by Kaushik Guha

Created on: July 11, 2009   Last Updated: July 20, 2009

There are a lot of beautiful spiritual teachings around us. One of the famous ones is called bhagavad gita, an ancient Indian spiritual text dating back to 3000 B.C.

It is written in Sanskrit and is incredibly dense.

Really difficult to understand for most people like you and me.

As a kid, we were encouraged to read such scriptures and get a better understanding of our lives. But in my experience , only the aged wise people over 80 that have seen a lot of life would read them and discuss about them in an intellectual fashion.

And I used to think damn,..these guys are past their prime.Most of them are too old to apply these teachings in their lives, what good is it now?

See, there is a whole chicken and egg dilemma going on when we consider the issue of transformation using conventional spiritual wisdom.

Most of the stuff is written in such an abstract philosophical fashion that for somebody caught up in the mundane day to day way of thinking, it is very hard to understand it, apply it and better his life.

You can only understand it once you reach that level of understanding through overcoming a lifetime of battles and struggles.

But that defeats the whole purpose of any teaching, doesn't it? The purpose is not to provide intellectual fluff to people in their rocking chairs. It is to provide light and guidance to people at the beginning of their lives so that they can actually use this wisdom to create a better life for themselves.

But as you see, the cause and effect relationship is reversed here. You cannot understand it and become a better spiritual person. After you become a spiritual person, you understand it fully.

This is where the new age spiritual teachings by authors such as Eckhart Tolle become so significant. These people have dedicated their entire lives to understanding conventional spiritual wisdom from all religions and bringing it to the common people. It is true that before them many others have tried the same thing, but their efforts have always been marred by dubious claims about religion. Where as true spiritual wisdom is always independent of religious orthodoxies.

These new age teachings are awesome. They have already helped millions of people transform their lives and I am sure they will help you transform yours too. You will gain a deeper understanding of how your mind works, the structure of your own ego and numerous other questions that you have found no answer to. And you will really really appreciate the fact that happiness and so called enlightenment is within the grasp of every man. You need not go celibate yet.

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