How to be spiritual and still manage one's job and bills? || (2016)

Questioner (Q): I like being in your Satsangs but what I want to say is, I just find it a big challenge to fly back to everyday life. You know, you’ve got a job, you’ve got to make plans and it’s tough.

Acharya Prashant (AP): If you really like this, then why would you go back to your job? Especially if the job is of the nature that hinders this.

Q: You have to have a place to stay. You have to have food on the table.

AP: Do we go to our jobs just to have a place to stay and to have food on the table?

Or do our jobs exist to provide psychological fulfillment to us? Is it only for the sake of physical needs that we work? Our physical needs are small and few. Please, look at this closely and honestly.

Q: We are dependent on so many things.

AP: Had we wanted only shelter and food, would we still have slogged the way we do in our offices? Do we really need that much money for food?

No, we need that much money so that the neighbor can say good things about us; so that our car is at least as big as the brother’s car.

When you want only so much (indicating a small amount), then existence helps you get it. Just as the existence helps get the fish its food, the frog also gets its food, the bird gets its food, the flowers get their nourishment. Everything in existence is able to get its basic, physical sustenance very easily, without having to toil. Only man says that just to survive, he will have to work so hard.

Man works hard not just to physically survive but for the sake of psychological aggrandization. We want to be psychologically big and that is called the ego. And that is why life becomes suffering.

Whatever takes away your peace, keep dropping it.

And that decision is from moment to moment.

Obviously, peace is so precious that you cannot trade it for anything. And when you make that decision to not trade your peace for anything, you are happy. It’s a decision that you wanted to take. Next moment again something challenges your peace, you stand with peace. Then, this way, all that which is unnecessary in your life, you will keep dropping. And you will be left only with that which ensures peace.

That which must go away is always ready to go away, but we keep clutching it.

And there is a simple test, which I just said—Whatever comes in conflict with peace deserves to go away.

That’s the simple test.

If you are peaceful, then you can live even with half the food that you usually take, and I am not prepared to believe, given the state of development in the countries you come from, that you have to think about food and shelter. If an Indian asks me this question, that would be more relevant.

“Food and shelter!”

Are we so incapable? We are healthy, we are educated, we have a sharp mind, we have certain skills and experience behind us, will it really be so difficult to just earn your bread?

Q: Yes. Yes, it is.

AP: If it is, then drop the bread and let the body perish. If you will insist that it is so difficult, then I will insist that die. What is the point in living that kind of life?

Nothing is more valuable than a still mind; than your peace. Always make the right choice. If something is filling your pocket but draining out your heart – Kindly avoid!

Q: What if the case is just the opposite? Fills your heart.

AP: Gratitude!

Once in a while, that too happens. That rarely happens.

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