2025 in Review – How did we do Spiritually? – Part 1

Aum Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya.

Haribol. Haribol.

So, I was asked today to speak about 2025—How was our spiritual journey? And then tomorrow, a look into the new year, and what we can do to try and live a more spiritually directed life. There’s a—you know it’s—Okay, if I want to take a look at my year-to-date and figure out how I’ve been doing spiritually, there has to be some authentic and real standard I’m measuring that against. Agreed? Otherwise, you’re just kind of making it up as you go. And you could be, who knows where? You could have lost the plot entirely.

So, then the question is, “Okay, well, what should be those benchmarks? What should be the hallmarks, the milestones that indicate how we are doing on our spiritual journey?” And a lot of people have, kind of like their own ideas. There’s been a lot of stuff going on the last 30, 40 years, where people grab a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and they kind of make a salad and throw in some of their own dressing and a little bit of this and that, and think that constitutes spirituality. And it may, but it also may not.

So, when I speak about spiritual life and spirituality, it is from the very ancient, the most ancient traditions, in the Vedic, in the yoga systems. These are tried and true realizations, and they have guided countless people for thousands of years successfully, to arrive at the same destination. So, okay, that’s not like somebody wrote a book 20 years ago, and they had some experience. It’s way more profound than that.

I think it’s important to understand the foundation. What is spiritual? When you ask that question, what is spiritual? Is being out in nature spiritual? Taking a hallucinogenic, is that spiritual? Listening to some really cool music, is that spiritual? People use the word like that, without actually any deeper understanding of what spiritual truly means.

In this world, there are fundamentally only two kinds of energy, the material energy and the spiritual energy. The material energy is everything that you can see, hear, touch, taste, smell, experience through your body and mind. That’s the material energy. The spiritual energy, we know it is present when you observe life. Life is a symptom of the presence of this spiritual energy. Another way to know is called consciousness. Things that are aware, are aware because of the presence of this spiritual energy.

I have a little aversion to using the word soul. “Soul searchers.” Sorry. I probably won’t be here tomorrow. No, no. These guys are all really awesome. I have an aversion to it because it is probably one of the most misunderstood words in the English language. People don’t have any real clear concept of what that is. If you ask people, “Okay, do you accept the idea of the existence of the soul?” And a lot of people say, “Yeah.” So then you ask them, “So can you tell me exactly what is that?” And the most common response is, “Well, I have a soul.”

And my response is, well, are you sure? If you have a soul, who exactly are you? And what is this soul that you have? And you ask somebody to explain that, and it’s just like, Boof! It’s kind of really mind-blowing. And the reality is you don’t have a soul. No one has a soul. You are the soul. And that’s just like, what!? You are an eternal spiritual being residing within this current body that you have on. And you are also covered by another subtle body comprised primarily of the mind.

And you have so incredibly lost the plot that you totally identify the body as being yourself, as who you are. And so you’re lost in the idea that “I am male,” or, “I am female,” “I am tall,” “I am short,” “I am young,” “I am old,” “I am fat,” “I am thin.” All the labels attached to the body you utterly identify with. And that, from a spiritual perspective, is about the greatest disaster that can befall any living being, to become so lost to their own spiritual identity that they have utterly taken on this temporary external covering to be who I am.

And then I seek happiness through the medium of this body. I seek acceptance, I seek love, through the medium of the body. And because I do that, I am unhappy. All, all unhappiness in this world—you may not agree, and this may be kind of too far out. I’m telling you the absolute truth. All unhappiness, all pain and suffering that one experiences in this world is rooted in the false conception of the body as being who I am. There is nothing that is more damaging to the spiritual being than that notion.

Are we kind of fanatics rejecting the body? Absolutely not. The human body is the most extraordinary gift. It is so special because it is a doorway. It provides all of the necessary ingredients for self-realization and God-realization, to come to discover your actual true and eternal spiritual identity and to live that reality. That is the opportunity. So, we are not anti-body, we’re not… No. But when someone thinks that’s all there is and we are totally lost in that, then one is sure to experience misfortune. And we become—one of the natures—There’s this wonderful mantra in the Aranyaka, Brhadaranyaka Upanishad.

