Advice needed from older(agewise) members!

[Kumar_Das]

Namaste,

Currently I am working full time. If I personally could I would quit this job, but I just can't.

I feel that I am approaching a phase of my spirituality where I have to dedicate much of my life (almost the whole day) for my sadhana.

I can't have it even though I wish I could. What to do? Life is like that. This is our current times.

I put my trust in Bhagavan and I leave it all up to Him. Whatever He wants to happen for me, He will. I have chosen to accept whatever I am going through if its beyond me no matter what my own feelings are regarding it.



Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya

[sunyata07]

Namaste Kumar Das,

I am not one of the older members you seek advice from, but I wanted to post my sympathies. I understand what it's like. It is tough trying to juggle different commitments in your life, as well as making room for God in one's life. Although it depends on the individual, I have found that neglecting one's sadhana for too long can sometimes be a spiritual setback. Dedicating time to sit down each night to perform japa and dhyana is becoming more difficult for me as I've taken on a number of new projects in my life, as well as full-time work. It is really just a matter of time management and balance, but this isn't as easy as it seems! It takes a lot of discipline.

Like yourself, I only hope that God in His infinite mercy and understanding will know that I do try to think of Him always. I am always pulled back to ponder His names and forms, even (and especially) in bad and unhappy moments, and I wonder if this is enough to please Him for the time being. May blessed Sri Ganesha remove any obstacles that may impede our spiritual progress.

Om namah Shivaya

[Eastern Mind]

Namaste,

Currently I am working full time. If I personally could I would quit this job, but I just can't.

I feel that I am approaching a phase of my spirituality where I have to dedicate much of my life (almost the whole day) for my sadhana.

I can't have it even though I wish I could. What to do? Life is like that. This is our current times.

I put my trust in Bhagavan and I leave it all up to Him. Whatever He wants to happen for me, He will. I have chosen to accept whatever I am going through if its beyond me no matter what my own feelings are regarding it.



Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya

Vannakkam Kumar Das: Certainly I am no expert. Each individual is different, and their makeup/needs as well. I really have no idea what is happening in your life. For example 'full time' means different things to different people. For some, it means a standard 40 or 44 hour work week. For others, like immigrant shopkeepers here, it is 7 to 11 7 days a week, more like 100 + hours.

So knowing nothing, the best I can do is relate how I dealt with it in my life a bit, but it probably won't apply to yours. I remember working 14 hour days teaching and coaching, or parent teacher interview days, and coming home feeling very out of it. Certainly sitting down doing an hour of sadhana wasn't at the top of my mind. Seeing my family, crashing, and getting to sleep were, though.

For me it is very difficult to do sadhana for long long periods of time. So a suggestion to find out if you indeed are suited to that, as you are feeling, I say give at a go for a weekend or two, or maybe on a break. You may discover its not for you. Sadhana might just be a lot harder than you think. An analogy is thiose who say they want to move to India before even trying it. The suggestion is always to go live there a for a few months, even weeks, first.

I felt more like you near the beginning of my career. Eventually, in some small ways, I learned to see career/job as sadhana. It is an excellent opportunity to lean and practice harmony with others, observation, a study of human behaviour, charity with time, both from looking out and looking in. These are character traits well worth developing.

Indeed it is difficult in this day and age to strike a balance. Those of us like me, who are now retired, once busy, have the opposite problem. Having developed the life habit pattern of working hard, retirement often equals boredom. Personally,I'm okay because I have something rewarding to do 6 months of the year. But in wintertime I try to be a writer. But on days when the writing isn't flowing, I get bored.

Best wishes in finding the balance. Sorry for the ramble. But indeed it was a very practical question.

Aum Namasivaya

[yajvan]

hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

namasté kumar_das

First let me say I do not have an answer to your question, yet I wish to pose a few notions for you to consider.

Work no doubt is needed so you may sustain your current life style. This condition most experience in this world because most are householders ( gṛhastha).
The best of all worlds is when one's work is an extention of their sādhana. Note that action (in this case work) stabilizes one's spiritual experiences
of pure consciousness within the nervous system. That is, the realized man is one that can have this perfect silence within yet still act in the world
without being shaken. This is what action does and is part of one's development. This is the wisdom of kṛṣṇa-ji - yogasthaḥ kuru karmānī-
established (or steadfast) in yoga ( union) perform actions (karma).


It is always good to take advantage of all your spare time, your ~casual time~. This can be used for one's sādhana ( meditation,
reflection, study, and rest); It is the person with the balanced life that is able to make head-way on the path.


