enrich
your life
A PIONEER IN THE FIELD of mind-body medicine and author of dozens of
best-selling books on Eastern philosophy and personal transformation,
Deepak Chopra, MD, is known for bringing traditional wisdom to contem-
porary issues. In his latest book, The Future of God: A Practical Approach
to Spirituality for Our Times, he dives into the question of the existence of
God, and offers his own thought-provoking approach to the ongoing debate
between skeptics and believers. He do esn’t give black-and-white answers;
rather, he encourages readers to explore their own inner sense of these
questions and provides a framework and a set of practices to help each of
us discover answers within.
In the excerpt offered here, Dr. Chopra gives new meaning to the term
“spiritual seeker,” explaining that true seeking is not a journey to find wisdom
outside yourself, but a deeply personal process of introspection. Try the four-
step practice below to begin to tap into your personal guiding principles, from
which you can live a life of integrity and connection to your core self.Deepak Chopra shares a practice for finding what you seek.
Survey your true desires
You are a seeker if these ingredients exist
inside you. They may only be seeds; none-
theless you feel a stirring within you, some
sort of desire percolating inside.The desire to be real
The courage to step into the unknown
A refusal to be fooled by illusions
The need to feel fulfilled
The ability to go beyond material(^) satisfaction
An intimation of other levels of existence
The material world is chaotic, filled with
events beyond anyone’s personal control.
To be a seeker, you are required not to con-
quer the chaos but to see through it. The
Vedic tradition uses a clever metaphor for
this: A seeker must walk through a herd of
sleeping elephants without waking them
up. The elephants are your old condition-
ing, which insists that you are weak, iso-
lated, and abandoned. You can’t fight this
conditioning, because once you wake it
up, your fear, insecurity, and certainty
that you must struggle to survive will
have tremendous power. Once the ele-
phants wake up, they’ll trample you.
So the world’s wisdom traditions fig-
ured out another way through. Sneak
past these obstacles, without trying to
fight them head on. Shift your allegiance,
silently and inwardly. Stop being ruled by
chaos and be ruled by your core self.
To become a seeker, you don’t have to
walk away and exist as an outsider from
society; you aren’t required to turn your
back on those who love you or to prosely-
tize a set of new beliefs. Those are the
customary trappings of religious conver-
sion. Instead, reexamine your present
situation. Sit down and confront what
your existence is about.
Step 1 : Rate your outer activities
In one column, list the external things
you put effort into. Beside each category,
put down a number, either the hours
a week you devote to this activity or how
much you value the activity, on a scale
from 1 to 1 o.
Here’s a sample list:
Family and friends
Career
School, higher education
Wealth, property, and possessions
Politics
Hobbies
Exercise
Sex
Entertainment
Travel
Church attendance
Service organizations and charity
26 JEREMIAH SULLIVAN
december
2014
yogajournal.com
be well
WISDOM