“aum asato ma sadgamaya
tammaso ma jyotir gamaya
mrityor ma amritam gamaya
aum shantih shantih shantih”

[Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (1.3.28)]

There is some profound conceptions in ancient yoga teaching. The term sat, it literally means that which is eternal, but it more deeply also means that which is true. And the opposite is asat, which means it is untrue, it is false, it is temporary, it is not eternal. And that’s like the first line. “Aum asat—asato ma gamaya.” And it is like a prayer. “Lead me, lead me from untruth into truth.” (Let me just—)”Lead me…” actually, it’s more than untruth. “Lead me from illusion into the eternal reality.” It’s like what!? What’s the illusion?

Well, the biggest illusion that influences all living beings is the idea that this temporary body I’m occupying is me. And I should seek to be worthy, to be lovable, to find happiness only through this medium and in relation to the body. That is considered a profound illusion because when you look at it—

Oh, you want to—Are you guys okay with this? Just for those who don’t know me, I’m not the fluff guy. Sorry. I don’t do the unicorns and the butterflies, because time is short, and your life is too precious.

So, let’s just say—and this is probably a dumb example: Somebody goes and gets themself a car, and they’ve been really contemplating how to make it like amazing. And so, they’ve got this incredible paint job on it, and they’ve got new rims, and they’ve got the latest stereo equipment, and it’s all decked out with all the stuff, and it just sounds amazing. And they’re going to bring it on this road. Unfortunately, this road, even though it’s just incredibly well paved and everything, and my God’s, no speed limit, so you’re doing like 150 and just, Boomf Boomf Boomf [imitating sound of loud beats of music] you know, “Look at everything. Yaah!!” And it’s like a—sometimes you, what was that one? It was a movie, two women, they went off the cliff in the car: Thelma and Louise. Okay, it’s like a Thelma and Louise thing. You’ve got the spiffy car, you’ve got it all souped up, you’ve got your close dear friends or someone that you say you love, and then you’re racing down this road, and it comes to a cliff, and you’re going to drive off. And that’s it. That car gets destroyed.

And it’s kind of like, who in their right mind would do something like that? And of course, nobody would, not in their right mind. Yet that is what we are doing. We spend our time so heavily invested in that which is temporary, and to the detriment of ourself that is eternal. We become so invested in the car, and what it looks like, and the experiences that you can have with it, not seeing that it is destined for death. It doesn’t go anywhere else.

Or does it? You guys know something I don’t know? No? It’s destined. [Audience indistinct] Huh? [Audience indistinct] Yeah, right. That’s the problem. You get so enthralled, you can’t put on the brake at the end, and you can’t get out of it. You’re forced to ride it to the bottom.

So, that’s a choice. I mean, I’m not saying that person is unintelligent or whatever. That’s a choice. But what we need to do is to be clear-eyed about things. Life is really about choices. And every single choice that you make has a consequence, and you cannot escape the consequences of your choices. And so, the smart thing is to actually start examining, okay, what are the consequences of these different choices? What are the choices that I should make that will produce a brilliant and wonderful outcome for me? If the end result is crash and burn, and then start all over again, that was not considered by the great sages to be very wise. Putting it mildly! It wasn’t considered very wise.

The yoga system, in all of the different practices, is meant for the purpose of awakening myself to experience the actual reality of who I am, and to open the door to live a life that is immersed in transcendental or spiritual experience.

So anyway, that’s the big picture of what constitutes spirituality in general.

If we want to, therefore, look at how we did this year from a spiritual perspective, then one way that we can do it—and again I’ll just reiterate, it’s not like there’s only one way to approach things. There may be a myriad of different ways to approach things, but I’m going to suggest something that, you know, it carries the significance of a long history of countless transcendentalists who have approached things this way.

