Can Meditation Destroy Your Family and Relationships?

Can meditation destroy a family if one partner is developing and the other is not?

That is a fundamental question. I remember that when I first encountered different terms, trips, and everything connected with spiritual development or esotericism, the question almost always came up: Does your wife practice? Does your husband? Your business partners? In other words, do you practice together?

Why is that question asked? Where does it come from? It arises from separating the spiritual and material worlds. A person says there is a material world and a spiritual world. If I move into the spiritual one, I need to be there with my partner, or it seems that development will not happen.

That is where the question originally comes from. Then people begin reasoning about it. They say someone who pursues spiritual development becomes more elevated, calmer, smarter, and more developed, and as a result, their path may diverge from their husband’s or wife’s. But the original premise is entirely the separation of the material and spiritual worlds.

If we come to understand that the material world is part of the spiritual world, without dividing the two concepts, everything changes.

We could say there is a single, unified world. We do not have to call it “spiritual”; we could call it real, actual, true life. Within that life is a layer a person describes as material: the material objects around us.

If we do not divide the two, then when people say someone is pursuing spiritual development, that person is simply doing exercises society happens to call by that name. Some people walk a lot. I walk a lot, but not because I deliberately exercise. There is simply a lot of movement in my day. I am not intentionally accumulating steps.

I even asked my sister whether you need to separate the steps you take during the day from those counted as “dedicated physical activity,” or exercise. Do they need to be separated? I cannot help walking 10,000 steps. It seems to me that even if I do nothing, I still walk them: around the house and yard, with the dog, in town, with the children, to the car and back. To avoid reaching 10,000 steps, I would have to restrict myself deliberately—perhaps get sick and stay in bed. Then it would be 6,000–8,000.

My sister said, “Of course you don’t need to separate them. That is simply your lifestyle. You move. You do not sit in one room or spend the whole day at a desk; you get around.” I do not call that exercise. I could, but it is not exercise.

It is the same with practices. If, throughout the day, I move around, look at what is happening in the space around me, try to feel other people, notice impulses and energies, and observe what is moving, you could call that meditation. You could say, “I am doing practices. I am in meditation.” Or it is simply a natural way of being.

I am explaining this to get the point across that a meditative state is your life. It is an expansion of your perception.

Reaching a state where you continually register what is happening while you are awake—to say nothing of sleep—requires a substantial expansion of consciousness. In a sense, you need to be an initiate to reach those states.

Now let’s turn to why the problem itself arises. Can being in meditation destroy a relationship? Of course it can, just as any action can.

If you meet your friends every morning at 8:00 to drink beer, could that destroy a relationship? Yes. If you meet your friends every morning at 8:00 to meditate, could that destroy a relationship? Of course it could.

I chose those examples deliberately to show that it all depends on what bothers whom. If your husband or wife is bothered by your drinking beer, the relationship may break down. If they are not, everything will be fine.

Here is an example. I used to drink alcohol, but I have not had any for about 14 years. I remember a recurring situation in which my wife would say, “I wish you drank instead.” I did not choose the beer example at random. Of course, a remark like that comes from anger, irritation, or a bad mood. Wishing that your husband drank is a strange thing.

But why does someone say that? Drinking alcohol narrows a person’s perception, and a person with narrowed perception is easier to understand. It is much easier to understand an object—a microphone or a phone charger, for example—than a person whose perception is expanded.

There is something important to add. I did not give the example of a relationship breaking down because meditation is the cause. I deliberately showed that, like any action in life, it can become a factor. But it is not the underlying cause. I do not want anyone to form the belief that “meditation destroys relationships.” That is the wrong way to see it.

We could look at another angle, but it is a large subject of its own: whether expanding perception and increasing inner freedom affect the course of a relationship. That is a separate discussion. As your perception expands, at a certain point you arrive at a state of freedom. I often show this in meditations: levels of freedom and what lies behind them.

But it is important to understand that freedom is freedom. It can lead to completely different actions. If the very possibility of a relationship breaking down is a limitation for you—I am not saying that is right—then it is no longer freedom.

You cannot approach a state of freedom if you do not allow for different possibilities, including extreme ones. Anything could happen right now, for example; even the balcony could collapse. That is the essence of freedom.

So when people talk about spiritual freedom or spiritual development, there is a great deal of distortion—or, to put it bluntly, lying. They deceive themselves, because they still surround themselves with many different restrictions and things they find unacceptable.

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