What do we mean by Spiritual Practice?
Spiritual practice may be defined as efforts made by the body, mind and/or intellect for at least two to three hours everyday to realise God.
Repetition (Chanting) of The Lord’s Name, attending spiritual meetings
or remaining in satsang (holy company) of seekers or saints, service of the Absolute
Truth (satseva), sacrifice and spiritual love (Priti), efforts for the removal
of personality defects, ego and awakening spiritual emotion are the main aspects
of Spiritual Practice according to the Path of Guru’s Grace. You can read
about this further in Steps in Spiritual
Practice.
As one performs the above steps of spiritual practice, one begins to experience the following benefits.
Balanced state of mind
Every individual goes through ups
and downs in their daily life due to which one experiences either happiness or
unhappiness. By doing spiritual practice life’s ups and downs even out,
that is, one gets the strength to face the downs calmly. No longer do we yo-yo
between extremes i.e. climb peaks of happiness and plummet to the depths of despair.
In other words our emotional state evens out until life’s various situations
whether good or bad creates just a ripple within us. Ultimately we attain balance
state of mind.
Increased tolerance for pain
Every one has a different threshold of pain – be it physical, psychological or emotional pain.
E.g.- Two patients are about to be pierced with a needle. One of them is unperturbed by what the nurse has to do and even when she sticks the needle into him he doesn’t even flinch but the other patient finds herself a wreak even before the whole procedure has begun and when she does get stuck the pain brings tears to her eyes. See how differently two people have reacted, in spite of the stimulus being exactly the same in both cases.
So wherever we may be in terms of our threshold to bear pain – in the physical or emotional plane, if we begin spiritual practice we will be insulated from greater levels of pain and get peace of mind
Personality improvement
Personality defects are primarily due to incorrect impressions in one’s sub-conscious mind. Every self-improvement book on psychology attempts at guiding us to accomplish a change in our personality. These books are limited to the psychological level. Lasting and permanent change for the better happens only when we combine spiritual practice along with psychological techniques. Spiritual practice such as chanting the Lord’s Name results in bringing about a change in the sub-conscious mind, making the mind purer thereby resulting in purer thoughts and actions
Insulation from destiny
Destiny is when you have no control over life’s situations. In the present times, 65% of events in our lives are ruled by destiny.
All destined events are due to the give-and-take account and the happiness and unhappiness that one experiences is due to the merits and demerits (sins). When doing spiritual practice one gains the strength to bear adverse destiny.
Refer to article 6 on Overcoming severe destiny.
Bliss
One of the attributes of the soul is Bliss which is the highest form of happiness. When one does spiritual practice one taps into the soul and hence experiences Bliss.
Attainment of Liberation
For those of us who believe in reincarnation, there is very limited goal that most people have. By and large every one wants to live their life so that their next few lives will be very happy. But the aim of a seeker is not to have happiness in future births, but rather to get out of the cycle of birth and death and merge with God. The reason that we are born is that we haven’t yet learnt the lessons that we were meant to learn and just as we have to repeat a class if we fail in our exams – like wise we have to be born over and over again. Being liberated from the drudgery of this unending cycle can happen in this very birth if we make effort to grow spiritually, that is, doing spiritual practice and merging with God.