How to Speed up Spiritual Growth?

An Egyptian Family.

During the two weeks while we were in Saint Petersburg and Moscow we stayed at our friends’ places. Spiritual growth is known to go really quickly when you are living with other people. I do not mean living with your wife/husband and kids. I mean friends, acquaintances or even people you did not know before.

Sometimes it seems that such society really makes our already hard life harder. But if we look deeper, we will realize that when being put in the circumstances when you have to face each other several hours every day, “sharp corners” of the whole company are gradually getting round. And one day you notice that being in the collective really brings you joy.

The issue I am speaking about is topical for the West, I am sure not for the Eastern countries like India. I remember living in Bristol in a collective house/ashram for two weeks. We were five there: an English lady and an English man, a Hindu and we (two Russians). We had no problems living together as we are all Sahaja yogis and thus understand very clearly that the disadvantages we see in somebody else for sure exist in us as well (otherwise we would not notice them and react). This experience also gave us a chance to look at the conditionings of each other (I mean the conditionings we got due to the countries we live in) and, what is more important, discuss them. What means trouble for a Hindu (for example, a forced marriage) is never a trouble for a Russian. We also learnt that in India it is quite natural to have big families, I mean from grannies to grandchildren. In Russia it is considered a torture in most cases.

It was the case with us as well as we have been living with my father and grandfather for 3,5 years already. And though I really wanted to move to some separate apartment I felt very clearly that unless we learn to live together peacefully and in a loving manner life will not give us a chance to leave that house. First I really saw all the “wrong things” my relatives were doing: “no stains on the bathroom glass”, “no dishes on the table near the sink”, “wipe the bath with a towel every evening” – I heard every day. Yes, I knew that people are different, that I am not an angel myself, that my task is to share love and joy with people but could not do anything. But gradually, while I was changing, I noticed that all those things did not bother me any more. They still existed but it was not a problem for me any more and, thus, it was not the bone of contention. I even do not mind leaving in that house any more 🙂 . And it is such a joy now to realize that it means that I have got rid of some negativity within myself.

So, we went to visit our friends to Saint Petersburg and Moscow. In Saint Petersburg everything was just great: a separate room and the friends whose outlook is not different from yours. But in Moscow it turned out that our friends and us looked at all the things in a different way, even at some things which you thought everybody should think the same as you. First I tried not to get involved with my emotions into what the other person was saying (I even started to do some work to distract my attention). Then I really got involved into the argument though I saw myself from aside very clearly and felt that one of my chakras (energy centre responsible for communication and collectivity, the vishuddhi) did not like it at all. But suddenly some switch worked and I saw the whole play, the leela, of what was going on. The whole situation started to seem just a joke where the main characters were egos :). And as soon as it happened, joy from communication appeared again. I did not mind that the other person was saying what he was saying (though then he exclaimed that he was saying it only for the sake of the dispute 🙂 ), I returned the ability to see the best in him, his Spirit.
Thus, it was so much fun to live together! 🙂

Thought for the day: “All the things are turning to each other. In the same way all the souls are turning to God and each other” (Leo Tolstoy, Russian writer).