The Bearded Mystic Podcast
Rahul N Singh host of The Bearded Mystic Podcast explores the Hindu philosophy of Advaita Vedanta or Nonduality in a very simple, direct and practical way.
Episodes include discussions into eastern scriptures like The Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads etc and discussions about everyday spirituality.
Rahul has been on the spiritual path for over 20 years and has an open-minded approach to spirituality and finds that there is no one size fits all approach.
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The Bearded Mystic Podcast
From Boredom to Enlightenment: Reimagining Spiritual Teachings
Spiritual practice can become routine and boring when we repeatedly hear the same teachings without changing our approach to receiving them, but by shifting how we listen and actively engaging with each concept on a personal level, we can transform even simple teachings into profound insights.
• Finding spiritual teachings boring often reflects our own dullness of mind rather than issues with the teaching
• Quality matters more than quantity in spiritual practice—it's what you do with your time that counts
• True spiritual growth comes from deeply exploring one teaching rather than consuming many superficially
• Comparing teachings with your direct experience of formless awareness helps discern what's valuable
• Self-examination reveals gaps between intellectual understanding and lived experience
• The challenge isn't realizing our true nature but embodying the qualities that flow from that realization
• A sattvic (pure, clear) mind naturally finds depth in seemingly simple concepts
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Bearded Mystic podcast, and I am your host, rahul N Singh. Thank you for taking out the time today to either watch or listen to this podcast episode. Today I'm going to be talking about something that is important for me to kind of let out. I think the reason for this is growing up, I never had to really pick a spiritual path. I was given a spiritual path and I was able to follow it. Once I became a teenager, I picked that path for myself personally.
Speaker 1:And you know, when you go to a spiritual place again and again and again, you can get complacency and you can start because you don't develop further. Everything you hear tends to be the same thing, repeated again and again, and because you're not doing any of the work anyway, you're just going there doing the basic thing of attending. You kind of get stuck in this kind of cycle of just going, listening, finding it boring, going home, and that continues. Now I may listen to the same thing again and again, week in, week out. It may not be deep. It may be deep, and does it affect me today Somewhat? There's been times when I feel that I didn't learn anything and that kind of disturbs me. But last week I decided that I'm going to do something different, and that's what I'm sharing with you today. And that's what I'm sharing with you today. That difference is that, even if I hear the same thing again and again, or if I feel like I haven't learned anything today, or I felt that the two hours I spent going to satsang wasn't fruitful, how about if I changed the way I listened? And actually I put this into practice yesterday. So maybe in a couple of weeks I'll speak again about it. But what I did this time was, you know, obviously in those two hours I will always be in the awareness of formless awareness. That's kind of the practice that I do anyway. That's always be in the awareness of formless awareness. That's kind of the practice that I do anyway. That's always there in the background.
Speaker 1:And then you have the thoughts that the speaker talks about, or a song that you hear, a bhajan, or you know, you just listen to that. And what I did this time was, whatever I listened to, I elevated the thought. So, in my own mind, not saying that their thought didn't need elevated, that their thought needed elevation, no, how would I make it interesting for me? And so this is interesting, right? So in the background, awareness remains. That does not. That does not change. Now we're going into the thinking faculty, the intellectual faculty, so this is different. So I'm not talking about the, I'm not talking about remaining in awareness. I'm talking about something a bit different now. So when we're listening to the thoughts, I would just listen and I'll be like okay, how, how does this relate to me today in my spiritual practice? Not, oh, is it a deep spiritual thought, or is it not? How about, if I looked at, well, how would I develop this?
Speaker 1:So somebody talked about loving everyone. I know it's a very basic thing and somewhat people think it's a cliche thing to say in spirituality. But okay, what does loving everyone mean? Okay, so first thing I did was I looked at do I do I love everyone? I don't know. Do I hate anyone? I don't hate anyone. Do I dislike some people? Yes, does that stop me from loving them? No, but if I dislike someone, does it hinder me expressing my love for them? Yes, it could. Ok, so let's look into that. Then why is it that I'm not loving everyone? Because if you can hinder that love, that means I don't love everyone, right? So then you can find out the little dents that you have in your understanding or in your experience.
Speaker 1:See, it's not important about getting to realization. I think getting to realization anybody can do. I don't think I think it to realization anybody can do. I don't think. I think it's rare that someone gets there. That's my personal opinion and that's also shared in the Bhagavad Gita. Sri Krishna says the same thing.
Speaker 1:But when it comes to practically living, like humility, you know, do I really, am I really humble? Yeah, am I really? You know, do I really consider myself to be a humble person? Has there been times when my ego has creeped in, that I feel like I'm better than somebody? And that has happened. And so I have to check why did that occur? Was it something that was factual or was it something that I felt some level of pride for some level of personal agenda in? So, you know, when we do this type of introspective kind of work, we're able to see how the teachings are really affecting us. We can get to know our true nature as Brahman. That's fine. I don't think that's the difficult part. The difficult part is the result of that. There are certain expectations.
