Spiritual Exercise without Action is Dead

‘It is not an uncommon thing to meet with people who spend hours of each day doing spiritual exercises and who, in the intervals, display as much spite, prejudice, jealousy, greed, and silliness as the most “unspiritual” of their neighbors.’ – Aldous Huxley. The Divine Within: Selected Writings on Enlightenment

The popularization of the importance of spiritual exercises such as yoga, meditation, and prayer, has resulted in many folks practicing them without embracing spiritual virtues. People think doing these exercises alone will enable alignment with Infinite Mind/God. They are unaware that the exercises cannot enable alignment if not accompanied by spiritual action.

Apostle James noticed an almost similar phenomenon when he wrote, ‘faith without action is dead.’ He observed how early Christians prayed and praised God, yet they never demonstrated their faith by helping the poor. He thus questioned, ‘What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?’

Similarly, several modern folks allocate time for meditation, praise and worship, prayer, and yoga, but fail to demonstrate spirituality through their actions. They then wonder why they seldom experience the Infinite Mind and why their lives seldom change despite performing several spiritual exercises.

Spiritual exercises are dead without action. Although they enable us to access the Infinite Mind within, the access is short-lived. For them to lead to permanent access, they must be combined with spiritual actions such as forgiveness, love, humility, compassion, honesty, and so on because these deeds clear the negative energies within and enable alignment with the Infinite Mind, which is positive energy.

It’s thus pointless to practice spiritual exercises and still embrace hate, jealousy, pride, self-centeredness, and other negative qualities as most people do today. Modern folks go to the church/mosque/temple to pray/meditate but still display negative qualities in their relationships with other folks. ‘They thoroughly cleanse the outside of the cup, and ignore the inside.’ For this reason, they never achieve higher states of consciousness that allow them to experience the Infinite Mind.

We –the enlightened ones – shouldn’t be among these folks. We must accompany our spiritual exercise with action for us to experience the goodness and greatness of the Infinite Mind.

Thank You for Reading

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