22. Exercises: Private and Public

I am dividing the exercises we discuss into two categories: private and public.  According to Jesus, there are two commands, reflections of each other, we should follow to have a spiritual life.  The first is to love the Divine.  The second is to love those around us.  These loves are not the same, but to enact one love has an immediate effect on the other love.

The love of the Divine is primarily private.  Jesus spoke of praying in a closet, of giving to the poor in secret.  This is not because there is any value in secrecy, except that we are not doing these actions for anyone else but the Divine.  We are not trying to impress anyone, we are not trying to get people to tell us how spiritual we are.  Even so, there are some actions that are best done without anyone else observing.

In a sense, the core of our spiritual life is private.  We may rest in the Spirit and be completely open and relaxed, knowing that the Spirit loves us and has complete mercy on us. It is in that place that the Spirit builds up our core, and makes us a transformed, renewed person.

However, if we do not spend time with others, then we cannot love them and so we are not fulfilled spiritually.  The life in the Spirit is taking time to spend meditation in him, in solitude, and taking time to allow others to lead us to the Spirit through their graces and irritations, through their glories and their horrors.   We must take care to choose some exercises which gets us alone with the Divine and to choose others which cause us to be among others, seeking opportunities to love. 

21. Choosing Exercises

Below, (beginning with number 23) I will begin listing exercises of a wide variety.  Our task, at this point, is to find a beginning path to the Spirit.  This path will consistent of a set of exercises that we practice regularly.  As mentioned above, the path you choose may not be the same as another seeking the Spirit.  It probably won’t.  The Spirit knows you intimately, and you and the Spirit will choose a set of exercises, and the level of practice between the two of you.

If you like, look over the list below and pick two or three exercises that resonate with you.  Then use the tips in each section, making an attempt to practice them.  There may be an exercise that immediately doesn’t feel right to you.  That is fine, set it aside and next time choose another.  There may be some exercises that you gain some benefit from, but over time you realize that it is not for you.  Again, that is fine, just set it aside and pursue another one.

Then there may be an exercise that you reject.  It is too difficult, too outside the scope of your experience.  That’s fine.  But don’t be surprised if the Spirit later leads you back to the unthinkable practice.  Again, the Spirit knows us better than we know ourselves.  What may not work for us now might be the very thing we need later in our lives.

Whatever path you choose or attempt, don’t fail to do it.  If you aren’t in the mood, practice it anyway. If you get distracted and forget, pick it up and do it at the next possible opportunity.  The important thing is to act it out, regularly, until it becomes second nature.  That will take a long time.  Well, be patient.  The spiritual life isn’t an instant breakfast.  It’s a long term project, just like growing up.

You will fail.  You might even set your spirituality aside for a time.  But always come back.  The Spirit will be there, ready for you when you come. 

20. Examination

It is a fair task to examine ourselves.  The Spirit already knows where and how we are broken.  Perhaps we know some of our brokenness, and perhaps we do not.  For certain, when we begin with the Spirit, we cannot possibly understand how deep our brokenness extends.  Nor does the Spirit want us to know.  To understand how deep of a task we have before us to be healed is overwhelming at best, and a cause for us to give up any future work at repair at worst.

It is good to take time to examine ourselves, to give ourselves an evaluation.  The method I often use to examine myself is to ask two questions of my life and to create lists beneath both.  Below, I give you a list of question pairs that you can use to examine yourself.  Do not use all of them at one time.  For now, just answer one pair, or perhaps two, and you can leave the others for another time.  Some of the pairs of questions may not open up your life at all—that’s fine.  Just skip them and work on a pair of questions that reveals something about who you are.

• What do I need in my life? / What needs of others do I meet?
• Where is the Divine in my life?/ What parts of my life need the Divine?
• What is separating me from God?/ Where does God meet me?
• How do I act like Jesus?/ How should I act like Jesus?
• What habits separate me from the Spirit?/What disciplines might renew me to the Spirit?
• What relationships are breaking me and how?/ Where is God in the people I have broken relationships with?
• What about myself needs forgiveness?/ How do I display forgiveness?
• Who are the people I view negatively?/ What is the good in those people?
• Why am I overwhelmed? / How does God want me to have balance?
• What things in my life harm me?/ What aspects of my life are healing?
• What discipline do I need to add to my life?/ What am I willing to give up to make the discipline happen?
• What things in my life cause uncontrollable anger?/ What things grant me peace in my life?
• What things in my life do I worry about? / What can be changed through love?
• What do I expect from others? / Am I fair in my expectations? 
• How is God great? / What do I wish God to do for me that he hasn’t done yet?

Take the questions you chose and the answers you discovered and give them to the Spirit, allowing him to work with you on these areas. 

