The Two Ways to Speed Up Your Spiritual Process

“There are two ways to approach this. One way is to see everything in the existence as sacred. Your work, your wife, your child, your husband, your dog, your mother, your God – everything, including going to the toilet – see it as sacred. Or, you see everything as utter nonsense – with absolute disdain – including your God, your own body, your spirituality, meditation, everything.”

—Sadhguru

Q: How can we allow the spiritual process to happen within us in full flow, and what might we be doing unconsciously that might keep it from happening?

Sadhguru: What could be a barrier within yourself? The main problem is you attach too much importance to your thoughts, emotions, ideas and everything else that you consider as “me” – all the ingredients that make you a person. You make them too important because these are the things that build your personality.

The most fundamental thing is your likes and dislikes. Everything else is based upon this. Who you can be with and who you cannot be with, what kind of food you eat and what you don’t eat, where you go and where you don’t go, what kind of ideas you ascribe to and what you reject – everything is fundamentally rooted in your likes and dislikes. If you can take away this one thing, the spiritual process won’t happen slowly, it will explode in you.

There are two ways to approach this. One way is to see everything in the existence as sacred. Your work, your wife, your child, your husband, your dog, your mother, your god – everything, including going to the toilet – see it as sacred. Or, you see everything as utter nonsense – with absolute disdain – including your God, your own body, your spirituality, meditation, everything. Both will work wonderfully.

Right now, your problem is, “this” is sacred, “that” is nonsense. Now you’re lost. Life will not work like this. No growth will happen. The basis of your karma itself is your like and dislike. That’s the only bondage you have really. When you are in a mode where you love this and hate that, you are setting forth a duality. Once you establish duality, there can be no spirituality because yoga essentially means union. If you do not like this part, how can you become all-inclusive? It is a self-defeating process. You just have to work on that. There is no such thing as liking or disliking. Everything is sacred or everything is utter nonsense – which way do you want to walk?

If you see everything as sacred, it is much easier. To see everything with utter disdain takes a different kind of strength. There is a certain huge group of yogis in India called naga babas. Among them there are two kinds. One set see everything as sacred. Whether they see a rock or a man or a woman or an animal or anything, they see everything as Shiva. There is another set who are very fierce people. Generally, nagas are a very fierce tribe of yogis. They are naked sanyasis. If it is very cold, they will wrap themselves with a rug but they never wear any stitched cloth. They usually carry a trident. This tribe sees everything with absolute disdain. If you just as much as take one wrong step in front of one of them, he will use absolutely filthy language on you. He will even use this kind of language for Shiva. This is how they are. One segment sees everything as sacred, another segment sees everything as utter nonsense. Both of these work wonderfully.

If you choose the path of seeing everything as sacred, you give yourself absolutely to everything. You see everything as divine, then there is no question of which is better than which, which is more important than the other. You have to give yourself towards everything.

If you choose the path of seeing everything as sacred, you give yourself absolutely to everything. You see everything as divine, then there is no question of which is better than which, which is more important than the other. You have to give yourself towards everything.

The difference between the two is, if you see everything as sacred, you will have enormous amount of activity in your life. If you see everything as nonsense, this is a hard but quick way. However, you cannot do this in social situations. You have to withdraw somewhere all by yourself. Whatever suits you, do that. Whether you see everything as sacred or everything as utter nonsense, there is no like and dislike. That’s the tool. If you make one thing sacred and another filthy, as far as the spiritual process goes, you burn like an incense stick – slowly. If you just pull the plug on your likes and dislikes, fireworks will begin with your spiritual process.