Prema Shakti Yoga

16/02/2026

Love as Leverage

In many stories of cheating, three roles quietly take shape. There is the Anchor, the long term partner who is being cheated on. There is the Catalyst, the affair or fling that brings excitement. And there is the Traveler, who is also the cheater, moving between the two. At first glance, it can look like a simple story of temptation. But more often, it is a story about divided needs.

The Anchor represents stability, shared history, and commitment. They are part of daily life, woven into routines and responsibilities. Over time, that steadiness can begin to feel ordinary, not because it lacks value, but because it is constant. What once felt grounding slowly becomes expected, and what is expected is often overlooked.

The Catalyst represents intensity and validation. With the affair partner, attention feels focused and alive. The connection is lighter, freer from the weight of long term responsibility. Because it exists outside routine and shared obligations, it can feel more passionate and more meaningful than it truly is. What is really new is not necessarily love, but context.

Then there is the Traveler, the cheater who moves between security and excitement. The Traveler often claims confusion, loneliness, or unmet needs. They may say they still love their partner while insisting that the affair filled something missing. But beneath these explanations is a harder truth. Instead of confronting dissatisfaction within themselves or within the relationship honestly, they attempt to split their needs across two people.

Cheating, in this sense, becomes a negotiation. The Anchor provides safety. The Catalyst provides stimulation. The Traveler tries to combine both, hoping that together they will produce a sense of wholeness. But, it rarely works.

The Anchor begins to feel distance and betrayal, reduced to stability rather than desire. The Catalyst eventually realizes they are exciting but not fully chosen. And the Traveler, despite having access to both comfort and intensity, often discovers that the restlessness remains. The emptiness that fueled the affair is still there, because it was never created by one partner alone.

If someone needs two people to feel complete, the issue is rarely just the relationship. This does not erase responsibility because cheating is a choice but, it is often a choice driven by the belief that fulfillment can be outsourced. Instead of asking why intimacy feels dull, why validation feels urgent, or why boredom feels threatening, the Traveler searches for a person to medicate the discomfort.

The deeper question is whether love is simply the management of changing needs, or whether it is a decision to face dissatisfaction without escaping it. When partners become emotional assets, compared and balanced against each other, betrayal becomes easier to justify. When love is treated as commitment, the work turns inward.

The quiet tragedy of the cheater is that in trying to have more, they often fracture what they already have. By dividing themselves between the Anchor and the Catalyst, they remain divided within, never fully at peace in either place.

Painting: 'The Red Room', 1898 by Félix Vallotton

16/02/2026

“…myseľ prestáva byť trhoviskom a srdce žobrákom…”

Why in ashrams in India do disciples work without receiving a salary and donate everything they possess to the ashram? Do you consider that just? Is it fair to work without receiving money?

Question by Elena Blanco

Response by Prabhuji:

Elena… your question is profoundly human… “is it just?”… the mind is fascinated by that word because it hands it both the hammer and the judge’s seat. Socrates already sensed it: the unexamined mind becomes a tribunal of shadows; it judges swiftly because it fears looking deeply. Nietzsche, with his irony, would say that many times we call “justice” a well-dressed revenge. Simone Weil, more silent, would whisper to you that true justice begins when attention ceases to be a weapon and becomes a clear gaze. Yet religion and spiritual life cannot be so easily imprisoned in a tribunal. Kierkegaard would say: what is decisive occurs inwardly, where no code can replace the living choice. Let us try to examine what you propose with eyes free of both romanticism and cynicism, so that we may understand this matter clearly.

As you say, in many ashrams—and not only in India—you will see disciples working arduously without salary. Likewise, in most cases, they donate all their possessions to the ashram or the organization, as the case may be. You ask me whether this “is just,” and I would answer that it depends, because on the spiritual path, in the domain of revelation, “just” does not mean “equal for all,” but “true for consciousness.” That is to say, if an individual decides to offer their time, energy, possessions, or money from freedom, understanding, and love, this cannot be called injustice, but offering. Now, if someone does the same out of fear, pressure, guilt, need, manipulation, promises of salvation, or emotional blackmail, then it is not offering, but exploitation or manipulation.

