Balancing Material and spiritual life

Although it is extremely helpful for most beginners to cultivate a quieter life, meeting fewer people and keeping less busy, retiring into the temporary solitude each day of a study-meditation period, the aspirant need not reject society altogether or totally retire from everything worldly. Some do, of course, and join ashrams or monasteries. But such a drastic move is difficult for most persons in modern life. Nor is it recommended by philosophy. The opposition encountered in that life, its materialistic unpleasantness, may be treated as a challenge. The exercise of keeping the emotional self peaceful, or making the mind calm, despite provocation, is of the utmost value in such circumstances.

Paul Brunton