Baba, tell me about the importance of routine? Why is it necessary to have one? You had an unfailing one. How does it help on the path? Does routine not create rigidity?
Sai Baba:- Routine is not about rigidity. In a thing such as a world, where everything is movement, how can routine be rigidity? Routine is about repetition. It is about simplicity. It is about remembering. When you are alive, as a human, what is it that you can do to keep yourself focused on your spiritual goal? Routine is a necessary trait for creation or any consistent creation. If you don’t write regularly, you can’t have a book, can you? The words are not going to pop on the paper.
As a student of spirituality, as a child of God, if you want to discover your parent, your true nature, you have to walk on the path and take a few steps ahead everyday. You cannot stand and ask the road to move. Routine makes you take a few steps ahead everyday. That is one aspect of it.
Another important aspect is to reduce the clutter. Mental, emotional, karmic. At one point of time in the journey, you do not want any external influences that keep derailing you. You tend to pick on other’s energies and if you don’t know how to avoid it, it will lead to clutter. It is about avoiding sensory stimulation in some ways. Routine creates lesser sensory stimulation, and hence less mental and emotional chaos. In the end there are fewer things to process or clear or empty yourself.
So when you create a certain routine for yourself, whatever you do becomes more effective. You stay focused on what you really want and you do that for the major part of your waking life. If you choose God, then your routine should include all kinds of activities that keep you with him. So routine is a beautiful way to remember and be committed to that which you love.
So routine helps you stay with grace?
Sai Baba:- Routine helps bring clarity, purpose, peace in your life. You have to use free-will and choose it. Rather than let karmic forces define your entire life. Live your karma out, but don’t accumulate more junk. Empty the coffers of good and bad. Reach the state of neutrality and emptiness. Only then will the Oneness make itself felt. Choose what you fill your day with.
Most of what you say, comes to choice. The importance of choosing.
Sai Baba:- Do you choose your breath? Do you choose if can eat or no? No. But you can choose how to breathe and what to eat. Choice is what makes you human. It is an essential component of being human. Every act is a choice that adds to karma or empties it. That’s all you can do really. Choose. Till we become One with God, everything is a choice. The creator is a kind, just, completely non-interfering one. All he/she wants is for you to return to him/him. But the choice is yours. If you want to wander for eons or return home.
Everyone craves for that sense of comfort inside; to feel complete, at peace, joyous. What no one realizes is that no human experience can cause that permanently. Nothing but the feeling of Oneness can create that completion. Nothing but God can create it. Because God creates everything. You create nothing. Stay empty.
(This is part of my upcoming book – The Lost Path to Devotion. To know more and read more, visit this page.)
Living in Grace 