I don’t remember much from my childhood, but I have a clear memory of being a young, starry-eyed boy of about 7 or 8 years old, thinking that the age of 40 was a really mature and grown-up age where adults really have everything all figured out. I know that I retained this memory because when I turned 40 myself a few months ago, the image I had in my mind of what I thought being a 40-year-old would be like made me laugh out loud. While I’d imagined having a real grasp of what life is all about, and knowing how to operate effectively in this world, a big part of me still feels like that little boy: full of curiosity and unanswerable questions about the bigger questions in life without a clue of what I’m actually doing.
But instead of feeling inadequate because of this, I feel gratified, because I soon realized that these adults only seemed to have everything figured out because they had become, as Yogananda calls them, “psychological antiques.” This means they had all their opinions and ideas already formed, their regrets and longings on a loop, and their childlike sense of wonder and curiosity all but left by the wayside. And while that kind of psychological certainty looked good to me when I was a child, having been on the spiritual path for a decade and a half I see things a bit differently now.
And sitting here at this moment, thinking about what society says a 40-year-old ought to be like, I’m actually very proud of myself because of one very silly little thing I just learned how to do recently: maintain our community pool. In fact, I was sent to an all-day seminar put on by top-tier pool professionals who explained, in all the glorious scientific detail you’d expect from an all-day pool seminar, what exactly was going on between the various chemicals in my pool. And maybe it’s because I’m at the age where bird watching inexplicably becomes interesting, or maybe these guys were actually just great presenters, but I actually found the topic fascinating, like a complex real-world puzzle that I was now in charge of solving.
After a couple weeks of handling these various chemicals and processes, I started to notice something interesting: Our spiritual lives are a lot like a chlorine pool. There are various environmental factors working to change the pool every day, and in order to maintain the optimal state of a pool it needs constant care and attention, just like our sadhana and spiritual practices. We can often get caught up in thinking our spiritual well-being is somehow a reflection of our worth, that if we’re not doing well in our spiritual practices it must be because there’s something wrong with us. But the professional pool maintainer doesn’t see the pool that way, he just sees simple problems of water chemistry that require simple adjustments and fixes.
Yogananda said that Kriya yoga plus devotion is like “spiritual mathematics” and it cannot fail. Pool chemistry works in much the same way as mathematics, in that 1+1=2, and certain chemicals are needed to maintain optimal levels of other chemicals. For example, did you know if you just add chlorine to a pool of water it will quickly burn off from the sun? You actually need something called Cyanuric Acid in order to stabilize the chlorine and keep it from quickly dissipating. This reminds me a lot of the qualities cultivated in meditation, like inner Peace, Bliss, or Calmness. Without a bulwark like mental discrimination, or simply being careful about the environmental influences you subject yourself to, these inner qualities can very quickly be dissipated. Whereas carefully cultivating right environment can help maintain and grow these inner qualities much more effectively.
Similarly with pH of the water, there’s an acceptable range of acidity or basicity but not necessarily one perfect level required. This is a lot like our mental state, where we can be a bit more “happy” or “sad” depending on the moment, but keeping in the range of “even-minded and cheerful” is always the goal. Letting our emotions swing too far in either direction can be problematic in different ways, just like water that is too basic or too acidic. And whereas in our pool we can add an acid or a base to maintain a proper pH level, we can add in extra practices whenever our “spiritual pH” is a bit off. When we feel too excited, doing some grounding exercises can help us interiorize and focus our energy back into the spine, and when we feel depressed or down, some affirmations, chants, or spiritual satsang can be just the thing we need to come back into balance.
Now while a chlorine “shock” to a pool isn’t quite the same as the “liberating shock of Omnipresence” as Yogananda calls it, I could still go all day with this metaphor. However, I hope to leave you with the simple reminder that your spiritual development should be treated at times as impersonally as you would treat a chlorine pool. Just like a daily pH and chlorine check, you can do a daily Joy check, or Peace check, and see where you may need to add in a bit more sadhana, or service. Each pool is slightly different though, so make sure your introspection is filled with grace and compassion for all the karma you’ve built up to get to this point. And when we invite the Master to swim in our pool of consciousness, He helps take care of everything in even better ways than we could imagine. May His presence in your life bless you today and every day.
