transformation and AI transformation.
And I think this is the first time in human history where all the philosophies and teachings and books are available in your pocket.
The entire works of Ramana Maharshi, entire talks of Jiddu Krishnamurti, entire Upanishads, all the commentaries on the Upanishads, and all the commentaries on the commentaries of the Upanishads — everything is available at the touch of a finger.
Any teacher, any lineage — Buddhism, Zen, Jainism, some arcane philosophy somewhere — you can access it like this.
What that has created, and it’s a very fascinating trap, is the trap of endless consumption.
I think most of you would have listened to hundreds of podcasts, videos. You would have 200 videos in your wishlist you want to watch, bookmarked hundreds of books, lectures, retreats. You’ve done it all.
Why are you still here if you’ve read so much? You’ve done everything.
There’s a reason you’re still here in this room.
And the reason is this consumption is taking you away from practice.
So before I go to the next point, I will do a lot of interactive exercises today. And just to bring home the point, we’ll do a small exercise.
We’ll take a minute and, in the last one week, try to recollect all the spiritual things we have consumed — podcasts, videos, books, retreats, talking to friends about spirituality, watching something.
And then, in the last week, how much time have you spent practicing?
Consumption versus practice.
And the ratio is generally 10:1 or maybe even lower. Maybe it might be 20:1, depends on the person, but average is 10:1.
So you are consuming a lot and you’re not practicing.
Now, why are you consuming so much?
See, when you read or watch any video — say Jiddu Krishnamurti — and you’re involved in it and you watch it and you get it, at that time you feel, “Ah, I can connect to it. I feel that peace for that moment. I can touch it.”
And then the video ends and the feeling fades and you want it again.
So you go to the next video and then you get a high, then it fades away. Then you go to the next book.
If that is not addiction, I don’t know what the definition of addiction is.
What this consumption is doing, it is tricking your brain. It’s a dopamine hit. You think you’re getting it. You think you’re there. You think for that moment your troubles have melted away.
And they do. I’m not denying the fact that all these things do have an effect on your mind and they’re helpful.
But the problem is now you are just consuming.
And these teachings, they come to you. Earlier, when I had to go and visit a teacher, I had to make a physical effort — go by train, find the teacher, locate the teacher, sit among the group, talk to him and come back. There was some sort of action.
Now teachings come to you. They are available in bed while you’re cooking, and you can read Jiddu Krishnamurti while you’re on the toilet.
So this easy availability of these abstract teachings, without the foundation of the ability to sit with them, to digest them, is creating a lot of spiritual delusions.
You see, in the traditional paths, there was always a system. The teacher didn’t give the highest teaching on the first day. They didn’t just open the book. Even in Buddhism, there are steps. They didn’t just give the abstract to someone for the first time.
But now you have it. You can read anything you want.
But have you developed the foundation for it? Have you developed the capacity to sit with discomfort?
And that is one of the core teachings which I’ll come back to again and again today in the talk — developing this capacity to sit with your discomfort.
So this constant consumption of any media — it can be knowledge, it can be Netflix — ultimately is pointing to something you’re running away from. Anxiety, restlessness, emptiness, loneliness, it doesn’t matter. But you are trying to manage some form of emotion in you.
So earlier it was Netflix. “That is a material thing. I’m no longer doing it. I’m a spiritual person.”
So now I listen to Jiddu Krishnamurti or Ramana Maharshi or Nisargadatta Maharaj or any teacher of your choice.
But you see, the content has changed. The mechanism is the same. The escape is the same.
I can sum up Ramana Maharshi’s teaching in three words: “Who am I?”
You know it. Everyone knows it here.
Then why are you reading and listening constantly to the explanation?
Everything else is commentary.
Nisargadatta Maharaj — two words: “I am.”
Ramana had three words: “Who am I?”
JK: “The observer is the observed.” Again, three words.
But you see, you know that.
The problem is you’re not practicing.
Why?
And that is a question you need to ask yourself when you sit down and then restlessness comes in or boredom comes in or anxiety or fear or whatever comes in and you’re ready to pick up your phone.
This is something like a person wanting to build strength and muscles and watching 500 videos of exercises but never going to the gym.
It’s not possible for them to build strength or muscles.
They need to put whatever they’ve learned into practice.
