‘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.
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Purity
June 26, 2019 at 1:38 pm
Well said and I believe that faith alone cannot work but faith combined with action is what God really intended us to have and do…..
Isaac Wechuli
June 26, 2019 at 6:53 pm
yeah, absolutely true