Yogi / Negotiating Family Relationships
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 3 years before May 04, 2016
MiBeloved 3 years ago
The situation of the relationship with relatives who have no deep interest in spiritual realization is that if one cooperates with them one will lose out. If one does not cooperate with them one will also lose out. In either case one will not gain anything for spiritual realization in the association.
And still it is necessary to maintain some minimum relationship with one’s kin.
Why?
Because it is necessary to keep the karmic equation revolving because one might need another body. Even if one does not, still nature demands some minimum involvement in the meantime.
It is so important to associate with relatives that the Supreme Being, Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita said that he was the one who perfectly teaches karma yoga which is not temple services or philanthropic activities, but rather the application of yogically-acquired discernment to social activities or karma.
If one does not become an expert at maneuvering in the social field (the karma environment), one will never become liberated because the effect-energies from those situations will successfully undermine one’s efforts.
If I cooperate with relatives, they become fond of me and that is negative towards spiritual progress because their attachments will cause them to require more and more of my association. They will ask for more and more services to be rendered to the family for purely social purposes without considering the spiritual impact. The first impact is that the spiritual discipline will be reduced because I only have so much time in each day. If I budget a larger portion of time to satisfy the demands of relatives, then it means that I must reduce the time spent for spiritual disciplines.
If I make myself scarce for the relatives, then they may develop resentments because I will not be available to render social services for the upliftment of the family. This will cause negative energies to feed into my psyche over time. Eventually this will catch with me and confront me even in meditation. I will find that my mind is repeatedly conjuring images of my neglect of the family and showing me the outcome resentments in the minds of the family members.
This will in turn cause dejection, depression and sourness of mind. Just read chapter one of the Bhagavad Gita to get some idea of what happened to the classic yoga student, Arjuna, when he had a mind to run away from very inconvenient and spiritually-upsetting family responsibilities.
Negotiating through the morass of family relationships with family members who have no interest in self realization or who have a superficial interest in it, is a technical skill which each yogi will have to master, otherwise the bid for spiritual upgrade will be a failure.
