Honor Your Soul
Honor Your Soul
You are a drop in the ocean. And you are the ocean in a drop.
From God, in God, as God, you are tenderly loved since beginningless time. Your essence is light and beauty.
In this lifetime, no matter how much the inner truth of your being has been concealed, you have the opportunity to reveal it. You have the precious chance to become a beacon of light, to shine like the sun, to realize that truth so many have sought and which all the world circles around unknowingly.
What do you do with this chance?
The Main Thing
The way you pass a moment is the way you pass a day, which is the way you pass a year. The way you pass your life.
We spend so much time on fleeting things. It takes a lot of work just to survive: to feed our bodies and keep them warm, clean, and clothed. Then once that’s taken care of, a whole new host of distractions. Status, success, relationships, achievements.
We are living in the age of distractions — so many possibilities and so little discernment as to what is really valuable and worthy of our time and energy. It takes constant vigilance not to be swept away in the tide.
How many thousands of things call for your attention? How many choices, opportunities, and obligations?
To how many gods do you owe debts, making sacrifices on the altar of career or family, of other people’s expectations, or proving someone else wrong?
You may say, there’s already so much going on in my life. How can I make room for one more thing? How can I make room for God? For honoring the deepest yearning of my soul?
When you bring a new hobby or relationship into your life, things tend to get more complicated. But when you add God, life gets very simple.
Lin Yutang, a Chinese novelist and philosopher, has said, “Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists of the elimination of nonessentials.”
Or, in the succinct phrasing of Steven Covey: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
When spiritual life is your priority, all the other goals and agendas drop away. You may still do many different things — you have to earn a living, care for other people, and maybe create or manifest something in service of the Divine — but they don’t grab at you in the same way. There’s not so much conflict over what is more important and demands more attention because all of them are secondary.
Even in your formal practice, you don’t let the externals override the essence. Meditation, Hatha Yoga, rituals, studies — it is all in service of Love, the revelation of the Heart, not the other way around.
There is only one goal. Everything else either serves and supports, or does not and falls away.
And there is only one metric for all your choices: does this bring me closer to God? Or does it only serve my ego?
Releasing That Which Does Not Serve
So what to do with the things that are not supporting?
The job that conflicts with your spiritual values. The toxic relationship. The habits, dependencies, and addictions.
If you realize that some major element of your life runs contrary to your deeper longing, you still may not be able to cut it out immediately, and you might not need to.
Many things will drop away naturally. Others might need careful thought and consideration, to move from an understanding of where you want to go rather than an impulse to run away. Some may take effort, a long process to dissolve ingrained patterns and free yourself from old modes of thinking.
It will never benefit you to try and skip ahead or pretend you are something you are not.
Come to the altar of the Heart as you are, with all your weaknesses and failings. Radical self-honesty will open the door for grace.
In the fire of Self-inquiry and surrender, all limiting thoughts and patterns are finally burned. All it takes is commitment and a willingness to go as far as the practice will take you.
Give Yourself to Eternity
As you mold your life around your spiritual path, don’t make choices because it’s what you “should” do. Do it to honor the depth and beauty of your soul.
We give so much of ourselves to temporary things. How much do you give to Eternity?
Most of your problems and concerns will be forgotten in a month. If not, then in a year, a decade, or as you approach death.
People die regretting they didn’t give more care to their loved ones, to helping others, or to connecting with God. No one dies wishing they spent more time at the office.
Meanwhile, we live in God’s world and our beauty is His radiance. There is nothing sweeter than to offer your life back into His hands — into the Heart.
By Naveen Radha Dasi, a Hridaya Yoga teacher serving at our center in Mazunte, Mexico