If I want to examine my life and how it went this year, I need to look at relationships. How did I do in dealing with other human beings, and more broadly, with other living beings? How did I actually do? There is a gold standard that is part of the ancient tradition. It’s also part of Christianity, you know, the commandment to love your enemy. In the Vedic tradition, they said one should be equal to all, friends and enemies alike. And that’s like, oh my God, how do you come to that position of such compassion that all living beings, regardless, even people that are avowed enemies of yours, that you don’t even get disturbed, that they’re treating you in that way, you still actually love them and care deeply for them and are their actual well-wisher? So, this is the gold standard in terms of relationship.

On the other hand, we have become so deeply influenced by self-centredness. There is this extraordinary phenomena that has occurred in the last hundred years, that cannot be compared to anything in the history of humanity, where we have been fed a message that was actually necessary for us to hear and to be absorbed in if the system of consumer economics was going to work. The system of consumer economics required people to become increasingly greedy and increasingly envious, to look at what others have and to desire that also, and to develop an intense desire to consume things, to get things, and to experience stuff, to—We don’t even care what that costs, what the price to the world, the price to others. It’s all about getting as much as you can. This consciousness was introduced along with advertising. And it was founded on a single principle.

There’s this guy, he’s a really extraordinary documentarian. His name is Adam Curtis. And he did a thing, a documentary, a four-part one, quite a few years ago, called The Century of the Self, and it really explored the transformation of people from being more socially focused and more concerned about others to becoming utterly self-centered, and it’s all about me; and he explored that transformation. So, he, in describing his documentary, he said,

“The idea that has come to dominate our society is the belief that satisfaction of individual feelings and desires is our highest priority.”

And of course, that’s social media, that’s the internet, that’s advertising in general, that’s all of the social philosophies that developed.

I mean, a lot of them were rooted in the 60s, where you had all these people (and I was one of them) off experimenting with insane amounts of hallucinogenics and alternative lifestyles, not wanting to be like their parents, and then a few years down the track deciding, “Oh, I’m not going to be able to take care of business this way. I’m not going to be able to feed myself.” So, a lot of them went back to school and became university professors. And so we see this massive transformation in social philosophies and ideologies that were really rooted in that period of time.

The big problem is it has become so deeply ingrained that we think being very self-concerned is normal and good. From a spiritual perspective, it’s extraordinarily unhealthy, extraordinarily unhealthy. It is 180 degrees from spiritual consciousness.

The consciousness of being totally self-centered and “it’s all about me,” which everybody embraces, it’s just like normal, cannot deliver happiness and fulfillment. It just cannot. And so, we see the symptoms, the extraordinary amounts of mental health problems, of depression, of suicidal thought, and actual suicide. All of the statistics have shown that from 2012—I mean things were kind of progressing, pretty much for as long as they’ve got statistics, on the certain level. Then, all of a sudden from about 2012, everything just went into this exponential climb.

And it’s like this because we are embracing untruth. We are embracing illusion. And it is having a catastrophic effect not just on ourselves, but the way that we’re interacting with others. It’s so sad. For a real spiritual personality just looking at the world, they will weep with such profound heartbreak because it’s so unnecessary.

But we don’t have the models. We have all the crappy models showing us the bad behaviour, the wrong choices, the wrong direction, and everybody just—and because it’s so in your face and everything is so loud and it’s so “Blllwaaagh!” you know, it’s such an assault on the senses, we don’t even have the time to react the way the body and mind is designed to react. The internet won’t let you have that time. As soon as they hit you with something that will stimulate, and you’re going to get a dopamine rush or there’s something going to shock you or scandalize you or just be really, “Whaaaw! What’s that?” As soon as that—you don’t even have time to come back, to level out, and you get hit with another one and another one and another one.

And it’s just like, oh my gods, we’ve become lost in this ocean of ignorance, an ocean of bad behaviour, an ocean of bad choices. And a person needs to become actually very strong. They need really wonderful spiritual practice and association to be able to step back and not be lost and just be swept along with this whole thing that’s taking over.

