“'And the foot of your love shall not stumble.’ This means that when, with experience, this interior work becomes a spiritual habit, you will not easily be enticed or led away from it by the meddlesome queries of your natural faculties, though in the beginning it was difficult to resist them…As I have already explained to you, this simple work is not a rival to your daily activities. For with our attention centered on the blind awareness of your naked being united to God’s, you will go about your daily rounds, eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, going and coming…In the midst of it all, you will be offering to God continually each day the most precious gift you can make. This work will be at the heart of everything you do, whether active or contemplative.”
—Privy Counsel Ch. 7
A habit of any kind is simply something we’ve done so many times that we internalize the action and do it without much effort (I think of buckling my seatbelt, an activity that I do almost robotically when I get in the car). A spiritual habit is an activity of the heart and mind that conditions it to effortlessly perceive the world through Divine Eyes.
The author of Privy Counsel notes that when we begin the practice of contemplative meditation, the mind easily wanders away from the focal point of our awareness, but with practice concentration and centeredness become easy to the point of becoming our natural state of mind. Then, meditation is not just something that happens when we sit on our cushion or chair, but begins to permeate every activity.
I have practiced meditation in one form or another for a dozen years or so, and self-judging thoughts frequently arise in this mind: “You are not serious about the spiritual path; You hardly ever meditate; You aren’t dedicated, etc.” I was greatly relieved on retreat with Matthew Flickstein last spring when he told me what I already know: there are many people with great clarity of mind who never practice meditation at all. And this is the point: not that we would have a perfect meditation practice, but that mind of meditation—open, aware, compassionate and all-embracing—would become the ordinary way we experience our lives.
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2 comments:
I am in great need of a spiritual habit. I find the path of my spiritual life to be a very broken one. At times I crave faith...religion...someone or something to believe in but my interest often wanes. I always start with the best intentions but find that I grow bored. I expect immediate results and when they don't appear I quit. I guess that I’m really just lazy. I need a quick fix.
But once again I find inspiration. This time it’s in the form of a blog.
Thorin, thanks for the thoughtful comment. I doubt very much that you are lazy. You are probably much like all of us, harried by the hectic pace of life. I find that simple habits like eating well and exercise are not easy to come by.
Many of the spiritual masters teach that letting go of an outcome is the first step toward real spiritual growth. This, of course, is a paradox: for why would we ever start a practice of any kind unless we expected a result? The best way I know to answer the riddle is that the mind of enlightenment appears to be the everyday mind. All the same old thoughts, feelings and desires arise in the mind. But the difference is that there is so much space in the mind, the thoughts, feelings and desires are not a problem; they don't completely fill the space. And so we can see these mental phenomena for what they are: impermanent, unsatisfying if clung to or pushed away, and that no separate "self" is creating them.
Abstract, I know. I never could understand it until I had a little taste of it on retreat. Even now, though I can remember it vividly, the lessons of the experience easily fade from my memory and unless I pay great attention, my "everyday mind" easily becomes a prison instead of the ground of enlightenment.
As a word of encouragement, I might say that spiritual practices can take many, many forms. There are traditional methods of prayer and meditation, of course. But for some people a simple walk in the woods is spiritual practice, or running, or really anything, if the activity brings us back to our center and reconnects us with the larger reality so that we view experience more through Divine Eyes. Joseph Campbell, the great mythologist, was once asked what method of meditation he used. "I underline," he said. As someone whose primary spiritual practice has always been simple reading and reflection, I have always found that beautiful.
Pax.
CH
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