Hello, I have just begun Kriya Yoga meditation. I am finding some conflicts with my worldly activities in terms of how to approach them as a person with spiritual focus. In particular I have just begun an acting course (monologues) to improve my communicative ability and explore a desire to participate in transformative entertainment in the future. How can I approach this with no attatchment and stay true, amidst materialist people? What should I have in mind? What attitude should I maintain?
—Bernard, Australia
This is a great question to which I actually have some insights, thanks to Swami Kriyananda. A number of years ago in Paris, Swamiji was asked by a well-known opera singer a similar question. She found herself, with her low-pitched contralto voice, placed many times in roles that had a dark side to them and were even evil in nature. She wondered how to deal with this situation in a spiritual way, so as not to have her consciousness pulled down by the darkness.
Swami said to her to feel that God was acting through her in these roles. Also to feel that she was an observer, as well as a participant, in the roles she played. I think the attitude to remember and keep before you in doing this, is that God is in everything; that all of creation has been brought about out of Himself. As Swami Kriyananda would say in talks, “What else did God have to bring Creation into being from but Himself!”
These attitudes are not easy to develop, but they are possible. I would think they could even make you a very good actor! Non-attachment will be essential in doing this, and something you will have to work on every day. I would suggest that at the end of each day you offer all that has happened that day back to God, thereby freeing yourself from being attached to and defined by it.
As long as you feel a need to be involved in the very outward and entertaining “entertainment business,” then this will need to be part of your daily spiritual sadhana, along with your morning and evening Kriya Yoga practice.
As Parmahansa Yogananda said about this world of duality that we live in, “This world was made for our education and entertainment, but how very few are either educated or entertained.” May you be one of these few!
