Trusting Yourself

"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. "
--comment posting on "The Hobo Journal"

I appreciated the thoughfulness of this comment to Wednesday's posting. In reply, I'd like to say that 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 respond to this koan 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 and you should just trust yourself that whatever you choose is the right thing for you at this moment; and don't be afraid to do something different every day. 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 sentences," he said. As someone whose primary spiritual practice has always been simple reading and reflection, I have always found that beautiful.