MY SPIRITUAL TALISMAN
One of the secrets on my spiritual path is to try and develop the capacity to maintain an inner core of detachment regardless of how thick the battle outside rages. If one can stand back and watched oneself as if from the outside, the whole situation takes on a different dimension.
To my mind it is a key spiritual teaching which says that the battle must be fought but with a sense of detachment and without obsession regarding the result. Some people may feel that such an attitude will lead to lukewarm activity, but in fact the reverse is true. The sense of inner detachment gives us a deeper perspective into the whole situation and prevents us from getting overwhelmed by the tremendous physical and emotional activity inevitably involved in such events.
Joy and sorrow in fact represent the warp and woof of the fabric of life, and are as inevitable as night and day. It is this duality that needs to be transcended if we are really to reach our spiritual goal, and clearly this can only be done if we find within ourselves a spiritual center that is unaffected by the outer changes.
That spiritual center in turn has to be linked with whatever form of divinity we may choose to worship. Whatever action I perform, I look upon it as an offering to God. This is a talisman that helps to carry us through the adventure of living, whether the object of our worship is Shiva, Rama, Buddha or Christ or any other.
At their highest, all religions teach the religion of humanism, love and harmony. Once when Prophet Mohammed was in Medina, a funeral procession passed by and he stood up in respect. His followers exclaimed that the deceased was not a Muslim but a Jew. The Prophet said, “But was he not a human being?”