Sadhana/Spiritual Practices
People think that they have overcome their bad habits merely by avoiding them, but they have not eliminated them at their roots.  A person I know had a drinking problem.  She did the AA program and was sober for eight years.  Then she fell to drinking at a party.  Why?  Because the desire was still there in her mind.  The guru wants you to look into the mind, find the root of that desire, and extirpate it.  So, stay in the teachings; keep company with guru, dharma, and sangha, and the teachings will finally dissolve those desires at the root.

People think sadhana has a goal.  I never thought so.  My thinking is that one just does sadhana; just do the work and the goal will come.

There are many food faddists frequenting spiritual groups these days.  They will soon find out that the superior diet of the spiritual aspirant is guru anushashana, vidya shastra, and aparokshanubhuti.  What does this mean?  It means digestion of the teachings coming from guru and scripture, assimilation of that rejuvenating nourishment, resulting in the supreme spiritual health of realization.  The body then simply follows suit and retains ongoing health.

Shifting about from asana to asana develops asana-vasana – a desire of the mind for shifting about all the time.  The Father of Yoga relates this to chanchala-vritti, a bothersome vibration of the mind that causes the student to want to move and leave the meditation seat.  Adopting a balanced asana of the mind destroys such vasanas.  So get into one physical posture, ekasana, suited for still meditation, and place the mind into the asana of perfect concentration.

Liladhyan, meditation on the Divine Sport of the Lord, is excellent.  As long as you are focused on the Ideal, you are beyond distraction.

Do not run away from your true Nature, always run towards It.  The hound of heaven is after you anyway, and will catch up sooner or later.  The sooner, the better, as they say.....

Seers like Patanjali and Vedavyasa said: Samskaras of worldliness get replaced by meditation; samskaras of meditation get replaced by Samadhi; samskaras of Samadhi get dissolved by Nirvikalpa.

Q: How is one to find the middle path?  That is, between East and West, monk and householder?
Babaji: I would not call Advaita the middle path, or dualism either.  Yoga is the middle path.  Yoga is anything one does to transform the mind, and best accomplished in the knowledge that the Soul is already perfect.

Until Viveka and Vairagya — discrimination between the Essential and the nonessential, and renunciation of the nonessential — are in place, one's spiritual life has not really begun.