There are human beings who work out of fear: “if I do not do this, I will be rejected, dismissed, I will not eat, I will not be able to pay my debts, I will lose my place.” There are people willing to work for money; their life is an exchange, a business: I pay and I charge; one effort for one dollar, ten efforts for ten dollars; service for money. There are people who decide to work for fame and honor; they strive to be seen, appreciated, admired, venerated, and honored. There are those who labor intensely in life seeking power, dominance, and control. All this can exist both in an ashram and in an office, a business, or any company, because what purifies is not the place, but consciousness. Here, an inward Christian master such as Meister Eckhart would wink at you: it is not the external act that sanctifies, but the detachment from the self that wants to appropriate the act. That is why Teresa of Calcutta could speak of service as embodied love: not as career, nor as currency, but as love and devotion.

Disciples in ashrams do not “work without salary”; they practice karma yoga, which is something profoundly different. Karma yoga consists of a religious practice, an integral part of Hinduism. It is far more than simple “unpaid labor”; it is learning to act without allowing the egoic phenomenon to steal the results. It is total action, free from inner slavery; instead of being used, you use every action to awaken.

karmany evādhikāras te mā phaleṣu kadācana
mā karma-phala-hetur bhūr mā te saṅgo ’stv akarmaṇi

“You have the right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.”
Bhagavad Gītā 2.47

Instead of turning your labor into complaint or pride, it becomes meditation, awareness in the body, love in the gesture, attention to the breath.

According to His Holiness Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh, Karma Yoga is: “Work done with the right attitude becomes consecrated, a sacred act. A life devoted to the performance of selfless acts becomes a divine life.”

And in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says:

tasmād asaktaḥ satataṁ kāryaṁ karma samāchara
asakto hyācharan karma param āpnoti pūruṣhaḥ

“Therefore, without attachment, constantly perform the action that must be done; for by acting without attachment to the fruits, one attains the Supreme.”
Bhagavad Gita 3:19

Our earthly life is the result of karma and therefore already contains within itself the way out: to spiritualize action by relinquishing identification with what we do. There the spirit of karma yoga arises: action without possession, effort devoid of vanity, offering without expectation of fruit. Not working as self-affirmation, but as offering; acting fully, yet inwardly light. It is precisely in that lightness that the miracle may occur: what previously was karma that bound you becomes purifying karma; life ceases to be a battlefield. In the cultivation of such an attitude, your freedom is hidden. We do not cease to act, nor do we renounce action; we cease clinging, and act with detachment. When the inner hand opens, life becomes light, it loses its weight. Your reward is not a paycheck or a handful of coins; it is that your mind ceases to be a marketplace and your heart ceases to be a beggar.

Devotional service (seva/bhakti) in the context of bhakti yoga goes even further, because you do not serve to obtain absolutely anything: you serve simply because you love.

sarvopādhi-vinirmuktaṁ
tat-paratvena nirmalam
hṛṣīkeṇa hṛṣīkeśa-
sevanaṁ bhaktir ucyate

“Bhakti, or devotional service, means engaging all our senses in the service of God, the master of all senses. The service rendered by the spiritual soul unto the Supreme has two side effects: the person becomes freed from all false material identifications, and their senses, simply by being employed in the service of the Lord, become purified.”
Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu 1.1.12

You serve as a mother serves her small children, without asking how much she will be paid for her labor. In devotional service you experience causeless joy; though outwardly you may work greatly, inwardly you feel you are dancing. You do not feel robbed or swindled; you experience an emptying of ego.

Of course, someone can misuse karma yoga and in reality seek cheap labor; but there are concrete signs: is there freedom to leave at any moment you wish?

You speak of “donating everything they possess,” which can be a very elevated and noble act, only if it arises from the maturity that concludes it does not wish to live attached to anything. Yet authentic renunciation does not consist in the loss of objects or money; true offering is the transcendence of attachment. For you may donate your money and possessions and still remain inwardly greedy. Likewise, you may be a generous spirit and donate nothing. True surrender and renunciation occur at the level of consciousness, not necessarily in the inventory.

You ask me whether it seems just to work without receiving money in return. If it is employment in disguise, no; but if it is a consciously chosen practice, yes. For in an ashram one does not work to enrich anyone in particular; the work is part of the learning process of transforming your relationship with action. Such a process grants you something that cannot be purchased: silence and the opportunity to see your own mechanisms.

I do not wish to answer you by resorting to the simple or superficial; I respond by going deeper. For justice here is not whether there is salary, donation, or fear; justice is whether there is freedom, consciousness, and love. Because when labor is a genuine offering born of love… the ego feels deceived because it is left without wages; true transformation occurs in the instant you are willing to do everything… without keeping absolutely anything for yourself.

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