This Whole Middle Way Path Is Still Relatively Young
The history of pursuing the highest spiritual planes while living a wordly life
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One thing I’ve thought a lot about over the years is why there isn’t a stronger perceived correlation between spiritual evolution and the ability to thrive in the world. This is so fascinating to me because these two parts of my life are so intertwined now.
With the exception of “manifestation culture,” the typical narrative in Western culture rarely connects working on your consciousness as a linchpin to creating your dream life and what you want to see in the world.
I certainly see successful people sight God as a reason for their success. Though to me citing the grace of an almighty force is a bit different than someone citing the intentional pursuit of increasing union with it.
I think there are a lot of reasons why the correlation between spiritual transformation and thriving is tenuous, but one that I don’t think gets discussed enough is how this whole notion of pursuing expanded consciousness while living a worldly life is still relatively new.
Since the Vedic traditions (c. 1500-1200 B.C.) most people who really wanted to reach the highest spiritual planes took up the life of a renunciate or monastic devotee. We see this across the many wisdom teachings whether we’re talking about yogis in Hinduism or Monks in both Buddhism and Christian mysticism. It should be noted that though the Buddha made it clear that the middle way was available to anyone, though historically it seems like the select followers who were deeply committed to their personal enlightenment vs. casually interested, took up a more monastic lifestyle.
So across many traditions, the traditional path was that if you really wanted to reach the highest spiritual planes, you had to leave the world and orient the entirety of your existence around it.
The Rise of the Householder Yogi
One of the earliest examples I’m aware of that deviated from this narrative was the master yogi Lahiri Mahasaya. According to Paramahansa Yogananda, in 1861 he was initiated by Babaji into Kriya Yoga and instructed to bring forth these teachings while continuing his life in the working world.
To my knowledge, he was one of the first real yogic masters who also maintained the role of a householder - holding a job, earning money, and having a family.
After his enlightenment, he continued to carry on these duties while gradually bringing forth the teachings to those who sought them through evening “Gita meetings” where they discussed scriptures from the Bhagavad Gita.
Unlike the traditional narrative, he advocated for the benefits of aspirants earning their own living while pursuing spiritual advancement and not being dependent on those around them. At the time, this was a pretty unconventional idea. Most people thought if you really wanted to become enlightened, you needed to choose between a living wordly life or giving it up to focus full time on your devotion.
He brought forth this message while holding his job and performing awe-inspiring spiritual feats to aspirants around him.
Eventually, we see these ideas and accompanying teachings being passed down through two generations of teachers in this lineage to Yogananda who brought thesde ideas to the U.S. in 1920.
Ancient Practices, New(ish) Access
Though contemplative practices like meditation have been around for thousands of years, they’ve only been made more accessible to the common person and the Western world relatively recently.
Transcendental meditation which had its roots in the Vedic tradition started to be taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India in the 1950’s as a form of “everyman” meditation.
Its simple, straightforward nature was designed so that anyone could do it, including householders. Eventually, this started to spread internationally in the 1960s when the Beatles took an interest in it. I guess influencers were even a thing back then too.
Tibetan and Theravada Buddhism didn’t reach the Americas in a meaningful way until the 1960s and 70s following the turmoil in Tibet and Southeast Asia. With immigrant leaders like Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, these ideas started to slowly make their way into our culture.
I’m sure there are plenty more details here and historical examples of enlightened householders I’m not aware of.
The main thing that stands out to me is that the notion of living a worldly life and pursuing the highest levels of consciousness may not be a new idea, but in practice, it's a relatively new and less traveled way to live.
Compared to the many monastic and renunciate exemplars over the past two millennia, we only really started to see prominent examples pop up, especially in Western culture, in the past 100 years. For this reason, this isn’t really as storied and straightforward tradition of how to balance earnestly pursuing your consciousness while living a worldly life compared to taking up the robes.
I think that this is going to change in a big way because our current situation necessitates it.
As Victor Oddo points out in the Instagram video below, many people are having spiritual awakenings in the midst of their modern existence and are not really sure what to do. Traditionally, this mostly happened to those who intentionally sought it out. Now it seems like it’s happening to many people who were not seeking it. This is what happened to me and I found it very disorienting for a while.
Many spiritual people love to cite this is happening because the earth is moving into a new metaphysical vibration. The truth is, I don’t know why it’s happening. I just know it is.
I think we're going to see a new wave of leaders in the world talk about the impact of their consciousness and spiritual life on their ability to thrive in a more meaningful way in the coming years, kind of like we’ve seen with mental health over the past decades. Twenty years ago, talking about mental health was taboo. Now people celebrate you if you share your mental health journey.
I think we’re going to see the same exact thing with spiritual evolution. We kind of already are though it's a bit less overt in many cases. I’ve written about how I think this success-spiritual narrative will change here.
I find this all very exciting. Although it seems like collectively many of us treading the middle path are going through growing pains right now, the more people that learn how to navigate this path, the easier this will be for those in the future.
I think this is a very good thing.
If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏
love this, def my approach too.
i think the Daoists pretty much always had this approach - have a good worldly life and also pursue the higher consciousness.
Thanks for continuing to write such helpful ideas. I like this approach of balancing the spiritual and material. While our minds are greater than this physical plane, we still have to play by the rules of the game. At least to an extent. ;)