There is a widespread belief that you can reach spriritual enlightenment or even think about it only when you renounce your day to day social life. Saints standing on a leg for years to reach nirvana had been told in more than a few legendary epics. As a result, most of us look at spiritualism and associated rituals like meditation with cynicism. They are considered as tools for the people who are eccentric or “really in trouble”. This is such an erroneous belief. It is very much practical to at least try to attain enlightenment without giving up your normal life. I have come across several individuals who are at the pinnacle of their livelihood, enjoying the best of the material world, financial stability, and balanced marital life at the same time dedicating a good amount of time for practicing and spreading spiritual awareness. Singer and spiritual guide Guru Singh calls such an individual as an "Enlightened Householder".

Another dimension to this is using spiritualism for immediate gains like relief from hypertension, diabetes etc. While the benefits of meditation, yoga are proven beyond doubt, doing them with such fixated goals can cause more harm than good. It is like going to bed with clenched fists murmuring, “I want to sleep, I want to sleep….”. You will not fall asleep. On the contrary, you may sleep faster on your living room couch watching your favorite TV show!

No sooner he is done with meditation, an uncle of mine takes his personal blood pressure monitor and checks his blood pressure. He did this for few weeks. When there was no improvement to his hypertension, he got frustrated and went back to his medication. Ailments like hypertension and diabetes are hereditary or caused due to the life style you have been following for the past several years. Your cells and genes are imprinted with the signatures of these chronic illnesses. Your body has been warning you all these years. They are just signs of the forthcoming danger. However you ignored the signals. After so much of ignorance and maltreatment, how do you except a few days of meditation to make you normal? In the case of my uncle, he was a habituated smoker and an occasional drinker. I do not know how he was expecting a few weeks of meditation to do all the cleansing of the residue left behind by years of ignorance.

Several of our goals though pursued with our full hearts and minds, we’ve ultimately given up on them, because they took too long to realize. Finally when you let go off the wanting to achieve the goal, you achieve the goal. Most of us focus on the struggle that leads up to the letting go and then attribute their results to the struggle rather than the release.

Like a multiple choice competitive exam, we are given many choices to choose from in life. You choose your own. Nobody is forcing them upon you. In fact we are given too many choices that often times we are confused. For instance some choose home improvement over their children's homework. While some others choose happy hours and beer over aerobics. You can either choose to accept your spouse as he or she is or choose to find fault with whatever he or she does. You can choose to allow depression to take control of you or discover the love within you and overcome depression. The consequences associated every option you choose are very obvious. Is project deadline more important than your raising blood pressure? You make the right choices depending on whether you want short term pleasure or true unconditional happiness. Spiritualism is also such a choice. You choose it; nobody forces it on you.

Choosing work over life is also within your control. Several of us bring tones of work home and blame it on our managers or inefficient colleagues. If you are one of that kind, sit back and think about it. Are you getting paid for all the added work you do? If not, why are you killing yourself? If you are doing it out of fear, it is not worth it. If you think that dedicating extra hours would save you from future layoff, you are out of your mind. How different are you from your colleague who works eight hours a day? I am sure, if you compare your salaries, you both might be getting the same. May be when the performance review happens, you might get a quater of a percent more as salary hike for all the oil you burned. But your colleague's happiness has appreciated probably two hundred percent. Like balanced diet, balanced life is very essential for our existence.

When we are in our late twenties, all we do is work, friends and partying. When it goes out of control, our parents intervene and get us married. When our marriages get into troubled waters, we decide to have fun – vacations, movies, restaurants all sorts. Then all of a sudden we get a mild heart attack during the forties and we suddenly realize the importance of a healthy life style. Then we start aerobics, yoga, walking and some amount of spirituality, setting unattainable goals. When we get the symptoms like elevated blood pressure, sugar level etc. consider them as signals. All these physical conditions have a connection with your mind. Start your self discovery and mind cleansing process as soon as you get the signals. Don’t wait until heart or renal failure. You clean your body so often; else you feel so unhygienic. What is that you do to keep your mind clean? Visit your mental attic once in a while and keep it clean.

Whatever spiritual path you settle on, make sure that you absolutely believe in it from the bottom of your heart. Whether it be the Sedona method, Oneness blessings, Louis Hay or Art of Living, make sure that you respect, follow and practice the principles. If you have the slightest disbelief in any ideologies, do not force them on you. If you cannot practice certain processes for some reasons, don’t feel disheartened. Seek and get answer for your questions. It is like any medication. If your body does not accept the medication, it will reject it right away; you will develop allergies. That will do more harm than good. Spiritual discourses, meditation and wellness seminars are all good only if you believe in them and follow them and make them part of your daily life. Even weeks of cleansing processes will not change you overnight. They sow the seed of awareness and self discovery within you. It is your responsibility to nurture it and let the seed grow. It is when you practice the processes continuously for several months or years that you realize the merits.

You might not witness instantaneous healing of your disorders through spiritual means. However, there will gradually be tremendous improvements to your daily life. Your concentration level will increase, enhancing your awareness. You will be a better husband, better father and better son. You will talk to your mother more often. You start appreciating very small things you have been ignoring as trivial things in life all these years. You will become a better citizen and start appreciating your life better. You will gradually master the ability to differentiate between pleasure and happiness. Your colleagues appreciate and accept your ideas more often. Eventually you will become more relaxed and experience better health whether it is reduced blood pressure or blood sugar.

When the time is just right, you will be led into the appropriate spiritual path. Don’t ever do the mistake of choosing your spiritual mentor or Guru by doing a web search. On any spiritual leader you will find innumerable hate sites. It is like trying to get advice from the internet about mother’s milk. I am sure there will be several sites propagating the toxic effects of mother’s milk. That should not stop any mother from breast feeding their new born babies.

Meditation is just the path that will take you to the destination. Meditation and spirituality alone won't cure all your ailments. They make you wiser. They help you think clearly and attain your goals faster, thus helping you improve the overall quality of your life. They help you change for the better and help you realize the power you have within yourself. While it is impossible for any spiritual process to guarantee that you will achieve the goals, it is certain that it will dramatically improve the odds in your favor. Not only these processes when followed appropriately will help you discern which goals are the ones that you truly and should pursue, it will also help you to let go of goals that are inappropriate. An important part of any spiritual processes is self discovery; learning to love oneself. You can love others only when you love yourself. When you have anything in abundance, you give it away. Same principle applies to love also. Even if we don’t reach enlightenment or mukti, following certain spiritual processes under proper guidance will definitely serve as stepping stone on a pathway of self discovery. That is what an Enlightened Householder is after.