And AI is, it’s doing everything on steroids. All of the crap behavior, the crap focus, and intense self-centredness is all going to be just exponentially… They used to write algorithms for sectors of population, so that if you have certain attractions, which will be to do with your age, or your social exposure, or whatever, you’ll be more influenced by this particular algorithm, for instance, and it— The whole internet usage is built on addiction. They study addictive behaviors, and they learn to utilize the human responses to things to make it so you can’t put the shit down. You can’t stop. You just—you feel freaked out. Like, there’s something really missing in your life if you lost your phone for a day. Like most people would just wig out. And there’s something really profoundly wrong with that.

But now with AI, they can take an algorithm and specifically tailor it just for you. Every time you look at the phone, you don’t see the massive, massive amount of computing power on the other side of this. That is there to get hold of you and to learn everything about you, all of your likes and dislikes, how you respond to different things. They even track, if you start typing, like in a Google search, and then you decide backspace, backspace, you erase a word or two, that is valuable information that goes into your profile. It begins to show your thinking and the way that you respond psychologically to stuff. And so it’s all designed to pull you into this massive, ignorant ocean of illusion called materialism.

Are we exhausted yet?

And so it’s no wonder people are having such a hard time with relationships, and people are feeling so much heartbreak; and they don’t know how to compromise, they don’t know how to feel compassion, they don’t know how to find ways forward with things. They can’t find happiness. It’s just mind-boggling how many relationships end in an ocean of suffering. It’s more common than those that succeed and are actually incredibly sweet and wonderful. Right or not? Or am I fantasizing? It just—

I tell people—sometimes I get asked to do some counseling. And when it comes to couples, one of the dumbest things I hear is, when they’re starting to go at it, and somebody says, “If I knew you were like that, I would never have married you or never got involved with you.” And it’s just like, oh my God, how dumb are you? Don’t you know that that’s your job, to find out what you’re getting into? But when it comes to relationships, it’s all built on bullshit. Sorry, can I swear? Naah? Nobody’s going to throw anything at me. It’s such crap, where I want to put forward a certain image, and I got to hide all my faults, the ones that I’m aware of, the ones that I’m not aware of, I can’t hide. I’m going to hide it because I don’t want that person to see it. Because if that person sees it, maybe I don’t get to have a relationship with them, and I want the relationship.

So it’s cool for me to be deceptive, for me to lie, for me to make misrepresentation, as long as I can get what I think I want. And the other person’s doing the same thing. And it’s kind of like, oh, this is going to work out well, isn’t it? [Laughs] It’s like, what the hell has happened to us as a society, as human beings? It’s like things have become so distorted. It’s mind-blowing.

And like I say, the current influence began about 100 years ago with a guy by the name of Eddie Bernays, but we ain’t going there.

So, relationships. We intensely desire relationships. Right or not? People want to love. We don’t know what love is. [Sings]“I want to know what love is. I want you to show…” It’s like, come on. We know that there’s some sort of ideal, but we don’t actually know what it is. We have some fantasy ideas quite often. We desire relationship. Relationships are really important, but they need to be spiritually directed for them to produce wonderful fruit.

So, the first area of examination, phew, that’s a long one: How am I doing with my relationships? How close am I being to that most wonderful ideal of being so compassionate and so even to all, that even those who hate me, avowed enemies, I can actually love them. Not in a wonky sort of weird, [saccharine voice] “Oh, I love you,” pretending, but I actually feel in my heart profound love. That’s the ideal. So how am I doing with my relationship? That’s one area to look at if I want to measure things.

Second one is, the world. How am I dealing with the world? And of course, I’ve been totally sucked in to this terrible, self-centred crap that I see the world as simply something to exploit. It’s absolutely blown my mind. You know everybody was like on the green trip, and let’s worry about the environment and let’s stop using carbon fuels. I’ll just make a point on that. The problem is not oil. The problem is people are consuming all the shit that they don’t need, and they shouldn’t. Because we’ve become brainwashed with these promises.

