Should you join a monastery?

*The post that follows came from the Steve Pavlina forum before it closed down. I am not the original author.

Okay, this is reminding me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine whose traveled Asia and visited monasteries. He talked about how the monks there chose that kind of life, so they could get closer to God. But that didn't mean that they were any more conscious than he was. In fact, most of them were less conscious. They chose that life because they needed the peace and quiet, the peace and quiet became a crutch.

Take a monk out of the monastery, and you have fish out of water. A truly conscious person will adapt and flow to any situation.

There's also the Zen principle that states that wherever you are is the best possible place you could be. Your soul chose the kind of life you're in because it felt that it offered the best conditions for you. Your subconscious put you in the very spot you're in because it felt that was the best spot for you. Once I figured this out, I was able to really relax to a great extent and start looking for growth opportunities everywhere.

For example, if my father and I are quarreling, the growth opportunity isn't to wish that I wasn't in the kind of situation that leads to quarreling, but to wonder what it is about my authentic response that's leading to fighting rather than affection. Once I fix how I respond to him, I can also look at the rest of my life and figure out how I could change that response too.