Addressing the large online audience gathered for the 42nd Global Meditation in Place event today, Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj offered a mechanism to pierce through the barriers that impede our spiritual progress. Life has many challenges, he said. We may face physical, financial, emotional, or mental difficulties, and these often act as hindrances in our quest to find God. When we sit down to meditate, these difficulties keep us from stilling the body and mind, which is critical for us to focus our attention within and make inner spiritual progress.

Saints and spiritual Masters teach us how we can deal with life’s ups and downs, so that they do not impact us spiritually. To do so, we first need to realize that we are not the body or the mind, but the soul. We need to understand the importance of cleansing our soul and of leading the right kind of life that takes us Godward.

We are like a pipe, Sant Rajinder Singh Ji said, and the cleaner the pipe, the more easily God’s love and Light can flow through us. We have a choice to either allow our pipe to clog up or to cleanse it so that the divine waters flow smoothly through it. It all depends on how we live our life.

When we entertain negative thoughts, words, and deeds, we clog our pipe. In contrast, when we lead an ethical life and regularly focus our attention within through meditation, we pierce the walls of body and mind and connect with the divine Light of God.

Today, Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj described the path Godward. He said that when we experience the yearning to find God at some point in our lives, we search for God in the outer world because this outer world is all we know. But God is not far away from us. God resides within us, and in this human existence, we have all that is needed for us to find God.

We first need to develop right understanding of who we are and of our relationship with God. This right understanding comes when, under the guidance of a spiritual adept, we realize that our true form is not the body, the mind, or the intellect. Our true essence is the soul, which is a part of God and is conscious. The spiritual Master said the soul is a droplet of the Ocean of God, and just as a grain of sand carries the entire desert within it, the droplet of our soul contains all the characteristics of the Ocean of God.

When we experience ourselves as soul and realize that we have been separated from God for eons, our goal and the path to achieving our goal become clear. To experience our true essence, we need to focus our attention at the third eye—the gateway to the inner regions. The process of taking our attention away from the world outside and focusing it at this gateway is called meditation. Sant Rajinder Singh Ji said that as we collect our sensory currents at the third eye, in the stillness of the body and mind, our soul embarks on the spiritual journey to connect with God’s Light and love. This journey culminates in the fulfillment of life’s supreme purpose.