Simplify Life Through Yoga: Embrace Purpose, Non-Acquiring, and Contentment

Live with Purpose

The essential key to simple living is dharma, living in harmony with our spiritual nature and with all of life. Dharma refers to the inherent divine order and purpose of life. Our overarching purpose is to awaken spiritually, to realize our essential nature and live in accord with it. This divine purpose provides the necessary “polestar” to guide our choices. There are so many choices to make every day and choice-making takes energy. Clarity about our central purpose provides a ready reference point, narrows the field of possibilities, and facilitates ease in decision making.

We can ask:

• Will this choice support my purpose?
• Will it support spiritual awakening, or will it take me further from my goal?

This inquiry helps us live intentionally, avoiding the accumulation of things or involvement in situations that are not in alignment with our purpose.

Eliminate Nonessentials

It takes insight and vigilance to not accumulate more than we need. It is easy to collect things, more difficult to keep our lives clear of superfluous possessions. The practice of nonacquiring can help. To practice nonacquiring is to renounce or eliminate nonessentials. This doesn’t mean we can’t have things we enjoy, it means we acquire only what we actually use—whether that use is simply appreciation of the beauty of something or its utilitarian nature.

A lesson in nonacquiring came to me through travel. Almost every special destination whether it is a sacred place, a natural wonder, or historical site has a souvenir shop attached to it. I’ve carried a few things back home and noticed that the luster is lost over time. It becomes something else to dust or find a place to store. I started asking myself why it was so tempting to buy something in those shops. What I discovered was a desire to hold onto the experience. While things may jog our memory of something, it is not possible to hold onto experiences. Things cannot do that for us.

This discernment process can be applied to everything we have or intend to acquire. Ask:

• What is it that we expect it to provide for us?
• Can it do that?

Even Thoreau found himself confronting this desire to acquire when he brought some lovely pieces of limestone into his cabin. He said, “I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.”

Be Content

The third practice to support simple living is the cultivation of contentment. This is the practice of consciously abiding in our true nature and experiencing our essential wholeness. Superconscious meditation makes this possible. When we regularly sit for meditation and our minds become quiet, the inherent fullness of the divine Self is revealed. We do not need to add anything to the Self. It is whole and complete. To touch this wholeness and experience freedom from desire, even for just a few minutes a day, introduces us to the unconditional happiness that is always with us. Once we know this, we are naturally inclined to live a simpler life.

Embracing the tenets of yoga, we can transcend external clutter, tap into our intrinsic purpose, and unearth a profound contentment that simplifies our existence.