It’s not news to anyone that all day long things grab our attention and pull us away from ourselves—from, maybe, what we would rather be doing; from where we would rather our attention be. And no matter how sincere we are, how diligent we are, how much we concern ourselves with our own attention, that continues to happen. Times like this, are opportunities to focus our attention on what really matters. And we all know that most of what ends up occupying us, for better or worse, often doesn’t much matter in the grand scheme of things. This isn’t news to any minimally intelligent adult (even some smart teenagers).
So I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know, in that sense. But I can remind you that all of us forget this, day to day, week to week, year to year, decade to decade. And in spiritual life this becomes a much-discussed topic: The natural forgetting. “Oh, I forgot to concentrate on the divine”. “I forgot to focus my mind in a meditative way”. “I forgot to remember to love everyone”. Whatever it is, whatever someone’s practice may be, whatever someone’s attitude may be, whatever someone’s spiritual desire may be—again and again I hear people talk about, “If I could only remember”—and castigate themselves, really be very critical of themselves. “I forget too much”.
So if this happens for you at all, I want to encourage you to stop that. Because it’s impossible to not forget. It’s how the human’s constructed: You will forget. The best among us, will forget. The most attentive of us, will forget. The problem is: Nobody tells us that that’s natural. And in spiritual life, especially in spiritual practice—those ways that include a particular meditation or a particular type of practice or a particular way—this becomes a bigger and bigger issue, often. But it’s a ‘straw man’ issue, because it’s impossible for it to be otherwise.
People are striving for an ideal that can’t be met. And it’s not either the purpose of spiritual life, or the purpose of life, to achieve absolute remembering. It will not happen. It can’t happen. It never has happened.
And many times people think spirituality, spiritual practice, spiritual path is about remembering enough. So my suggestion to you is: If it’s worth remembering, it’s worth forgetting. If it’s worth remembering and you need to remember it, it will go into you whether you remember it or not. It’s really not your job to be the best ‘rememberer’ on the planet.
It’s your job to love yourself better. And if you’re critical of yourself for your own spiritual ideals, that doesn’t help that task. So this is when spiritual sincerity becomes a subtle form of self-negation, self-criticism. So you have to watch out for that. It also, in a very subtle way, helps promote the idea that somehow spiritual life is different from, or separate from, every other aspect of life—which certainly is not the case.
Spiritual life is just the part of life we call “spiritual”, somehow as if the rest isn’t (which it certainly is). Brushing your teeth is a spiritual act if you do it with self-love or if you do it with the understanding that you’re keeping clean and healthy, the physical temple. Or if you do it with gratitude that the divine gave you teeth. And at least ten-thousand other small ways that any act, any action, any movement, any thought, any feeling, any event, any situation, is a potential part of your spiritual path. The more that’s recognized (and notice I said “recognized”, not “remembered”), the more that’s recognized, the more inclusive you can be of the rest of life, into what you perceive as “my spiritual life”.
And I’m talking to people who all have a very developed, sincere, serious spiritual life—so I can say this. I can’t say this, have it mean that much, to a general audience, because not everybody is focused that way. So it’s important to recognize that the spiritual is not one side, and the worldly the other side. There’s no ‘sides’ here.
The spiritual includes whatever you include. That’s where you really have choice, you really have power, you really have responsibility. It’s really up to you. It’s not what you read in a book is included and that’s what’s spiritual. It’s not what a priest said or a guru said. It’s not what your practice or your path dictates. It’s what you decide can be included.
And I’m simply pointing out that there’s nothing that can’t be included. In my master’s way, in Osho’s practice, fighting with your spouse was included, very specifically. He said, “Do not try not to fight. Try to fight with awareness. Try to be really present and see what is going on in you that makes you fight with the person you supposedly love”. So even that can be included.
And that’s a mirror of life. In life, everything is included. What’s not included in life? What thought have you ever had or experience or feeling or anything, that’s not part of life? Life is all-inclusive and indivisible. It’s only us that divides it up into ‘that’s that part of life’. It’s only us that talk about ‘parts of life’. Life doesn’t recognize any parts. Life is holistic. One part moves, the whole is affected.
And never, never in the history of this planet have we lived in a society that more compartmentalizes life than this one right now, than western culture right now—which, as far as to my way of thinking, is essentially ‘corporate culture’.
Corporations don’t care about how you define life; they care about how you define profit. So we’re all influenced by the corporate mind, by the cultural mindset. And the cultural mindset says, “This is this, this is that, this is that—they’re different—they’re separate”.
And it simply makes it more difficult to recognize that all—whatever it is, good or bad, positive or negative, pleasant or unpleasant—all of it is not only part of this life, but part of spirit, part of that which animates this life, part of that which animates all that is.
But the key is not ‘remembering it’, because you will forget. You’ll get distracted. You’ll get upset. You’ll get caught up in something. And then it doesn’t help to remember and kick yourself that you forgot.
What helps is recognizing more and more and more, without judging yourself, recognizing more what’s true.
This culture, as far as I’m concerned, has never been less concerned with what’s true. It’s mostly concerned with what’s popular. And look what’s popular now! You can’t get any more silly. Paris Hilton is popular—she’s not true. So on the one side, we don’t have to be fooled. But on the other side, you don’t have to punish yourself for what you think is a spiritual ideal. The real spiritual ideal is when you don’t punish yourself anymore.
🌿 Excerpt from a Darshan with Swami Premodaya, JewelTree Center