To take on a spiritual path it is not necessary.....to take oneself away from the world..

What I am realizing more and more is that the spiritual is not a path as such but a way of being. It is a declaration that I am a spiritual being who is having human experiences. When this is the context then everything that happens is fodder for spiritual growth and development.

To pay my bills, I work as a fundraiser for a number of charities. Each call presents itself as an opportunity for me to choose who I am going to be on each call. As you can imagine given the nature of the work some calls are more harmonious than others. What is invaluable about this job for me given my self-declared path towards self-realization and enlightenment is that when the energy of anger is there I can watch it impassively, like an observer. I don't get identified with it and I certainly don't project it onto the person I am speaking to. I just watch it rising up. Everything is energy and anger is just one form that the energy takes. In another instant that same energy can transform into love or compassion. What is important is not the form that it changes into but to be aware of its presence and to watch its rise and more importantly its fall. To follow it back until it dissolves into the formless. Only then will it result in a deep and abiding peace.

The person who caused me to get angry has no part to play. The anger was within me and it is only when we take responsibility and own that we have anger, but anger is not who we are that a level of ease and freedom can be experienced around anger and indeed around any energy whether this is hate or love. It is all the same energy but the form in which it is expressed is different. But the principle is the same for whatever form it takes. Become aware of its presence, don't act out or project and follow it back to its source.

I feel blessed that at least once each day I am given the opportunity to engage with this process and it has led to deepening peace and calm. In this way there is no need for me to take myself to an ashram or even have a teacher. The willingness to take myself on at every moment is enough.....