Why did I not do any paid work for the last 22 years? Am I happy doing software development work (paid or voluntary) now?

Last updated on 8 Mar 2025

This post is in the context of my recent post on another blog: Restarted my commercial work career from payment received point of view, after a gap of 22 years,  https://raviswdev.blogspot.com/2025/03/restarted-my-commercial-work-career.html . A relevant extract from that post is given below:

I recently received a commercial work payment from a friend for whom I have been doing a short-term software development assignment related to LinkedIn OAuth 2.0 with OpenID Connect login for a React frontend and AWS Java lambda backend app. I started that work as a two-week part-time free trial followed by a paid period. My last work related payment received was in early Sep. 2002. So my friend's payment has restarted my commercial work career from payment received point of view, after a gap of 22 years and around 6 months!

--- end extract from my post on another blog ---

This post has been triggered by some comments/questions I received on this matter. I thought those questions may come up in the mind of some readers and so I have put up this post.

Why did I not do any paid work for the last 22 years?

I chose to lead a single and reclusive spiritual aspirant life from Oct. 2002, a month after I first retired from commercial work, to focus on my spiritual goals. Till my health emergencies of Jan-Feb 2022, my retirement plan worked very well for the simple life I was leading. In other words, my expenses were within my retirement income. After Jan-Feb. 2022, as my increased expenses started putting a strain on my retirement income, I focussed on health recovery and spiritual practice, and continued to not worry about commerical work till around mid-2023 to late-2023.

Being free from having to do commercial work/money earning work gave me enough time to do a lot of spiritual seva (service activity), spiritual study and spiritual practices like meditation and contemplation. That was a strong desire I had for many years before my first retirement from commercial work. This long 21 year period (till a few months before or around Oct. 2023 when I started my journey of trying to get back into commercial software development work) enabled me to fulfill that desire to a very large extent and I am very happy that I could do that. I think I benefited a lot spiritually due to this full-time spiritual focus I had after my first commercial retirement, for a long period of 21 years. 

By my beloved Gurudev, Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba's grace, I was able to achieve many of the spiritual goals I had and I am very happy about that. From sometime around or slightly prior to 2008/2009, if I recall correctly (IFIRC), I have been able to experience the changeless awareness part of me (Atma) which is the very core of my being. More about it can be read in my post: My Limited Self-Realization Experiences – Points, https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2023/05/my-limited-self-realization-experiences.html . That experience continues now in March 2025.

But I still have many flaws and have not been able to fulfill a strong desire I got after my health emergencies in Jan-Feb 2022, of having the ability to go beyond body consciousness at will. So my spiritual sadhana continues.

I don't think I would have achieved all of the spiritual goals that I achieved in this period, if I was working in a paid software industry job during this period. There is something special about leading a simple life without having to worry about earning money which enables one to view and understand life much more broadly than if one has to worry about money-earning.

I was also able to spend a lot of time exploring interests which may be classified more as worldly typically though from a high-level view, I believe that all of life has the divine as the foundation. I understood history of India as it applied to my life much better than earlier as I got the time to read and view (videos) up on it. The same applies for history of the world.

I was able to understand my own family history and family background much better. I also read up and viewed up on computer software history to some extent especially parts of it that directly impacted my industry software career (till 2002). All of that gave me a very satisfactory understanding of my life and the various influences that shaped my life. I am very happy that I could achieve that understanding. I don't think I would have had time for developing such an understanding of my life and the influences that shaped it, if I was working in a paid software industry job during this period.

Am I happy doing software development work (paid or voluntary) now?

This section is long which may bore some readers😊. So I have copy-pasted the short concluding remarks below:

To conclude, I am most enthusiastic about my spiritual efforts of trying to rise above body consciousness. About software work, I certainly do not have that level of enthusiasm but as I have not got clearance from God-within to live a sannyasi-like life in a remote place, I see it as my duty then to do some work and not be a freeloader. From that perspective, software development work fits the need very well and I am quite happy doing it and certainly NOT unhappy doing it.

Now the detailed section starts. Please feel free to ignore/skip reading it.

Am I happy doing software development work now as part-time and within my health limitations, either in commercial mode or in voluntary mode as giving-back to institutions/people that have helped me/continue to help me (like Puttaparthi ashram system which provides me free medical care for services it has like cardiology)? The answer is that I am quite happy doing it and surely NOT unhappy doing it. I do get satisfaction and some enjoyment-thrills from time-to-time from the pure technology part of the work and also get satisfaction/happiness from providing solutions which give satisfaction/happiness to others (like project team members or a customer). I should also mention the satisfaction I get in writing some small software/app I need but which I could not get as free download. And, yes of course, if I get some money for the work, I feel satisfied and happy as it will help me to meet my much-higher-than-before expenses.

But is doing software work a strong desire/motivation in my life now? The clear answer is No. There is only one strong desire I have now in life. That is to acquire the power to go beyond body consciousness at will and to get back into body consciousness at will. That desire is what makes me super-enthusiastic and all fired up 😇! 