The first thing advertisers learned, back in 1920s, you’ve got to associate with a product the promise to fill up that empty space. There was the recognition, advertising is based on the principle, the recognition that every single one of you feels some emptiness inside. That recognition is foundational. And then what I have to do is a product or a service: I have to offer you the promise directly or indirectly, offer you the promise that this will fill up the emptiness. This will take away that discomfort, the emptiness that you’re feeling. That’s the promise. And so we’ve become crazy consumers.

The problem is not oil. I mean, if you changed all of the sources of energy, which you can’t do, it’s impossible. You can’t do it. It’s a fantasy, otherwise. And you replace it with so-called alternate energy. Do you really think the world is going to become much better? The problem is our level of consumption. We have whole societies—the world is built upon the need for growing economies. Growing economies require endless consumption. And we’re living in a finite world. And we’re trying to live an infinite life. We’re trying to fill up the infinite emptiness that we have, which is spiritual in nature, with that which is material, and it can’t fill up that space. It can distract us for a while.

So, how am I doing in relation to this world? I’m not talking about a little bit of recycling, and we should all be recycling. Don’t worry. I’m totally on board with it. But it’s kind of like, come on, we’ve got to do more than that. How much is my corrupted consciousness making it so I’m leaving a wake of damage in my path in terms of the world, in terms of competition for resources.

The third area that I have to weigh my spiritual progress is like: how am I doing in terms of cultivating an actual appreciation of my spiritual identity? Or am I totally lost just in considering the body to be the self? Oh my God, what a disaster that is. And then you think that the way you will find love, the way that you will find friends, your lovableness, your attractiveness is all determined only by this hunk of meat that is destined for death. That’s sort of like, okay, you might be able to do that for a while and feel okay, but it can’t last.

So when we talk about—(How long have I been talking? I talk for a long time. I’m sorry) When we talk about evaluating, it’s not my business to evaluate anyone. It would be incredibly arrogant if I tried to evaluate anyone. But what I need to do is evaluate myself in those three areas.

There is a fourth area that needs special attention. We all have a source. If I am an eternal spiritual being, what is my source? One of the reasons that we feel this great need for relationship is because we have an eternal connection with our source, with the Supreme Soul, with the highest truth, however you want to term it. And actually, the word yoga means the re-establishment of that relationship or connection between the individual soul and the Supreme Soul. Because even if you do well in all those other areas, if you don’t take care of this, which is your greatest need, the greatest need of the spirit-soul itself, then you will always feel an emptiness. You will always feel that there is something missing, something seriously missing.

My view and interaction with others, relationships, my view and interaction with this world, my view of who I am and what is my actual purpose for existing, and that eternal relationship with the Highest, or Absolute Truth, or Supreme Soul. These are how one gauges how well you’re doing spiritually. I don’t have any answers for you. You have to find your answers. But these are eternal truths, and have been the guideposts for all the great transcendentalists since time immemorial. And if you embrace these in relation to my own life, it really brings wonderful clarity.

I mentioned before, in that mantra that I was chanting, which I haven’t finished.

“Lead me from illusion into the eternal reality. Lead me from darkness into light.”

That’s like, oh my God, that’s so heavy, that how we’re living, we may be so unaware that we could be actually deeply in darkness. The idea of accepting the body as the self is considered the pits of darkness. And the last one,

“Lead me from the realm of death to the nectar of immortality.”

These guys weren’t messing around. The reference to the world as the realm of death, it’s kind of like, okay—You know what, if everybody lived their life with an awareness that the time that I have allotted to me in this body is limited and it will come to an end, and I was every day aware of that reality, even without trying, the nature of your relationships would improve. How you are living in this world would radically change. How you are looking at yourself, and what you consider important, and what is the purpose of your life, would radically change.

So, this wasn’t a bummer idea. Nobody’s trying to scare anybody or spazz them out. This is kind of like—this is how to shine light into your life. This is how to become happy, permanently happy. This is how to become free from all, not some, almost all anxiety. The foundation is this spiritual understanding.

Is that okay or what? Any complaints?

So (one sec), tomorrow we’ll examine a little bit more of the solutions and the things that can make it so that we can begin to actually embrace these principles and live this way.

Yeah, you had a question?

