Keeping Your Balance - Swami's Teaching in practice

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Swami's Teaching in practice - is the pictorial essence of the article

"Keeping Your Balance" written by William and Debra Miller today in "Indiatimes

Spirituality". Enjoy it as an example, as experience inspired by Swami's

Teaching.

 

An article is below.

 

When we tap into our spiritual nature and trust in our inner Divine

guidance, work-life balance simply becomes a natural result.

 

In 1978, when William was hired by an American manufacturing firm to be

head of management development, his boss told him, “We believe in having

a balanced life, and that includes working only 40-45 hours per week.

 

"If you can’t get your work done in that time, then we need to talk

about it.” What an introduction to executive life! And how far away that

possibility of a balanced life now seems in our work world today!

 

People in every corner of the globe feel as if their lives are out of

balance. It’s not just between home and work – though that’s

what most people speak of. It’s between our spiritual life on the one

hand and our work-personal-family life on the other. As Sathya Sai Baba, a

universal spiritual teacher, says:

 

Humanness has declined because man lacks balance in life. By losing

balance, people acquire only an outward vision and do not cultivate inner

vision or insight. Human excellence will blossom only when the relationship and

balance between the physical and the spiritual aspects are intimately

established.

 

When we do have a healthy sense of balance, then all aspects of life are

imbued with peace and fulfilment. For example, talking about her sense of

spirituality, a senior vice president for Motorola, had this to say:

 

For me, spirituality is getting in touch with the essence of God inside of

me – finding God inside myself. Spirituality is also learning to manage

my energy – not in a controlled way, but as a balance of life. With this,

there is harmony and peacefulness because I am not allowing myself to chase

false gods.

 

Avoiding the temptation to “chase false gods” – money,

status, power, achievement – is what a spiritual foundation can bring to

the equation, thus helping us to naturally find an inner balance. From there,

we can tap into our Divine, or higher guidance to find wise and meaningful

choices in how we spend our time and energy.

 

But there’s one trap we’ve seen in our own lives and

others’. Many companies have become quite good at creating meaningful,

challenging and fulfilling jobs. But such jobs can seduce us into putting in

extra long hours at work, especially if there are troubles at home (children

misbehaving, difficulties with spouse, and so on) or if one’s inner life

is dry.

 

Knowing this, people like Deependra Moitra, an executive at Infosys, take a

very deliberate approach to making sure they maintain balance. As he told us:

 

What is most important to me is joy, satisfaction, peace and fulfilment.

Now how do I get this? I have a 4-pronged approach. Here is society, here is my

family, here is my professional life and here is my personal life. I look to see

how I can achieve joy, satisfaction, peace and fulfilment in each of the four

areas of my life.

 

Does Deependra always succeed in this?

 

Perhaps I am doing well in some of these dimensions and not so well in

others. That is my challenge as an individual: to balance and take an

integrated perspective of all four. I do not want to do one thing at the cost

of another. Something that is fundamental to me spiritually is creating a

wealth of joy and being balanced.

 

Ultimately, we’ve found that the real starting place is to tap into

our spiritual nature and trust in the Divine guidance drawn from that deep

well. From there, work-life balance is simply a natural result. Swami

Tejomayananda, the spiritual head of the Chinmaya Missions worldwide, once put

this into perspective when he spoke about how to balance spiritual and worldly

life:

 

I do not create a division between the two. A spiritual man will find even

worldly life spiritual, while a worldly man will make even spiritual life

worldly. (As the saying goes – a drunkard will make even the monastery a

bar, while a monk will make a bar his meditation cave). A spiritual man will be

able to operate from a spiritual vision everywhere in every activity of life.

 

So, ask yourself: How would strengthening my spiritual foundation help me to

have inner and outer balance in my life? How might my life and work priorities

shift as a result? Source:

http://spirituality.indiatimes.com/articleshow/908989.cms

Namaste - Reet