So if you want to take something away from today, it’s maybe this: for a week, don’t consume any more spiritual media.
This is pretty counterintuitive. Most teachers will tell you to read more and memorize the Vedas and the sutras and the Gita.
I’m telling you something else.
I’m saying stop the consumption. Let it go for a week.
And maybe for a week, focus on your practice. Focus on the uncomfortable emotions, on things you need to resolve internally.
Just reading will not help you.
So this is the first trap.
Trap 2: Criminalizing Your Emotions
The second trap is a bit more subtle. Most teachers have talked about it in some form in their works, but not as explicitly.
I call it making internal enemies or criminalizing your emotions.
What do I mean by criminalizing your emotions?
Before we do this, let’s do a small exercise. Close your eyes for a minute with me and think of an unspiritual thought or feeling or emotion you have had in the last day or last week.
It can be about revenge, jealousy, sex — whatever you think is petty, not becoming of you, not high enough, not spiritual enough.
It can be a desire.
All right, you can open your eyes.
Would anyone like to share their unspiritual thought with the group? Have the courage to share. This is a place to become uncomfortable and invite discomfort.
This is not a happy place of finding peace. First, you need to resolve your discomfort, then peace will come.
Many of you would be thinking internally about financial issues, having more money, financial security. That’s a big thing for seekers. It’s one of the thorns.
Anything else? Anyone else brave enough?
“Honey and money.”
- Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for being brave and vulnerable.
So whatever thought you might have had — some uncomfortable thought — it can be about sex, it can be about anything.
Now you see, as we progress into spirituality, we read more and more books. Mentally, you start creating a structure.
I’m giving you a simplified structure.
Peace — good.
Restlessness — bad.
Anxiety — bad.
Kindness — good.
Compassion — good.
Desire — bad.
Money — suspect. Maybe bad, maybe good, don’t know.
Mortgage — bad.
So what I’m trying to say is that you create a yardstick of emotions and feelings which are good and spiritual, and feelings which are not good and spiritual.
I call this creating internal enemies.
So what you’re doing here is this: a desire, a feeling, a thought comes up and then you monitor it, you surveil it.
It’s an internal surveillance system.
You surveil it and say: “Is it right? Is it high enough? Is it pure enough? Is it virtuous enough? Does it line up with my spiritual thought process?”
If not, you either repress it, try to get rid of it, try to transmute it, transcend it, whatever.
Now you see, you are creating a conflict where there was none.
If the thought just came in and the image and the desire just came in and there was no judgment, no yardstick to say this is good or bad, this is spiritual or unspiritual, it would come up and go off.
But the moment you start labeling them, categorizing them — and it’s a very subtle thing, you have to be very attentive to catch this — you will see it.
You will hear someone talking about career and immediately say, “This person is material. Career is beneath me,” or “Money is dirty,” or “Ambition is horrible.”
These are all subtle labels and structures we picked up from reading.
And again, I go back to the first trap because of the availability of all this knowledge and videos. You’re reading one thing from here, a podcast from this person, a book from that person, and everything comes together as a jumble in your head.
And you pick up all these ideas which are deeply woven into spirituality: desire bad, sex bad, money bad.
And then you fight your internal enemies.
So first you create the enemies and then you have to fight them.
You’re creating conflict.
Now Advaita is a total opposite movement. It is a movement towards unity, towards oneness.
But if you are creating conflict and inner enemies, are we moving towards oneness?
Again, as I said in the beginning, the teachings have to reflect today’s time.
Now you all are sitting in the midst of action right now.
Can you run away from money?
You say, “OK, Ramakrishna said there shouldn’t be any money and there shouldn’t be any kamini.” Kamini means attraction towards the opposite sex or lust or infatuation.
Can you run away from it?
Then how are you going to practice this teaching?
Can you renounce money, your bank balance, your mortgage, or looking after your child?
I’m talking practically. We’re being practical here.
I’ve read all those books. I’ve read the entire works of Ramakrishna. I used to sit in Dakshineswar for days and days. She knows it. We were in Kolkata then.
So I’m well aware of all those teachings.
It’s not that I’m questioning those teachers. I’m just making you think.
Say a teacher says sex and attraction are not good.
Again, internal enemy.
A desire for sex comes in and then what happens?
Shame.