19. Brokenness

There are some common words that are used for the work of the Spirit—salvation, deliverance, grace, mercy, forgiveness.  They all have a common basis, that the one receiving the work of the Spirit has a desperate need.  They are in crisis, they are imprisoned, they are beyond their own help, they are desperate, they are separated from their good. 

In our society we are trained to tell people that we are “fine”.  No matter what is going on in our hearts, or relationships, no matter how self-destructive our souls are, no matter what oppression we live with, we are to put on a good face, to display strength.

The Spirit requires three things if we are to receive His work.  One is complete honesty.  The Spirit wants us to be open about our weaknesses, about our failings, about our hurts.  We cannot attempt to hide our true selves from the Divine, because he already knows who we are, to our deepest core, better than we know ourselves.

The Spirit also requires that we take our very selves, our core, and recognize our weakness, our brokenness. We need to look our inadequacies in the face, and admit—if only to ourselves and the Spirit—our brokenness. We are the child who accidentally broke the precious item of the parent.  The child has the choice to hide the broken item, or to admit and bring it to the parent.  It is the admission that leads to the deepening of the relationship.

Finally, the Spirit requires that we come to him with our broken selves and ask for repair.  Just as the child might request, “Can you fix it?” so we come to the Divine and ask for our renewal.  Both the parent and the Spirit looks down on the child and says, “Of course.”  And that is the grace of the Spirit.  He repairs within us what we cannot fix ourselves.

18. Spiritual Exercises

The heart of a spiritual life are the continuous actions we take to connect to the Spirit, also known as exercises.  Intellectual activity (such as prayer, Scripture reading or meditation) by itself, whether belief or analysis does not impress the Divine.  The human race is known to say one thing, but to be committed to another.  The human heart reveals itself in what it commits to through continuous actions.

The thief is not one who associates with thieves, or who talks like a thief, or who talks about doing the actions of a thief.  The saint is not the one who talks like a saint, or who lauds the saints, but is one who does the actions of the Divine on earth.  The Spirit is not interested in the superficial, but in the inner character of a person.  And that can only be revealed through actions.

A single action isn’t enough to declare character, as well (although a single action, like someone dying for another, might dramatically represent a person’s character).  Human are not born evil, but they are born weak and inexperienced.  Activity makes us strong and teaches us life lessons.  Even so, a single action may confirm a life in the spirit world, a connection to the Divine, but it is ongoing action over time that transforms us and conforms us to the nature of the Divine.

For these reasons and more, spiritual exercises are the heart of the spiritual life.  Through repeated action, we receive strength through discipline and become new people, people of the Spirit.

4. Isn’t Ritual Bad?

Ritual has gotten a bad rap over the years, along with the word “religion”.  They have been accused of being a false spirituality, a fake which real spirituality replaces.  But the fact is, the very people who yell loudest against religion and ritual are deeply entrenched in these practices.

Religion is seeking the Divine.  Anyone who connects with God at some point pursues him*, if only to pray and to give the Spirit one’s intention.  Some who deny religion deny the Divine, but they still seek Truth with the same passion that others pursue God.  Religion is simply a part of us.

Ritual is a meaningful act that we repeat.  We sing the same songs that are important to us, we read the same stories to all of our children, we have the same worn arguments on Facebook.  And these acts make our lives meaningful, we know who we are because we have done them.  Everyone enacts ritual.

So what’s the big deal?  Because some people have claimed more for ritual and religion than they actually can do. 

Some claim that ritual is sufficient to connect to the Spirit.  That isn’t true.  Ritual is a door for our inner life to change, to become something different.   But if all we do is spin a prayer wheel without our inner life being transformed by the act, then the ritual is meaningless.  Empty actions do not change us.  But acts with intention make transformation possible.

Some have claimed that ritual purifies us.  This is not true.  We are purged from guilt or uncleanness by our transformation from evil to good.  But a ritual can lead us to being contrite or repentant, which will purify us.  Ritual is positive if it leads us to an inner transformation. If it just leads to complacency, then it is a negative force in our lives. 

A ritual is like a smile.  A smile communicates happiness.  However, an unhappy person can smile, which makes others think they are happy.  People can get angry at the smile, because it feels like a lie.  However, studies have shown that a smile can often create happiness.  The act often changes the inner position.  Yes, the inner life is shown in our bodies.  But our bodies can also help create the inner life.  It isn’t a one way street.

Even so, ritual can help create an inner life which is what draws the Spirit.  Ritual is nothing without a transformed inner life, but it is an essential tool for achieving it.  So the Spiritual Life is a life of ritual, or discipline, leading to a transformed inner life. 