It is good to have a job ( if at all possible) that is life-supporting. That is, with minimum grief to one's self, to others, that supports
society in some way. A service or product that promotes a favorable condition for one's self and others. What would be opposed to this?
Jobs that exploit, hurt, excessively extract life force, like that.


So, if one is working then make the best of it. That means we do not strain, or stess over it. My teacher would say - see the job , do the job,
stay out of misery.


Now that said, what can one do during the day that would compliment one's spiritual development yet allow one to return to work in an instant?
The simple idea of being aware of being aware... this is a simple practice one can do to groom awareness. Are there others? sure. But more if
there is interest.

praṇām

[devotee]

Namaste Kumar,


Currently I am working full time. If I personally could I would quit this job, but I just can't.

I feel that I am approaching a phase of my spirituality where I have to dedicate much of my life (almost the whole day) for my sadhana.

I can't have it even though I wish I could. What to do? Life is like that. This is our current times.

I put my trust in Bhagavan and I leave it all up to Him. Whatever He wants to happen for me, He will. I have chosen to accept whatever I am going through if its beyond me no matter what my own feelings are regarding it.

I think this may be a dilemma of many of us here. I don't know how much time each day you want to give to Saadhana. In fact, sometimes we keep thinking that if the situation changes like this I would be able to do long meditation or japa or reading sacred scriptures etc. and we keep longing for that changes to occur & in the meantime we keep shifting all blames to "not-happening" of those changes. Lack of time may be true sometimes but most of the times we are only seeking excuses to cover up for our inability to manage time.

Sometime back, I also faced somewhat similar dilemma because I took some tasks/activities which were taking much more time than it was taking earlier. However, on analysing I found that :

a) I need two hours in the morning and one hour in the evening daily (minimum) for doing my saadhana. So, there was a question of getting only 3 undisturbed hours of total available 24 hours to me.

b) I could cut down on ineffective hours in bed i.e. keep lying because I felt that it was not the time to get up. I found that a 5-6 hours sleep was good enough for me & could get up quite early. So, instead of getting up at 6:30 or so, I started getting up at 4:00 Hrs in the morning and sometimes even early if somehow I awake early. That gave me a good two and half hours time extra.

c) I found that I was wasting nearly 2-3 hours on TV/Internet unnecessarily which could be reduced to bare minimum.

d) I found that there was a lot of slack time for my daily activities which could be tightened up & that helped.

Now, I am having no problem in managing daily extra time needed for my saadhana in spite of taking up new extra activities. For intensive Saadhana, I keep a few predecided special days when almost the whole day is devoted to saadhana & I take leave from office for that day. I am thinking to take a week off for doing intensive saadhana during Navaraatra, unless I have some very important things to deal with in the offfice.

My advice is :

You may take a long leave for, say, 10-15 days from work & start doing saadhana & find out how much time was actually devoted in Saadhana & how much was wasted & whether you would like to have this type of schedule everyday. That will give you an idea of how much time is optimum for you at your present level for doing Saadhana & whether you can do it within the time available or you really need extra time. With my daily enagagement, I can tell you that if you need maximum 5-6 hours daily or less than that ... there is no need to leave your job and face financial hardship etc. because you can easily manage with the time avaiilable to you even after your office hours. If you have gone ahead of that then you may like to take a step like leaving your job etc.

Also, you will have to work out in advance if you can manage your and your dependents' lives without a job. If not, it would create more disturbance in your Saadhana than just crunch of time now. It is to be noted that quality time devoted to Saadhana is more important than quantity of time devoted to Saadhana. A 10 minute fully dedicated, calm & focused meditation is better than full one/two hour(s) meditation with stray thoughts disturbing you.

OM

[Ramakrishna]

Namaste Kumar Das,

I think this is a problem that a lot of Hindus in modern society face. Devoteeji offers good advice about just shaving off some time from some of the activities that you do daily and add that time for your sadhana. I personally have cut off a lot of the time I used to spend watching television and now I use most of that time for my sadhana. But I still spend a lot of time on the computer, which I can cut back on.


Eventually, in some small ways, I learned to see career/job as sadhana.

This is great advice that I have done as well. I'm a student (not one of the older members :)), and I have come to to see the work I do as a devotion to Saraswati Mata. I see it sort of like being a way of fulfilling my dharma and fulfilling the brahmacharya ashrama. So in this sense, being a student is part of my sadhana.

I don't know what type of work you do, but certainly you can do something similar. Just take the core teachings of the Gita, and see Lord Krishna in everybody and do all of your works for Him and offer all of the fruits of your work for Him. When it comes to things like meditation, puja, etc. you can take time off from other daily activities and wake up earlier to do those things.

Jai Sri Ram