22. Improve Quality Of Life

When we go to college or school we have big dreams. We want to go out into the world and achieve fame, money, respect and admiration of peers.

We begin to think that quantity of things we possess is more important than people around us. Our outlook of life changes when we land a job. We live, talk, dress, behave, earn money and spend money in a manner that pleases us.

We are continuously working hard for our material needs that we forget that this is the not the core of our life. We live in a world where we can get any service for money. There is nothing that money cannot buy. Since we need money and find it a useful currency, we begin develop a habit. We begin to reduce everything in our life to monetary transactions.

We forget that everything in the outer world is lifestyle. Lifestyle is all about the quantity of things we possess. We measure our life by our bank balance. Lifestyle is related to the way in which we dress, where we go out to dine, how we behave with people, earn our money and spend our money. All these are related to worldly life and part of our life style.

We mistakenly link two unrelated things together. We start to believe that there is nothing in the world beyond lifestyle. Many of us run to spiritual Masters even when we have achieved everything that the outer world can give us. We will have two cars, many houses although we don't feel at home in any one of it, have stacks of new suits and throw lavish parties. Yet we lack fulfillment. We have a deep sense of restlessness and we cannot relax in one place. This is because we have achieved everything we want in our chosen lifestyle, but it turns out to be all wrong. Something does not feel quite right. No matter how hard we try, it will not be our life. Life is not lifestyle, and lifestyle is not life.

Life is all about the quality of our consciousness. Life takes us inward, in a journey of self-discovery. Lifestyle allows us to swim in the waters of material things,

which after a while become shallow and insipid. We realize that only the outwards things are enough for a lifestyle, but life is another game altogether.

Let's realize this distinction and apply it with awareness. A transformation will happen within us. This will lead us in the right path.