Avoid Burnout – Make Inner Peace Your Priority

As Yogis, what we want to do is learn to relax, yet still be aware of how we are relaxing and relax in ways that won’t pull our consciousness more and more and more down. And each one of us, we get to figure out how to do that. Meaning, each of us are individuals, and we’ll find our own balance, our own way. I’ve heard Swamiji say that it’s good to compartmentalize our lives. Meaning make a section that’s for meditation. A section for physical exercise. A section of your life where you do your business activities. Then a section for fun.

Sometimes in meditation, as we start going more and more into our true self, into superconsciousness, all kinds of solutions will come for problems we might be having. And then we face a dilemma. Should I get up and write this down? Or should I just forget it and push that thought away?

But it’s a very important thought, because I’ve been searching for this answer maybe for a long time, and what I do is I tell God, you have to put this thought back in my mind later, at the appropriate time when I can use it. Right now, I’m only focusing on you, and I believe that you’re going to take care of my life in all aspects and all things at the right time. So, I’m relying on you to put this thought back in my mind at the right time. And then I keep going forward towards God alone.

I have found that it’s nice after meditation, to take 5 minutes. I actually like to arrange my morning. And that’s the time when you use your mind actively to sort everything that needs sorting. Because if we don’t do it in Meditation and then we just get up and we’re running and we’re trying to sort out all these thoughts
in our mind.

You never actually take a conscious place in your day to do that. It’s calm, focused, peaceful thinking and planning. And I feel that we need space for that in our lives. Swamiji says, don’t compartmentalize your life too much. Leave space for flowing and times for just peace. And we need that as well. That if you regiment your life too much, the joy level will go away. The fun factor will go away.

The world is going to tell you that you must do this, and you have to do this and that. But it’s very important, that you go into your own center and that you ask God, what do you want me to do here? And that you follow your own conscience.

Obviously, it’s good to have a Guru, it’s good to have spiritual guides, spiritual friends, to bounce ideas off. Even Swamiji had advisors. Even master had advisors. But if you’re asking others, I feel that God wants this, but what do you think? But then at the end of the day, you have to take responsibility for your life. And if you are making decisions that are in harmony with your own highest self, your own highest understanding, you will be at peace.

Peace then won’t be something that you have to actively go out and search for and think, “God, once all these people leave me alone, all these business duties are off my head, then finally I’ll have peace.” That we need to find a space where even as we go through the day, that we’re doing it from our calm center and to be peaceful all the time.

Peace and calmness are two of the eight aspects of God. In a clear definition, that peace is the cessation, the stopping of all movement and calmness is that place, within that is also peaceful. It’s calm, but from that activity could flow in just a wave that goes up and down. There’s always a center to it.

I’ve probably been talking about this a lot, so you may have heard it, but I’ve been fascinated by it for weeks because I’ve heard Swamiji tell his story. “I’m a Greek. I’m a Greek.” And that he taught himself Greek in 2 hours and then passed his exam. And only two people passed that exam. I’ve heard him tell that story hundred times.

But a few weeks ago, I heard him tell it again, and he said: “When you go inside and you become nothing, then you can become everything.” And that sounds like abstract philosophy. But he proved it in the Greek exam by saying, first of all, he went to that space, I’m nothing. And then from that space, he could say, okay, now I choose to be Greek. And then he could pass the exam. And that’s the point. That point of nothingness, that zero point.

Obviously, everything has to go up and down. God could not have a show if there were only peaceful yogis meditating. And that was it. That God wants there to be a show and for it to be entertaining. Remember, life was given to you for your education and entertainment, and so there will be negative times, and we’re living through negative times right now on the planet. But you don’t have to even really tune into that deeply. You just have to tune into God.

Master also once said that if all of the good people were to go to the jail, then the jail itself would become heaven on Earth. And sometimes I think of this planet as a jail, and we ourselves have put ourselves into it through our own desires, through our own karma, thinking that we’re going to make a perfect world, which we never will. But if all of us find that Peace within that, we can at least make a world that is much, much better. But again, the only true heaven we’re ever really going to find is within ourselves. And to find that, we must meditate.

If we try too hard to have peace, it will just slip through our fingers. As if, we tried to grasp onto water, that we have to ‘cup’ the water and you gently hold it, but you can’t grab it. And so, it’s the same with peace. We have to make our hearts a receptacle for it so that we can hold that peace, but we can’t grasp it, and we can’t even strive too hard for it, because it is an inherent quality that is already within us.

And we make a space in there for it, and then we gently hold it, and we nurture that space within us that is already there. The highest priority should be God, should be peace. And you feel like, well, that’s just an abstract thing.

It’s not actually something that I have to do, but making peace the Highest priority, it will flow through all of the other priorities. And it will be like a mala that holds all of the other priorities together. And it will be the priority, like the philosopher’s stone, that turns other stones into gold.

It will be that which helps you organize all of the beads on your mala and tell you which place to put them in. Because the ones that are closer to peace, you want to give those more priority, the ones going out and running around with ten thousand different friends. And then you come home, and you feel empty inside. That’s not giving you peace. And so, it gives you an indicator on how to put that all together.

Again, I want to emphasize this – I tell you many things that I’ve learned from Swamiji, and I want you to read and study and listen to Swamiji’s videos and talks and listen to Master’s talks and learn from them. But even there’s something beyond that. And it is, I’m just reemphasizing here. Your direct connection with God and you need to learn to go into that space where you can ask God anything, and you feel God helping you all the time, and learn to live in that space so that you directly can ask God, I need help right now. I’m not feeling peaceful. What do I need to do right now God?

So that you don’t have to flip open the manual and say, should I chant “a” or chant “b”? Or should I do three Kriyas? Which is the higher priority, that you can just ask God, what do you want me to do right now? And that you can hear that voice, and that voice is going to come to you in a particular, unique way. And we have to keep fine tuning our ability to listen and then our ability to act on what God says, because sometimes we hear, we think, okay, really? I don’t want to do that. Maybe He’s really not saying that.

We need to learn to do the right thing and get into that positive, peaceful flow and then I promise you, no matter what trials you go through, that you know that God is there, giving you the peace on the other side and giving you the strength to overcome them. And you know that he didn’t give you these trials to punish you, but He gave you these to strengthen yourself. All of these attributes are used so that we can put ourselves together in deep meditation and offer ourselves ever more perfectly. And that we can hold that cup ever more steadily to commune, to bathe in God’s peace and feel that oneness and that joy and that light. This is the purpose of life.

So please see everything that’s brought to you outwardly as help, as stepping stones, to help get you towards that place. And please know that you can do it. It’s so easy to look outside and just think, I have all these problems and nobody else does. Everybody does. But don’t let those overwhelm you. Just come back to your center and please believe you can become a Jivan Mukta in this lifetime and you can do it.