Finding Balance and Dealing with Crisis in Spiritual Life

If you are one of those people who are always busy and have no energy left at the end of the day to meditate or to think of spiritual things, then try reducing your workload. You have to change something in your life, and that is not selfish. Many people have this idea that it is selfish or “not spiritual” to look after yourself, but it is simply commonsense. If you cannot help yourself, then in time you will crack up and you won’t be able to help others. To benefit others you have to be in a reasonably good condition yourself.

As a student of Wisdom you have to reassess what you do twenty four hours a day—how much you run around after others, where you are spending your energy, what workload you can reduce—so that you can still do your meditation and remain attuned to the Light of the Soul. This is very important. With the way society is heading, there will be increasingly greater demands placed upon you, so you need to be wise and accept that you cannot save, heal or fix everybody.

Every personality is a limited construct; it is not an infinite powerhouse. So accept your limitation without feeling guilty, work with it and adjust it to make sure that the Light functions inside you at all times. Then, if your life is equalized and balanced, with fewer ups and downs, you will find that the Light of the Soul can flow steadily and you will feel that steady Inspiration from within at all times, no matter where you are or what you are doing. Then everything you do in life will have a momentous effect on other people. You won’t have to give them big sermons; because of your inner Being, your very presence will change them. Wherever you go, you will touch the lives of many and you will find that your ability to serve others will increase. It is important to understand this principle, because the coming years will be difficult and many people may want to give up the Spiritual Path because they think life is too much to handle.

The rule is that you don’t have to save the whole world all by yourself.  Every one of us is given something to do in life, and if that is done well, then you will find that the Light-force can function correctly within you, and that is more beneficial to the world than overdoing everything and collapsing. That doesn’t help the Light circulation inside and outside you.

Being on the Spiritual Path does not mean you will be free from crisis in your life. Going through a crisis is not exceptional; it is just part of being human. What is important, however, is to understand the process. We will investigate what crisis means for you on a personal level, and then we will expand that to the level of society and the world. It is important to understand what is behind individual crises, because everybody has them. In fact, just being in this physical body is a crisis in itself!

Behind every crisis, whether it is personal or planetary, there are three things: fear, insecurity and expectation.

Most problems with personal relationships occur because of an expectation that the other person will be perfect. You don’t have to be perfect, but the other person does! This can happen with parents, children, family, friends or work colleagues; expectation is a common cause of all kinds of relationship crises. You expect the other person to be something according to your ideas, and of course that is not who they are, therefore something is wrong in your relationship. If you are wise, you might end the relationship; otherwise you will struggle for many years. Alternatively, you can change yourself and change your expectations of the other person. When our expectation of a situation or relationship is not realized we commonly have a crisis.

Insecurity is another cause of crisis. You may have a job where the boss can dismiss you at any moment; or you may be insecure about whether your relationship is right for you; or perhaps you are unsure whether the spiritual path you are following is right for you, whether you should go to this teacher or that teacher, or whether you should change to something else. Insecurity is one of the prime causes of crisis. Another cause is fear. It may be physical fear or fear of a person. It may be the fear of change, of changing your job, your lifestyle or your relationship. The fear of change is very common. In summary, whatever so-called crisis you have, it is always based on fear, insecurity or expectation.

The question is: Who is afraid, insecure and having these expectations? The ego. The bigger the ego, the greater the fear, the insecurity and the expectation—and the greater the crisis. As you progress on the Spiritual Path there can actually be more crises, not fewer. If your ego becomes larger, your expectation of people and situations becomes greater, your fear and insecurity about people and situations become greater, so the crisis inside you becomes greater. Just because you are on the Spiritual Path does not necessarily mean that everything will be a bed of roses.

Furthermore, when you start on the Spiritual Path you are not free of your ego. The whole thing can be a play of the ego. If you join the Hare Krishnas, you will have your ego; if you join a Tibetan monastery, you will still have your ego. No matter where you are or who you are with, you will have a problem with your ego, and consequently you will have crises. You can extend this to your family and friends or to your workplace, where you may feel insecurity or unfulfilled expectations. You carry such things with you in every situation in your life and therefore you have crisis after crisis.

Understand that being in a crisis is not unique to you; it is a continual problem in most people’s lives. Unless you have the right understanding you will continue to have crises due to the ego. Although a crisis obviously appears to be bad at the time, it only exists because we have an ego, and the ego is insecure and afraid and has expectations that are not met. To put it simply: reduce your ego, reduce your crises; increase your ego, increase your crises.

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