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About six thousand years ago, just after the great Vedic civilization in India, the Spiritual Science was practised by kings, dictators, soldiers, emperors — people with tremendous worldly power who lived in society. They were powerful people, yet they practised the Spiritual Path totally. They did not divide their worldly duties and worldly power from their spiritual lives.

Then around three thousand years ago came the silly idea that to become an enlightened being — a Yogi, a Mystic or a Saint — you had to leave the world behind, leave your family, your job, your duties, and shut yourself in an ashram or in a cave. You had to completely negate yourself (your mind, emotions, and body) and disconnect yourself from society.

The Wrong "Ideal" Spiritual Way

That wrong teaching became the ideal spiritual way of life and it is still being practised today. Everybody started practising this idea that to be spiritual you had to get rid of your personal mechanism and your connection with the world, to somehow just be in a vacuum, crazily desiring God and using all kinds of techniques to attain. Unfortunately, that idea pervaded the East as well as the West. It was completely wrong then and it is still wrong now.

To live a spiritual life, you don’t have to give up your job or become a monk or a nun. The spiritual life is where you are, whether or not you have a job, are married or have children. You don’t have to suddenly throw everything away and rush off to join a Tibetan monastery. In fact, you would most likely find that you couldn’t be a Tibetan or Buddhist monk even if you wanted to, because you don’t have the makeup for it.

It is silly to try to become something other than what you are. We always have this idea that by becoming something else we will become spiritual. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. You do not have to travel anywhere to find it.

Everything Spiritual is Already Within You

Everything that is spiritual is already within you. You do not have to go anywhere. You can find the Kingdom of God inside yourself, right now. Good Christians are told to go to church to pray because “that is where God is”. It is the same for the Jews and the synagogue, or the Muslims and the mosque. But the idea that God is at a particular place is false, because God is everywhere. So the trick with spiritual life is to realize that what you are seeking is where you are.

If you are in the garden or in the kitchen, you can find God there. It is so simple if you understand that God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and that your Soul is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. If both God and your Soul are omnipresent, they must be in the same place — and they are. You cannot find what is within you if you are continually looking outwards.

As Within, So Without

When you notice a beautiful flower, it is the beauty inside you that recognizes the beauty of the flower. Without that sense of beauty within you, the flower would not be beautiful to you. Similarly, whatever music you listen to shows what is inside you. If you only listen to heavy metal music, that indicates what is inside you, because by sympathetic vibration you attract that vibration to yourself.

So choose your path, wherever you are. It makes no difference whether you live in an apartment or a palace; God is wherever you are and that is where you must find God.

The Great Ocean of Life

Furthermore, every encounter you have in life is an aspect of God because everything is a manifestation of the Divine Nature — whether it be a candle, a flower, your son, your grandmother, or a vast star-system or galaxy. They are all simply particles of the great Ocean of Life.

You are part of that great Ocean of Life, the amazing Play of God, so why get bogged down in the little details of life? Somebody may have insulted you forty years ago and you are still annoyed with that person, still telling your children and grandchildren about it. But since that occasion you have moved millions of kilometres through space; time has changed, energies have changed, the whole universe has changed, and you are still holding on to a silly incident of the past.

While we hold on to the past — whether as an individual, a family, a nation or a religion — we are holding back the progress of the planet. Forget what happened in the past; always move ahead. The Truth is here now.

You Are Spiritual All The Time!

Don’t say, “Now I’m not spiritual because I’m working in the office, but when I’m chanting I’m spiritual.” You are spiritual all the time! The Spirit is literally everywhere: you can pick up a flower and it is there, you can look at the face of a person and it is there, you can look at the sky or the Sun and it is there. You can find God everywhere.

The next time you are arguing with your husband, wife, child or boss, just think of him or her as an image of God. If you could see the other person in that way, then suddenly the argument will fade out and that person will become something much larger because you are tuning-in to the person’s Soul. Every Soul is an absolutely beautiful, bright entity, an Angel of Light, quite literally.

On the Soul level you see the personality mechanism as only a covering, a veil. The Latin word persona means “a mask”, and the personality is simply a mask. How you appear to other people is not you; it is just your mask. If they could see the real you, they would go into shock! They would see you as a beautiful, radiant Being of Light.

Dropping the Mask of the Personality

Drop the mask of the personality every now and then and begin to live like a Divine Being, rather than identifying with what people say about you. Forget what people say about you — whether or not you are beautiful, whether you are good or bad. It is just their opinion of you. It is not you. Furthermore, any opinion you may have of them is not them either. It is simply personality judging personality, one mask judging another mask. That is all.

This article is excerpted with permission from the book:

Planetary Transformation: A Personal Guide To Embracing Planetary Change
by Imre Vallyon.

Reprinted with permission of the publisher:Sounding-Light Publishing Ltd. ©2010. www.soundinglight.com

Click here for more info and/or to order this book.

About the Author

Imre Vallyon was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1940. At the age of fifteen, he emigrated first to Austria and then to New Zealand. From an early age, Imre immersed himself in many spiritual streams of the Western and Eastern teachings. In the early 1980s, he began writing and lecturing full-time. He continues to teach at spiritual retreats and workshops around the world. Imre’s teaching is ancient yet immediate, intricate yet accessible. It encompasses the great religious and mystery traditions of history, yet is a response to the urgent spiritual thirst of Humanity today. The Foundation for Higher Learning was formed to help provide people with the opportunity to practise their spiritual work within the support of a group environment. There are centres in several countries around the world and retreat facilities in New Zealand. For more info, visit http://www.planetary-transformation.org/

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