Chitananda,
Your English is fine, better than many native speakers, so no worries! I think you feel "borderline" because you have yet to find where you belong in this spectrum. I absolutely KNEW myself to be a householder from youth--I wanted to marry by the time I was perhaps 14 years old and would imagine how happy married life would be, how satisfied I would be raising children. And yet, I also always knew myself to be a Spiritual Seeker! I also always assumed, because both desires were so strong and pure within, that it therefore must be possible to do both. And so I did--and my dual parallel tendencies proved to function like the two wheels on a bicycle. There could be no progress without both wheels. So it's not about having to choose EITHER the purely spiritual path OR the householder's material path, because they can coexist on many levels IF that is your dharma. One needn't be "strong enough to make it" in a marriage IF it's the right thing. In fact, after my wife of 34 years passed from this life, I thought just the same thing about remaining single--I knew quickly that I was, in fact, NOT strong enough to make it without a wife! However, neither am I strong enough to make it without my spiritual practices. I need both for my spiritual progress to remain balanced, for my very person-hood to be centered and whole.
Not all 'great masters' have been reclusive monks. Lahiri Mahasaya, who was the guru of Yukteswar Giri, who was the guru of Yogananda, was an Indian holy man who was a householder; marrying, raising a family, and working as an accountant. He lived his entire life with his family rather than in a temple or monastery. Credited with rediscovering the lost practice of Kriya Yoga, Lahiri taught that if one is earning an honest living, then there is no need to alter one's external life in order to become aware of God's presence. It was extremely rare for him to advise worldly renunciation by becoming a monk. Instead, he advised marriage for most of his disciples, along with Yoga practices.
So it is all about balance and harmony. I became a school teacher, because that is my family dharma, but also because it gave me my summer months off to go on retreats of several weeks while providing a comfortable enough lifestyle to not be worried about putting bread on the table. I was a householder with an overwhelming focus on my spiritual life--because my entire life became my spiritual life! My work and my family have been part and parcel of my spiritual development--my Bhakti practices have been devotion to wife and children, while my Karma practice was my teaching. See--balance and harmony. One can tell when it is right when one feels balanced and harmonious. Unhappy or unfulfilled people, whether celibate in ashram or married and working in the world, have not yet achieved the balance and harmony of their true path. It happens by intuition, trial and error and self-inquiry. Mistakes are always part of the path, as long as we learn their lessons and correct them in time.
And remember that life always changes. I remember my guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, telling a group of us younger students many decades ago that life for us would have three phases. He told us then, as students, that we were just beginning on our spiritual path and it was good that we were with him full time, not in the outside world, but focused only on discipline, devotion, learning and practice. But then, he said we would (or SHOULD) leave and go out into the world, get jobs, raise a family, enjoy the rewards of the householder--as long as we held fast to the knowledge and practices he taught us. Then, later in life, after children were raised and career was over, we could (or SHOULD!) return more fully to the spiritual path to finish what we'd begun as young people. Now that I am in my 60s and have retired, I finally understand this. I have time, inclination and no distracting responsibilities, so my spiritual path once again is the focus. Just remember that those 40 or so years spent as a fully engaged householder are not a waste of time (spiritually speaking), but a proper path for that phase of life--IF you live your life in a balanced, harmonious and conscious way. Then wife and children are the flowers of Bhakti, successful career the blossom of Karma, and blissful householding the royal path to fulfillment! The only danger of this is that we easily get distracted--new cars, bigger house, more payments, too many THINGS, too much time paying for those things, not enough time spent in silence. So my motto as householder these many years has always been, "It is better to want what you have than to have what you want."
Namaste,
Michael
