Everything is Spiritual

I am convinced there is spirituality in everything that happens in our life. We just have to know where to look for it.

A few years ago, we had a bat infestation in our home. Things got so bad that one bat made his way into our bedroom while we were sleeping, using some bat-friendly secret passage. That morning, we woke up at the auspicious hour of 4 am, without any effort. It was the perfect time for meditation but, somehow, we were not quite in the mood for it. We ran out of our bedroom with great spiritual energy, locked the door and called an animal control specialist as soon as we could. He arrived a few hours later, found the bat hiding behind a painting, and released him to the great outdoors.

He also found evidence of other bats in the house and created a one-way trap for them. This let them fly out of the house but didn’t let them come back in. It worked.

A few weeks ago, my brother-in-law had a raccoon infestation in his backyard. A whole family of raccoons just moved in underneath a wooden deck and made a home for themselves. They were noisy and smelly and a little dangerous. When they created too much trouble, my brother-in-law called an animal control specialist to fix the problem.

The specialist used the same approach as in my house. He set up a one-way trap that allowed the raccoons to leave but didn’t let them come back. This approach worked, as the raccoon family moved into the deck in a neighbor’s house.

I learned a deep spiritual lesson from these events. We are humans living inside a one-way trap. Once we enter the trap, we have to leave, and we cannot come back to the same place. We may want to come back, because of our attachments, but there is no way back.

These experiences also teach us valuable lessons on how to live in this world. The trick is to avoid catching the attention of the landlord, who can evict us at any time. Here are a few things we can do to make our stay a bit longer and more meaningful.

1.    Don’t make too much noise; don’t move around too much

2.    Don’t fight with the other residents

3.    Practice more love and less hate.

4.    Practice the universal religion of kindness

5.    Maintain good personal hygiene; body odor should not become a problem for the owner

6.    Keep the environment around you as clean as possible

7.    Don’t get attached to your surroundings; this is not your permanent home

The one-way trap exists even if we try to go back to the past. It just doesn’t work.  

During a recent trip to India, I visited my childhood home in Lucknow and, trust me, it was not a pleasant experience. I had some great memories about this place. We lived in a beautiful bungalow, with spacious lawns all around. There was a guava tree in the front yard; my brother and I spent so many pleasant hours playing there.

However, when I visited this place again, the guava tree was gone. The beautiful lawns did not exist anymore, they were replaced by multi-storey apartments. The main building itself was in shambles and had been declared unsafe for human occupation and it was slated for demolition.

I realized we just cannot go back to our past. Most of us have pleasant memories of our childhood but that’s exactly what they are: just memories. They are not real; they exist only in our mind. Time itself is a one-way trap, we can only move forward. We cannot go back even an hour or a minute in time. We can only live in the present, or, in the future that we are creating right now.

Is there any way to escape from this trap, without leaving the human body? I believe there is. It’s called yoga.  The whole purpose of any form of spirituality is to unite our individual consciousness with the universal consciousness. Once we succeed, we are free; our consciousness can go anywhere it wants, at any time, inside or outside the trap of our body.

Om Swami ji has given us wonderful ways of carrying out this spiritual journey, based entirely on his own experiences. He has written books about it, and he offers courses about it, such as the course on kundalini wakening. Om Swami ji’s presence itself on you tube and other channels leads towards this awakening.

The raccoons still drop in to my brother-in-law-law’s backyard for family visits. They have an attachment to that place having once lived there.

Maybe, the universe is sending us a message. My wife and I still have a deep attachment to India, it is the country of our birth. We do visit India from time to time, but it is no longer our home. Eventually, we have to return to our current home in Canada.

The one-way trap is always waiting for us and at some point of time we will have to enter it and make a one-way trip to some other part of existence. Maybe, with good behavior, we can make it wait a little longer.