Audience member: [Indistinct]

Acharya das: The mantra? You want me to repeat the mantra?

“aum asato ma sadgamaya
tammaso ma jyotir gamaya
mrityor ma amritam gamaya
aum shantih shantih shantih”

[Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (1.3.28)]

That last part, it means, “Let there be the peace of spiritual enlightenment.” Peace is an interesting concept and idea, and I’ll just give you a little example (and we can do some more questions and answers). But in the Vedic teaching, they taught that individuals should strive to become self-satisfied, to become an atmarama. Instead of looking out into the world for something that will fill up the emptiness, I need to take an inward journey and find something real and eternal that will make it so I’m not empty anymore.

The messaging that the human race has received for the last hundred years is the opposite. You need all of this stuff to fill up that empty space. That’s what consumerism is all about. That is the message. That is what you’ve been hearing. That’s what you are deeply conditioned by.

The teaching of the Vedas was that, if you choose that path of trying to fill the emptiness with material experience or objects or whatever, relationships, materialistic relationships, not only will you not find peace, you will be profoundly sad; and peacefulness actually arises from resisting desire. We are told that as desires manifest—and of course, all of the lords of the universe have learned how to plant desires in your mind, make you want things that you don’t need, and think that it’s really important and to chase that. But if you choose that path, you cannot possibly be happy, and you will never be peaceful. And they state in the Bhagavad-gita, “…and how can there be happiness without peace?” And so, there is a verse,

“A person who is not disturbed by the incessant flow of desires that enter like rivers into the ocean, which has always been filled, but is always still, that person alone can achieve peace, and not the person who tries to satisfy such desires.”  [Bhagavad-gita 2.70]

This is not some just like philosophy or idea. This is instructional for your life. You have to start making real decisions about the course of action that you’re going to take. Every single action you take should be a conscious choice. What you allow to reside in your mind is your responsibility. You are meant to be in charge of what your mind is thinking. But we are told, no, you don’t control it, just let it all flood in, and it’s going around, and my mind’s flipping out, and that’s all natural and normal and good. No! That’s what they want you to experience, those who seek to exploit you.

Transcendentalists desire that you become self-satisfied. It is called an atmarama. This word atma, sometimes people use it in English as soul, but it’s not soul. As I said, soul is a vague idea. It means the self, who you actually are, that person residing within.

Okay, anybody else got a question?

I love this kind—this life. I love this world of extraordinary transcendental ideas. I love the experience of it, and I love sharing it. So, I get kind of enthusiastic and sometimes talk too long. Please forgive me. Anyone have a question? Yes.

Audience member: [indistinct] … question… a clarification around desire. So I think I’ve got a good understanding about the [rejection?] of desire and where I’ve come to is… [indistinct]

Acharya das: You have opened the door to a whole ‘nother extraordinary area of importance.

Why do we desire happiness? Is there anybody that doesn’t desire happiness? Even people seeking to hurt themself, what they call themself, meaning their body, are seeking happiness. They’re seeking relief from their misery, which is often thought of as happiness. Why do we seek happiness? What’s wrong with being on a bummer? It just feels so unnatural. Right? And it’s because of this reason: the desire for happiness exists in us because it is the eternal nature of the atma, the spiritual being, to exist in a state of limitless joy, ananda, great blissfulness, not just happiness. That is part of our eternal spiritual nature.

But now that we’ve lost the plot, and we think this body is me, and my mind and all this stuff is me, then I’m attempting to satisfy a spiritual need with material experience. And even though that material experience may be stimulating, I may have a ha ha ha moment, you know, where I was really tripping on it, it doesn’t last, and it doesn’t fulfill me. And so, I must be on the hunt again.

So, many of the things, like desires for different things, actually have a spiritual root. And when we understand what is that spiritual root, then we can seek to address it spiritually. If I just address it materially, even though I am flooding my body and stimulating it into all kinds of orgasmic frenzies, of the tongue, the eyes, the ears, the genitals, just stimulating the whole thing, does it fulfill us? Or does it leave us feeling empty and an increased desire to hunt for something more? We see it, and we experience it, but we can’t figure it out because we are in illusion.

