ARTICLES | WE'RE IN THIS WORLD TO GROW


By Swami Chetanananda
(from a talk given October 17, 2006, Portland)

We are in this world to grow. It's not just important for spiritual people to understand this, it's important for every person. We're in this world to grow spiritually, and that means to grow love and understanding. That's why we're here.

For the people that don't know this, there is only getting lost and living a kind of narcoleptic existence, just being asleep. We get lost in our confusion about why we're here and what we're supposed to do and why we're doing it and everything that happens to us. We get lost in the recitation of that mantra, "What's gonna happen to me?"

If you understand that you are in this world, with this life, and that the treasure of this life is to grow, then you can never get lost. You always have a baseline. At any moment where you recognize that you are confused, any moment that you acknowledge that you're afraid, any moment that you feel like asking yourself "What in the world is going on here?", you can always come back to that place within yourself that understands that you are here to grow, and that everything that is happening around you and within you is about growing.

As we grow, we will engage in every kind of activity. There's really no need to think about renunciation. There is no need to think about any ascetic practices. There's no need to think about correcting this fault or that fault. If you're growing, then naturally every one of your misunderstandings and every one of your limitations will dissolve. There's no need to be overly concerned about your problems. The fact is that the finest place within you has no problem. The source of your life, your own creative energy, doesn't have any problem. It's complete. It's totally well and scintillating with vitality and abundance, and it is trying to shine out from within you. You just have to let it.

This isn't rocket science. While Rudi constantly said to us, "You really have to work at it," what we have to work at is simple and actually sweet. We to work at being a real person. We have to work at really being connected to a true place within ourselves. We have to work to not live from the tensions, to not live from the fear, to not live from all of the misunderstanding.

I'll give you an example of a misunderstanding. Happiness does not exist outside us. It exists within us. Happiness does not exist in a different circumstance than the circumstance you are in now. It exists within you now, just as you are. Love is not something that you have to go out and find. You have to reach in and find it. Love doesn't exist outside you; it exists within you. Once you understand that it exists within you, and you start to make contact with that love within you and live from it everyday, you will find that you will attract into your life people who also have the same understanding, people who are living from the love within themselves. Then you will have people to share your love with, who will share their love with you.

People who think love exists elsewhere, who have to search for love someplace else, who have to find happiness in a new car or something different than right here, right now, will never find it. You can search and search and search your whole life, and you will never find it. That's the kind of misunderstanding that we're talking about.

Living free of misunderstanding, from a real place within yourself, cultivating the love and growing every day in understanding, every experience in your life, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, becomes meaningful. Every experience in your life, whether you think of it as positive or negative, becomes part of the richness of your experience and a part of the strength that you live from every day within yourself. It sharpens your capacity for living from and expressing love.

In this environment, where you are growing, where you are expanding your understanding, where you are expanding the love within you, you may be called upon to do things in the world. I made an ashram-with a lot of help from all of you. But I didn't do it to make money. I didn't do it to change the circumstance of my life, to make my life better or anything like that. I certainly didn't do it because I think accomplishment is important. I did it because that was the form in which I was inspired to express the love within myself. I do what I do for love, not money, and not for fame and recognition.

When we do with our life whatever we do from love, we're released from all of the negative feedback and all of the difficulties of the world and all of the self-criticism that goes along with that, all of the entanglement and the tension. We are released from it to be in touch with a real and true and completely honest place within ourself, and to express that in a loving fashion every day with every person whom we share our life with. It starts when you understand what your life is for and become committed to growing as a person. You have to be committed to growing as a person. Then you'll never be lost.

When you know that you're here to grow, life gets very interesting, at least in my experience. When I come to a new circumstance, because I understand that I am here in this world to grow, it sorts my priorities out automatically. This happens in any kind of experience, whether it's as mundane as one of the fifty bazillion businesses we've started or designing a room or writing a letter, or anything else. I have within myself the ability to access those priorities, what's important and what comes first and what comes second and what comes next, etcetera. It's very interesting how the simple act of knowing, really knowing that I'm here to grow, at a certain point, totally reorganized my daily life. It was a completely practical experience. It totally changed the way my mind worked-thank God.

Your most important bottom line as a human being, what is meaningful in this experience, has to be that you are in this life to grow. The next thing is that growing is not about getting. We're not in this world to get anything. We are in this world to grow, and growing is growing our capacity to give, growing our capacity to love, and express that love in all the different ways we move in the world-to express that love in the way we plant a garden, to express that love in the way we clean a room, to express that love in the way we fix a meal. The simple things in our life everyday suddenly become permeated with a consciousness, an awareness, and a fineness that transforms the whole experience for us and of course for the people who that experience is shared with. How simple and beautiful is that?

Everyone's life is a mixture of pleasant and unpleasant experiences. That's just the way life is. But we don't have to live from that or even be tangled up in it. Growing the love within ourselves and living from that place elevates us to a whole different appreciation of our individual lives and life itself that transforms our perception of all objects and experiences into one of amazement and wonder. How fantastic!

Every day when I get up, the first thing that I do is remember that I'm in this world to grow. Going forward in my day, I remember that I am looking for opportunities to grow the love in myself and my understanding of how to express it skillfully. I hope you remember that, too.

If I had one prayer for humanity, I would pray that everybody understood they were in this world to grow. It would make the world a better place for all of us.

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