Spirit Matters: Integrate Your Spiritual Awakening for Mindful Living | Teachings of Sri Chinmoy
Jul 13, 2026 · 49 min · 12 segments
There’s a moment after spiritual awakening when the ground beneath your life starts to shift. Maybe you’ve felt it too—that strange mix of wonder and terror that rises after a deep spiritual…
When I give meditation classes and people come along for that for a couple of weeks, they are usually really inspired.
They love the meditations, they love, uh, starting a spiritual practice, and they really notice positive changes.
But then when the time comes for them to decide if they really wanna launch onto the spiritual path, choose a path or choose a community, very often people shy away from that.
They feel reluctant, and underneath that, there's a fear.
There's a fear of really accepting or launching into the spiritual life.
And our teacher, Sri Chinmoy, has also written about this quite extensively, about how people are afraid of the spiritual life.
And we're gonna talk about that today because, Vaajen, why do you think that happens to so many seekers when they really are on that turning point when they have to make that, that choice?
Yeah.
I think there's a couple of key points or key reasons, um, that feed into that.
And first of all, there's, uh, the going against the grain of the group or the society or the community you're in.
When you truly embrace something that's e- even, uh, just a little bit outside of, um, what's considered, um, acceptable or normal or, um, the, the way things are done in your culture, there's always the sense of, of concern about rejection or what, what other people think, so that part of your being, um, kicks into gear.
But I think the really deep fundamental fear is the fear of the loss of the identity that you have created as you know it, that you...
Some part of you realizes that if you really wholeheartedly embark on this journey, that there's gonna be some profound transformations that will happen to you, and in some ways it's gonna be the death of the you that you already know, the, the identity and the character that you've been acting out.
In some ways, you have to be willing to allow that to die for y- for the, the deeper, the truer version of yourself to be born.
But that's incredibly scary for people, and so I can understand there's some-
Because you, you know-
When I give meditation classes and people come along for that for a couple of weeks, they are usually really inspired.
They love the meditations, they love, uh, starting a spiritual practice, and they really notice positive changes.
But then when the time comes for them to decide if they really wanna launch onto the spiritual path, choose a path or choose a community, very often people shy away from that.
They feel reluctant, and underneath that, there's a fear.
There's a fear of really accepting or launching into the spiritual life.
And our teacher, Sri Chinmoy, has also written about this quite extensively, about how people are afraid of the spiritual life.
And we're gonna talk about that today because, Vaajen, why do you think that happens to so many seekers when they really are on that turning point when they have to make that, that choice?
Yeah.
I think there's a couple of key points or key reasons, um, that feed into that.
And first of all, there's, uh, the going against the grain of the group or the society or the community you're in.
When you truly embrace something that's e- even, uh, just a little bit outside of, um, what's considered, um, acceptable or normal or, um, the, the way things are done in your culture, there's always the sense of, of concern about rejection or what, what other people think, so that part of your being, um, kicks into gear.
But I think the really deep fundamental fear is the fear of the loss of the identity that you have created as you know it, that you...
Some part of you realizes that if you really wholeheartedly embark on this journey, that there's gonna be some profound transformations that will happen to you, and in some ways it's gonna be the death of the you that you already know, the, the identity and the character that you've been acting out.
In some ways, you have to be willing to allow that to die for y- for the, the deeper, the truer version of yourself to be born.
But that's incredibly scary for people, and so I can understand there's some-
Because you, you know-
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