We are spiritual beings on an evolutionary journey through lifetimes. We have forgotten our eternal, blissful spiritual essence and live identified with our impermanent and easily stressed human personalities. Engaging in spiritual company everyday helps to remind ourselves of our true spiritual nature and allows it to shine through.
What exactly is spiritual company? Satsang, the Sanskrit word for “spiritual company” explains this.
“Satsang” is made of two root words—sat and sang. Sat means “spiritual truth”, “good” or “noble”. And sang means “being in the company of” or “in association with.”
And so, satsang means being associated with truth, or that which is good and noble.
Keeping spiritual company is considered “good” because it brings peace of mind, and “noble” because it promotes your spiritual growth.
You can engage in spiritual company in many ways: You can listen to talks given by spiritual teachers, meet with other like-minded people to discuss spirituality, read spiritual or inspirational books, magazines, and articles on your own.
You can attend regular services at a place of worship where people gather to pray, sing devotional hymns, and read from holy books.
The internet has a plethora of spiritual resources. There are spiritual teachers giving talks and articles providing inspiration for our daily life. There are also innumerable spiritually focused groups you can join and inspirational stories and quotes that you can read and uplift yourself.
Here are 6 reasons why you should engage in spiritual company everyday.
1. Helps you meet life with a spiritual perspective
Spiritual growth is self-transformation. It is an inner maturity, a deepening of peace and poise in life. Inner maturity comes from learning from your experiences and the experiences of others, and then imbibing those lessons into your own life. This changes your thinking, which in turn transforms your personality, how you see the world and live in it.
Regular satsang instills your mind with higher ideals and noble emotions that keep you inspired and focused on your spiritual path. It reminds you that you are here to use the circumstances of your life to grow and evolve spiritually.
Without regular spiritual company, hardships and challenges can make you bitter instead of better. This is because the world with its enchanting temptations, and people with lower goals and values, can easily influence and pull you away from your spiritual path and inner focus.
2. Cultivates detachment in life
Regular spiritual company also cultivates detachment from things and circumstances. It helps us to let go of our insistence on things being a certain way.
When you hold a narrow view and time frame, the smallest thing can upset you. Looking back at your life, you would have found that your past little upsets and even the bigger ones have faded away and don’t matter in the present.
Keeping regular spiritual company will help you remember to detach and raise your view of life. Holding a higher spiritual perspective will make you stop and question whether a particular response is appropriate for the time and circumstances.
Satsang also helps to improve your relationships. Spirituality teaches us that each of us is a soul with lessons to fulfil in this lifetime. Our relationships are precious opportunities to express the divinity of our soul. Through our relationships we learn and evolve.
Our closest relationships bring us the greatest joy but they also often hinder our spiritual growth. This happens because of our strong attachments to our loved ones.
Attachment makes us feel that we are complete or happy only when we are with a particular person. We also want him or her to be present in our life in a way that pleases us. Without that person being there or acting in a particular way, we feel a sense of insecurity and lack.
Attachments breed dependency, a false sense of security and bring tension in a relationship.
Engaging in regular spiritual company helps you detach and remember that we are all souls on a temporary human journey. This does not mean you hold back your love. Not being attached means loving unconditionally without judgements and expectations. This actually enhances your relationships and life.
3. Protects your mind from negative thinking
The mind is a continuous flow of thoughts. Like a river, it has a tendency to flow downwards. When faced with a situation where the facts are unknown or unclear, it has a tendency to think the worst. It jumps to wrong conclusions and starts to generate fearful or negative thoughts.
Being in daily spiritual company raises your perspective and mood and can insure you against habitual negative thinking.
It gives you faith that the Universe is benevolent and that there is a higher purpose to everything that you encounter in life. It promotes a positive mind by inspiring you to transmute lower emotions and choose higher responses. You learn to detach from drama and ego and choose peace.
4. Builds faith
You may have experienced a disappointment or setback and wondered, “Why did this have to happen to me?” or “Why did it have to happen in this way?”
Sometimes, we are able to look back and see that things happened for the best and at other times, the challenges seem to have come out of nowhere and for no reason.
Being in spiritual company regularly builds faith. Faith is a firm inner conviction or knowing that the universe only brings what is for your highest and best good. Situations can be challenging but if you can see the blessings in them, they become a wonderful means to bring out the spiritual shine from within you.
Faith helps to strengthen your conviction that no suffering is without a higher purpose and carries you through difficulties with greater ease and poise.
5. Gives you the motivation and courage to move forward
Reading or hearing about how someone overcame adversity and grew from it can encourage you to do the same. It can give you the motivation and courage you need to meet and overcome your own life’s challenges. Spiritual company provides that.
On the other hand, watching or listening to everyday news, gossip and shows for entertainment purposes only clutters and stresses your mind. It doesn’t do much to help you move forward in life with less pain and more ease.
6. Promotes inner strength and resilience
Building resilience to life’s unexpected and inevitable blows makes as much sense as planning for your financial security to tide you through future seen, and unforeseen circumstances. You must have a healthy balance in your emotional bank account. And, you have to build it before calamity strikes. The way to do this is to cultivate a positive mind.
Engaging with and learning from regular spiritual company can help give you the inspiration, inner strength and resilience to handle adversity with greater equanimity and ease.
What we associate with matters
A raindrop from the sky, if it is caught in the hands, is pure enough for drinking. If it falls in the gutter, its value drops so much that it cannot be used for even washing the feet. If it falls on a hot surface, it perishes. If it falls on a lotus leaf, it shines like a pearl and finally, if it falls on an oyster, it becomes a pearl. The drop is the same, but its existence and worth depends on with whom it associates. – Swami Vivekananda.
As spiritual master, Swami Vivekananda tells us, what and whom we associate with, and spend our time and energy on, determines the quality of our outer and inner lives.
The type of friends and people in your life, what you interact with on the internet, what you watch on TV, the podcasts and programs you listen to, the types of books and magazines you read—they all influence your mind and thereby, the quality of your life.
Engaging in spiritual company everyday will surely raise your perspective of life, promote a healthy detachment, develop a positive mind, increase your faith and motivation, build inner resilience and uplift your entire life.
Like this post? Sign up for the free fortnightly Spiritual Solutions Newsletter and receive the latest articles, news and updates in your email inbox!
Absolutely beautiful article ❤️❤️❤️🙏🙏🙏 thank you so much x
Thank you, for your interest and kind words, Minisha. I’m glad you liked it!