But I focused on that effort for around 9 months from mid 2022 to early 2023 (till mid 2022 I was recovering physically and mentally from my heart-attack followed by COVID in Jan-Feb of 2022). Given below are few extracts (slightly edited) from my post: Have dropped focus of trying to rise above body-consciousness that (focus) I had in my past around 9 months spiritual practice, https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2023/05/have-dropped-focus-of-trying-to-rise.html , May 2023 (but with note(s) from April 2023):

A key decision I have taken (and which I have implemented/done over past week or two) is to drop the focus that I had in my past around 9 months [till around end March 2023] spiritual practice of trying to rise above body-consciousness. I have accepted the possibility that I may never have the ability to get into a trance or rise above body consciousness. I will be continuing my praarthana-jap-dhyaan (prayer-chanting-meditation) sadhana including trying to go deep into the Awareness-I and dissolve in it, and so it certainly is possible that I may have some trance or rising above body consciousness experience in future. That cannot be ruled out. But it may not happen and I am OK with that.

...

I must also say that I am happy that I invested this around 9 months period of time and lot of effort to try to rise above body consciousness. Now I know that I tried and that it is currently beyond my ability. If I had not tried, I would have had this desire to do this focused effort. Now that desire is gone though I still have the desire to rise above body consciousness but not as a single-pointed goal. Further, this focused effort has given me some side-fruits/side-benefits like increasing my praarthana-jap-dhyaan stamina, deepening my dhyaana, opening the go deep and dissolve into Awareness-I meditation (dhyaan) path etc. Therefore I am very happy that I made this focussed effort even though I have dropped that focus/main objective now.

...

My serious health challenges in early 2022, for the first time in my adult life, made me physically dependent on others for a few months. I am much better now though I still have limitations and do not have the physical stamina I had prior to the health challenges. And, I guess, that's how it will be for this body till it dies.

I hated that dependence on others. I hated not being self-reliant. Now I am largely self-reliant for many tasks but cannot do much physically strenuous activity for which I rely on maids and other help.

It is during this period of dependence and slowly coming out of that dependence but remembering it rather vividly, that I felt a very strong desire to ****experience**** that I can, through my own will, be temporarily free from my body (go beyond body consciousness) and then return to the body (and in an extreme case just give up the body through my own will). Such ability had been acquired by rishis and few kings and princes in the past, as per Hindu scripture, and a few contemporary mystics claim to have such or similar ability. As I was in a position to make a strong attempt to get such an experience and/or ability, and I had that very strong desire, I made that focused effort for around 9 months.

--- end extracts from my post ---

Adding to above extracts, I have written earlier in this post about my experience of the changeless awareness in me (Atma) which is the core of my being, right from around 2008/2009, IFIRC. But in Jan-Feb. 2022 and for some time later, I was helpless as the body underwent trauma and had got dependent on help from others. That's when I felt that simply having an experience of the core of my being as changeless awareness is not enough. I felt I should acquire the ability to go beyond body consciousness and thus be, at least temporarily, free of my body, when I want.

As above extracts show, I made that intense effort to rise above body consciousness for 9 months (from mid-2022 to around end March 2023) and failed to achieve that objective. So I had to deal with what next to do.

Till my early 2022 heart-attack followed by COVID stuff, my expenses were within my retirement plan and so I was in semi-sannyasi mode (from Oct. 2002, a period of around 20 years before heart-attack and with semi-sannyasi mode continuing till around Oct 2023). From spiritual point of view, I benefited enormously from this semi-sannyasi mode free from having to do commercial work/money earning work. Post heart-attack, the expenses for medicines and doctor visits for areas not covered by Swami hospitals, my body weakness due to which I need maid support for some stuff which I would do myself earlier on, and diet restrictions needing me to hire a cook, had put a strain on my retirement plan. It was a big decision for me about whether I should continue my semi-sannyasi life and not bother about body outcome.

I personally felt and continue to feel that it is NOT FAIR to become financially dependent on close relatives and friends to meet these much-higher expenses post heart-attack, if I can earn money. I felt that either I should try to earn money to meet some level of such costs, or I should move away from close relatives and friends (trying to reduce any hurt they may have due to such action) and go to a remote place and follow the stoic example of Ramana Maharshi without going to doctors and hospitals and let whatever happens to the body, happen. But I did not get clearance from God-within to do the latter and so I decided to try to get back to commercial money earning.

If I had taken sannyasi deeksha (renunciation vow) then I would not have got back to commercial money earning and would probably have limited my medicines to a minimum or stopped them entirely, and, most probably, either this body would have died by now or it would be much worse than it is now. And I would have focused on my efforts to rise above body-consciousness. But as I have not taken sannyasi-deeksha and was only a semi-sannyasi (till around Oct. 2023), I felt OK with trying to get back to (and now having got back to) commercial money earning. As mentioned earlier, I started that journey of trying to get back to commercial earning through software development related work around Oct. 2023.

So what do I do now in March 2025?

Now I have transitioned to a balanced life of health-care, spiritual effort, personal work and software work. While health-care stuff goes on for all the days of the week, I focus on software work from Monday to Friday, focus on personal work on Saturday and focus on spiritual effort on Sunday. I also spend some time on other days (Mon to Sat) on spiritual effort.

As the reader may have guessed, if he/she made it to this point in this looooong post, the focus of my spiritual effort continues to be trying to rise above body consciousness. So far, I have not been able to even go into a trance for a few seconds!

To conclude, I am most enthusiastic about my spiritual efforts of trying to rise above body consciousness. About software work, I certainly do not have that level of enthusiasm but as I have not got clearance from God-within to live a sannyasi-like life in a remote place, I see it as my duty then to do some work and not be a freeloader. From that perspective, software development work fits the need very well and I am quite happy doing it and certainly NOT unhappy doing it.