Speaker 1:You know, I remember reading Swami Dayanandaji's. He had a book called the Value of Values and it's the values. I can't remember the actual number of values, but basically an enlightened person will have that many. It in chapter 13 I think, from verse 8 onwards, there's a list of the qualities an enlightened being should have. Because urjan asks but how can I recognize that person? You know, what kind of qualities do they have? So this is when sri krishan expresses, and in my opinion that's a good parameter for people to check if they know an enlightened person. Now, for someone like me, who's on the path, who's a seeker, that's a good way to see where am I on the path?
Speaker 1:Now, quite a number of people may turn around and say you know, I find spirituality boring. It's just the same thing, said and again and again, and it comes back to this it's only boring because you do not know what to do with the teaching. Yeah, frankly, that's what happens, even if you've listened to everything and you think it's basic and you think it's mid or you think it's um, you know, not that deep. Maybe the shallowness is not in the teaching but in the receiver of the teaching. If I'm a, if I claim to be a deep thinker, then even the most shallow of thoughts I can make into something deep, I can transform it. And that's true, see, when you see things from the perspective of Brahman, from formless awareness, from the nirguna Brahman. So I'm talking about the vast aspect of Brahman. So let's go into saguna Brahman here and let's go into the attribute of vastness. Now, a simple teaching can have vast outcomes, and that's where the rubber meets the road. You then see how can you make that simple teaching into something vast? You make that simple teaching into something vast.
Speaker 1:And what I find these days in spirituality is we jump from one video to another, one text to another, but we don't actually spend time understanding one verse or one line or one poem as a whole. We just jump on to the next thing, we jump on to the next upanishad, we jump on to the next aphorism sutra in the brahma sutras. We don't actually spend time to understand that one sutra. Same thing with the bhagavad-gita. Do we actually understand that verse?
Speaker 1:And this is where I find today, although we may claim to be intellectual, although we may claim to be more, um, we tend to be utilizing our intellect more and we want rationality and logic, but at the same time we're not spending the correct amount of time actually exploring the teaching within. And one thing I've always done is compare what I know of as formless awareness and matching each line to what I read or listen to. Against that, now, anything that doesn't match that formless awareness, I don't entertain it, I just put it to the side. But whatever does, which is majority of the case I spend time and I explore, and this is more important than reading many books, listening to many talks, watching many talks and thinking. One knows Vedanta than you know. Reading many books, listening to many talks, watching many talks and thinking one knows Vedanta.
Speaker 1:The whole point of Vedanta is to know yourself, to know how to expand yourself. And when I'm talking about yourself, I'm talking about the Atma, I'm not talking about you the personality. And the more you live as the Atma, the more you live a deeper life. So if you find something boring, it's a representation of your dullness in the mind. So the tamas gun rather than the sattvic gun. If you are full of a sattvic mind, then boundlessness, purity, is your way, and that's what I find is that when we change our approach, we gain so much. So, really, that's.
Speaker 1:It's a short video today. I know it's not as long as I normally do, but I just wanted to want to share that and let me know what do you think? Do you feel like spiritual teachings? Do you do the same thing as spiritual teachings? Like, what's your method like? If you read something, what do you do? Do you write notes about it? Um, how do you approach your spiritual practice? I just want to share what I've gone through recently.
Speaker 1:Um, and you know, uh, and it's something, and I think what triggered the practice actually was yesterday I listened to my guru and she said that you know, it's not about the quantity, the amount of times you go to satsang or the amount of minutes you spend in satsang. It's actually about the quality, like, what are you doing in those minutes, minutes? And I was thinking, you know, if I find that the intellectual capability of most of the speeches is below me, but being aware of formalist awareness, there's nothing higher than that. So why isn't my time spent doing that, instead of criticizing the apparent thoughts that are lower than what I think is high spiritual teachings? So, changing my approach, I changed my energy, so where I could have got up from satsang feeling frustrated, instead I had a good time because I'm resting in formless awareness. Even if the teachings are rather simple, I'm able, with my intellect, to expand upon it, because that's the gift that has been given to me through the mind, and why not use it for a positive purpose? And so, yeah, just let me know your thoughts, let me know how you feel with your spiritual practice.
Speaker 1:What are you doing? And if this video has helped you, let me know, because sometimes you know it's hard until you get feedback about how people feel, about listening to your stuff. Little to know what's doing. Well, so, um, do you like this? Do comment, do subscribe, do join my discord server, say hi to me there, ask questions. I love talking about spirituality, I love writing about spirituality. So whenever I get a moment to do that, trust me, I would always find time for it. So, but, yes, yeah, okay, take care everyone, namaste.
