Lesson 98 - Q&A – Yoga and marriage

From: Yogani
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 0:35pm

New Members: It is recommended you read from the beginning of the web
archive, as previous lessons are prerequisite to this one. The first
lesson is, "Why This Discussion?"

Q: Can a person get married and still practice meditation and attain
the 'goal'? How does marriage help/disturb the spiritual growth of a
person?

A: Marriage is not necessarily incompatible with spiritual practice.
Marriage can be an important part of spiritual practice, for it can
help us grow into a life of loving service. The sexual aspect need
not be a deterrent either. It all depends on how you approach it. The
previous lesson on tantra begins the discussion on this subject.

I am married with grown children, and deeper into practices than
ever, finding life filled with joy. The greatest challenge that
marriage and raising a family places on spiritual practices is the
need to provide for everyone and then make the time for practices
too. It takes a strong commitment, a lot of bhakti. There are many
rewards if one can manage to do it all.

Some may prefer to focus only on their spiritual life. This is not so
simple either. Renunciates can become ingrown and narrow in their
outlook, with little regard for others, and stunted in their
spiritual progress even while doing many yoga practices. Service
to "a family" of some sort is necessary to keep the heart and
spiritual progress growing. The family may be our neighbor who needs
help, our spouse and children, our community, or all of humanity. A
joining of some sort that connects us to others in service is
important. If it is marriage, that is great. If it is not that, then
something that puts us in a position of having some responsibility to
help someone other than ourselves.

If we are helping others, we are helping ourselves. It is the oldest
wisdom in the scriptures.

Ultimately, spiritual progress is less dependent on our external
environment than on our internal environment. This is why meditation
is first. It goes right to the source and immediately begins building
the right internal environment -- pure silent bliss consciousness.
Then we should go and do something with this inner silent quality. We
will be wise to take our pure bliss consciousness and give it to the
world in some form of service. Then we are like a channel, and the
pure bliss consciousness and divine ecstasy come up through us going
out to others.

With a commitment to developing the internal environment, all
external environments become natural fields of service, which is also
practice. It is called karma yoga, the yoga of action in loving
service. Karma yoga isn't something that can be forced into
happening. It just happens as the spirit expands inside. All of yoga
is connected like that. All of life is connected like that. We are
One, expressing as many.

So, let's do advanced yoga practices and come out of our meditation room
and consider how to help someone. We will be helping ourselves.

The guru is in you.

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