Most of the time, spiritual seekers are sexually alive and spiritually ashamed.
I’ll repeat this because maybe it will give you something to think over.
And this was true for me as well. I’m not taking myself out of the equation. I went through the same thing.
Most of the seekers that I’ve met, including myself, have been sexually alive but spiritually ashamed.
And you need to ask yourself why.
Again — why have you criminalized it?
It’s an emotion which arises. It’s a normal human thing.
When I was going through my own process — and I don’t know, for some reason spiritual people have a huge amount of libido, I don’t know what conspiracy there is — I used to feel very ashamed of it.
And then one day I thought to myself: “Rajiv, did you put these feelings into yourself?”
When I was born, I didn’t pick the box saying high libido or low libido or no libido. I didn’t have a choice.
Like you don’t have a choice, right?
You’re born with what you’re born with.
Now then, criminalizing what comes naturally — isn’t that creating problems on top of problems?
So this will require a lot of attention and alertness.
When something comes up and you see you’re judging it and saying, “Oh, this thought is not right,” or “This thought is not spiritual,” and when you become aware of the judgment, you need to watch that judgment and the thought without any labels.
You need to let it come. You need to let that out into the light, let it flow out.
And then there is a possibility of transformation.
Trust me.
If we keep labeling and repressing and criminalizing thoughts, you will not find transformation because a part of us has already mentally decided: “This is not good, this is not right. I don’t want it. I don’t need it.”
And the whole process of spirituality, or what I discovered, was acceptance of what is as it is.
So “what is” contains everything — your judgment, sex, money, good, bad, the teachers — everything.
When I’m open to it, I accept the what is as it is without my labels and judgment.
Then I can be in tune with this energy, this immensity or vastness or whatever you call it.
So when you become alert to the judgment, investigate the judgment.
Where is it coming from?
Why are you judging it?
Some teacher, some person must have said that and you’ve internalized it.
Once you see the judgment is not yours, but either given to you by society or some other person or your parents, you can step out of it.
Because right now you think it’s your judgment. It’s a value system that you need to adhere to somehow and prove yourself through.
I’m saying you don’t have to prove yourself.
OK, so we’ve covered two traps.
Trap 3: Dividing Life into Spiritual and Material
The third trap, again, is a very subtle trap.
It’s the trap of dividing life into spiritual and material.
So what I have experienced, or what truth I have seen, is there is just life.
There is no spiritual life. There’s no material life.
There is just life.
And you label it.
You label some activities as material and some as spiritual.
To bring home that point, we have these two containers.
Now each of these is a concept, right? Innumerable concepts here, innumerable concepts here.
So this is spiritual chickpeas and this is material chickpeas.
So you read a teacher and transfer one material concept into the spiritual container.
And now you say this is spiritual.
But you see, the chickpeas are saying it doesn’t matter. I put it here, I put it there — it’s the same thing.
What you’re changing is the container from one container to another.
And then again, you set one thing against the other.
“I just want spiritual things. Material is not good.”
“I can only find peace, happiness, joy in a retreat, in a cave.”
I had that fantasy. She knows about my fantasy.
I lived through it for many, many years where I just wanted to go and be by the Ganga and meditate and renounce everything.
Now again, why did I have this concept?
Because I was dividing life into two containers: material and spiritual.
But what if everything is spiritual?
What if your work is your ashram?
And this is the second teaching which I’m trying to bring out to seekers again and again in different ways: the very ordinary things that you run away from — relationships, complex relationships, work, disagreement with boss, fights with neighbor, this mess of living — this is your dojo.
This is your ashram.
This is your cave.
This is your retreat.
You just have to change your perception.
Why can’t this become spiritual?
Why have we said one thing is spiritual?
Why is going to an ashram spiritual and going to the office not spiritual?
Who told us that?
Why is going to a movie not spiritual and going to a temple spiritual?
You see, again, we come back to division.
And these are very subtle divisions which we keep creating on the spiritual path.
But ultimately what happens is you start thinking in terms of “this is spiritual, this is spiritual,” and you get blocked or trapped in that bubble and reject everything that is not spiritual.
But again, we come back — the what is contains everything.
The what is is not diminished by money.
Nisargadatta Maharaj, whom most of you are aware of, used to count money every evening because he had a small shop.