So, a big desire is the desire for love. This arises directly from the spiritual being, your heart of hearts, and it has to do with this eternal connection and relationship with the Lord of your heart. And because you feel this emptines,s, and you don’t know where it’s coming from, you seek to fulfill it through material relationships. But even if you find someone that’s incredibly nice, and you have a wonderful relationship, you still have some idea of something higher, something more wonderful, something better. And that is because it is part of our spiritual nature.

So, the true transcendentalists, the true enlightened people, don’t seek to run away from the world and hide from it because it’s like bad. They seek instead to utilize this extraordinary gift of the body and the mind that we have, to immerse it in spiritual experience that is real nutrition for the soul, if I can put it that way, that is actually fulfilling, that actually makes it so that we experience what it is to be complete.

And so, there is a term in Sanskrit, vairagya. Vairagya means renunciation. But actually, it’s not properly understood. So, you will see certain people and different religious traditions, and certain yoga traditions where they will try to turn away from the world and live a very simple life. And that can be helpful and beneficial, but it’s not the answer. Because in reality, if I recognize that I own nothing, I showed up in this particular body, in this life, with nothing, nothing but a huge volume of karmic fruit that I must unpack in this lifetime and experience, which may be experienced as happiness or distress or something in between, that I came with nothing and I leave with nothing… The idea of laying claim to this world and things of the world, including this body, is a false conception.

Higher than this idea of this kind of renunciation or vairagya is another word, yukta, yukta vairagya, which means to now recognize who is the true owner of everything and engage it in the loving service of the true owner, so that even when I look upon other living beings, I see them and their relationship with the Supreme Soul, and I love and care for them as my brother and sister. Even if they’re on a rampage, even if they’re going through a hard time, even if they’re angry, even if they hate me, even if they seek to harm me, it doesn’t change. I love them because of that perspective.

And so, the spiritual process is a process of learning how to regain a proper understanding of everything and using it how it should be used. Long answer. But it’s a very wonderful question. And you should frequently revisit it in your life.

Okay, we good?

So maybe we’ll have a little kirtan. And I’m just letting you know, I’m meant to be doing something this afternoon. 5 o’clock. 5 o’clock. It’s meant to be over in the yoga grove. It’s not? It’s going to be here? Well, it could be here. It could be there. Those that are interested in a less formal sort of setting, and I’m sitting here on this chair, and all you guys are there like looking, and we can do something that’s a bit more hangout. We’ll do that at five o’clock, those that are interested.

This process, and please, make sure this is a significant takeaway, and I’m just reinforcing it because I had a very nice conversation with a very lovely person a little earlier. This engagement in this process of kirtan and the use of spiritual sound, mantra meditation, is the most efficient, effective, powerful form of meditation. Meditation is not a mental activity. The mind is a material thing. It’s a material covering of the living being. When one becomes immersed in that which is spiritual, just like you go down to the river or you go to the ocean on a warm day, and you just walk out, and you just fall back in the ocean. You just let go. Immersion in spiritual sound is meditation. You, the spiritual being, within your heart of hearts, your mind, your body, becomes immersed in these transcendental sounds. These transcendental sounds will carry you to another realm.

The effect of engaging in this form of meditation is that it will dissipate the fog. You know, in the morning when you have a heavy fog, the sun comes up, you can’t see it. Everything’s just white. But the heat of the sun’s rays gradually dissipate the fog. It burns it off. And you get to see further. “Oh, now I can see the car outside. I couldn’t see it earlier. Oh, now I can see the trees across the road. Now I can see the mountains in the distance.” As the fog dissipates, you get more clarity of vision. When you engage in this form of meditation, it will have this effect of gradually dissipating the fog, the illusion, and you will come to see things with increasing clarity. That’s the offer.

And Meditation New Zealand; myself, I have an online presence; there are lots of resources, guided meditations, and discussions on different spiritual topics and subjects. So if you’re looking for resources to help you on your journey, plenty exist. So, I’m going to chant the Mahamantra.