I’ve said this before. The right questions are more important than the right answers. And every once in a while, you come across these priceless questions. A friend at the ashram asked Jacqueline two questions – the second one will come in the next post. Her replies were so special, I couldn’t resist sharing.

If you want to hear it all in Jacqueline’s voice, click here (14 min).

Question: When I look at people in world, also many of my friends, I just don’t understand why they are doing what they are doing. I find ordinary pursuits meaningless and the teachers tell us that it is all an illusion. Can you please say something about this?

Jacqueline: First of all, what I would like to say is you have to be very careful with this – that everything is an illusion, the world is an illusion. People who haven’t realized the truth of who they are, haven’t realized what reality really is, can end up becoming very confused by this idea that the world is an illusion, everything is an illusion, nothing matters.

When someone hasn’t had that realization, it can be just be a way of turning their back on the world. It can be a form of escapism. The illusion is, it’s not the world, but it is what the mind projects on the world. The stories that the mind projects onto the leela, God’s divine play, the happening that we call life. It’s the mind’s projection onto this that we could call the illusion.

Now, finding ordinary pursuits meaningless – first of all, very important, don’t become a spiritual snob. And, I’m not only speaking to this young man now, but just generally speaking, beware of that. Judging other people’s lives because they are not on a spiritual pathway, you create actually, a new kind identity. The identity that I often call ‘the holy personality’.

Your spiritual pathway is about recognizing that you are a spiritual being. Recognizing your true nature. A spiritual pathway is moving beyond the mistaken identities of who we think we are. You know, I’m fantastic, I’m not good enough, I’m this, I’m that. This is the illusion, this is the mind’s projection. But it can be very easy on a spiritual pathway, to start building up a new identity, that of being holy. And any identity you build up, you will get stuck in it.

So the pursuits you might call meaningless, the lives some people are living, are the lives that are required for people until they are ready to awaken. Anybody coming to this planet has some kind of karma to work out. And it’s not meaningless. So, the things you meet in life, how you deal with these things, how you relate to people, all of this, is karma working itself out.

The conflicts we have, it’s like when you are making a diamond- I don’t remember the English word for this, but sometimes it says, you know, they say you need a diamond to cut a diamond, to rub against it. And the tensions and irritations we can meet in life, can be a fine way of polishing our inner diamond, our inner truth.

So if everyone coming on this planet, read a book on spirituality or found a teaching that everything is an illusion, and then they just sat down and didn’t do anything. I mean, first of all, it wouldn’t be possible, but it would be a total waste of an incarnation. I think you understand what I mean by this.

So, don’t label other people’s lives meaningless. Stay centered in yourself and walk your own pathway. That will give you plenty to do. No need to get lost in other people’s drama, in that way. And if you are using a lot of energy to judge and think about why other people’s lives are so meaningless, you are getting lost, stuck. Use your energy instead in your sadhana, in your spiritual pathway, in your practice.