He used to count the money.
Infinity didn’t care.
Reality didn’t care that he was counting money every day.
He was in the midst of action.
So instead of dividing life into spiritual and material — and I know this is a very tough thing to do because we love the label “spiritual” and we use it hundreds of times a day — I want you to give up those labels and see life as it is, without any categories, again without any judgment.
Accepting the what is for what it is.
And secondly, nothing is an obstacle to your path.
The work that you do, the relationship that you are in, wherever you are right now — you can make that into your practice.
Disagreement with boss? Time to practice patience.
There are so many things you can do. You can witness it. You can use any of the practices everywhere.
Why wait to go to a retreat?
Why wait to be with a teacher?
Use every opportunity as a doorway.
Trap 4: The Endless Search for Enlightenment
Now the last trap, which kind of ties all the traps together.
Before I start talking about it, we’ll do a small exercise again.
If you say yes to the answer, just keep your hand up and keep holding it up.
How many of you here want enlightenment?
How many of you here want the end of suffering?
How many of you want self-realization?
OK, right, so a lot of hands up. Of course there are. You can keep your hands down now.
It is up because we are all on the spiritual path.
Now what if this is a trap?
This very wanting for a future state turns your life into a waiting room.
You’re waiting for that perfect state to emerge somehow.
“I’m not enough now. I’m not complete now. When I become peaceful enough, compassionate enough, wise enough, and reach that state, then everything will make sense.”
Now again, what that does is create a cycle of becoming.
“I am this” — as a person full of darkness and anger and pain and loneliness — “and I want to become that.”
What is that?
The ideal version.
Buddha sitting quietly, even if storms come and nuclear war comes, just smiling benignly.
“That’s what I want to become. I don’t want to be this person here right now.”
Why?
So you are again running away from what is.
You are rejecting and dividing and saying the present thing — the present state, the present person, the present feeling — is not good enough.
Something better is on the way.
So you are always in transit, always in the waiting room, waiting for the airline.
There’s a very famous play called Waiting for Godot, right? They wait for something forever.
Now if you wait for it, mark my words, we’ll be having this talk after 10 years and you’ll still be waiting for it.
You’ll still be trying to find it.
I’m giving you an alternative.
The alternative is: accept whatever arises in the moment as it is.
Don’t wait for enlightenment.
This is from a guy who was obsessed with enlightenment, who spent years chasing it, so I know that because I’ve been through that.
But what I realized at the end was though this seemed very spiritual — and all of us do that in some form or another, evolution or higher state of consciousness — we are somehow moving away from the central what is, and we are looking at the future to fulfill us.
Enlightenment, awakening, or whatever you call it, is something which is here and now.
All the teachers have said that. It’s not my words.
And you talk to Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj — they all said this awareness is here right now.
You don’t have to become it because you are it.
But if you keep searching for it in the future, you keep the cycle of becoming alive.
Now spiritual seekers are wired to seek. That’s why they’re called seekers.
Even I was wired to seek — next book, next teaching.
And this is where all the other traps tie together.
If you see the first trap where we were trying to read and gain knowledge and all the other traps, we are somehow trying to become.
One of the major aspects of spirituality, or anything really, is becoming.
“I want to become emotionally or mentally or spiritually better than what I am.”
Hence I read. I go to all the seminars.
Now maybe the self that I’m trying to improve is itself an illusion, and the teachers have said that.
So what am I trying to improve and what am I waiting for?
What if I open myself completely to this moment, to the what is as it is, without any expectation, without any labels?
Is it possible?
Yes.
If it is possible, why don’t we do it?
Habit.
Finality.
End of seeking.
End of seeking is very easy. Just drop it.
Who is asking you to seek?
No one is putting a gun to your head and asking you to seek.
You’re doing it of your own volition.
But you can’t drop the seeking.
Why?
Because your ego is not able to accept the pain and suffering which are arising right now.
It wants to escape.
It’s not able to deal with and cope with the complexity of everyday life.
So earlier there were drugs and bars or whatever which helped us escape.
But now spirituality has also become part of that escape hatch.
So part of being a seeker is walking this double-edged sword.
This does not mean all the teachings are useless or that you don’t listen to anything or read anything.
But you can’t get addicted to it.
You can’t use it to become.
You take the lesson, you apply it.