*The Divine is neither male nor female, or, more likely, both male and female are drawn out of the wholeness that is the Spirit. I use the masculine pronoun for the Spirit as a convenience.  However, there is a really good discussion about how all of humanity is the feminine to the Spirit’s masculine by C.S. Lewis.  Still, I’m just trying to express something without getting tripped up over grammar.  If you feel more comfortable, replace my masculine pronouns with feminine ones.  I’m not using “it”.   For grammatical reasons I am not capitalizing pronouns referring to the Divine, even though I capitalize Spirit and other words I use to represent him.  When you have a Divine who became human, by some who recognize the Divine and others who don’t it gets tricky.  In reality, I just don’t want to have to remember to capitalize every “His” or “Himself” or “Herself.”  It just gets silly.  I’m pretty sure the Divine doesn’t mind that the text isn’t so filled with capital “h”s anyway.

3. What is a Spiritual Life?

As human beings, we all struggle with three moral realms.  These three moral standards occupy portions of our lives, of our thinking, of our actions, of our opinions.   And they all take up permanent residence, resisting any change.

The first moral realm is karma, or justice.  This is the sense that everyone gets what they deserve, and that everyone should get what they deserve.  We work for pay, the good is praised, the criminal goes to jail.  What we do has a direct correlation to what we receive.  We know that life doesn’t always work out this way, but in some sense we think that it should always be this way.

The second moral realm is mercy.  This is the necessary putting aside of karma, to give what isn’t deserved.  Whether children are good or bad, we give them presents at Christmas.  We do nice things for our family, whether they deserve them or not.  We see someone in trouble, and we give them help, even if they can do nothing for us.

Most spiritualities claim that the realm of mercy is superior to that of karma.

But there is a third moral realm which is older than either karma or mercy—the moral realm of Ritual.  Ritual is based on the idea that you are, and you become, what you do.  We learn to cook and we make a lot of mistakes at first, we might even burn some pans to oblivion.  As we keep at it, though, especially under guidance of an experience cook, we get better and then we become a cook.  We didn’t become a cook because we were naturally talented at it, but because we kept at it until people wanted to eat our food.

The Spiritual life is the regular practice of seeking the Spirit, a set of rituals we use to meet the Divine.  At first, our spiritual practice is like a toddler taking her first steps—wobbly and without much hope for the future.  But as we persist, the spiritual life becomes easier and we become a spiritual person.   Not by ignoring the other two moralities, but by having all three moral realms—karma, mercy and ritual be woven together into our lives, giving us a spiritual whole. 

2. Choose Your Own Spirituality

What most people don’t understand is that spirituality is a relationship with the Divine, and like any relationship, it is unique to the two people who are involved in the relationship.  Couples do things together that they would not do separately.   And different couples do different activities to connect to each other.  Each relationship is completely unique, which is part of what makes the relationship significant. 

Your spiritual life, your connection to the Divine, will be unique to you.  You will determine the time, the activities, the place, and the goals.  No one else can tell you how to live your spiritual life.   Well, no one should tell you.  Just because something works for one person, or for millions of people, it doesn’t mean that it will work for you.

In this volume, I will be taking a mostly Christian perspective, with some clues from other spiritual paths.  I am taking this approach, because it is what I know, what I have lived out.  Perhaps that seems limited to you.  But Christian spirituality has been around for 2000 years, and billions of people have taken a Christian approach to connecting to the Spirit realm.  This means that there are billions of different paths, billions of ways to connect to the Spirit. At least. 

This volume is only going to take a handful of the ways to connect to the Divine and give some basic explanations, as well as give some principles that work for most people.  What you do with the tiny insights you might find here is up to you.  Because ultimately, you have to relate to the Divine in your way.  It’s your relationship.  

1. Touching the Unseen

There is a realm we cannot see, but we can sense.  Many talk about it in mystical terms, but we cannot reach out and touch it. Not exactly. Some seem to connect with it so naturally, but for others it is a terrible struggle. Some spend hours in joyful meditation or prayer, but others have a difficulty seeing or sensing anything beyond what is absolutely tangible.

We all know that there is an intangible world.  We are made up of elements and atoms, and beyond our solar system is a realm of beauty and order that few have actually seen.  But we know the tools to reach those worlds—microscopes, telescopes, labs and observatories.  Yet even more people have claimed to have an intimate touch with the Divine, with beings that almost none have seen with their eyes, heard with their ears.  They derive peace and meaning from this connection.  But how does one actually accomplish this?

This blog isn’t going to give a definitive answer.  Rather, it is going to give many answers, many potential paths to live a life connected to the spirit world.  It is up to you to discover what you want out of it, and the path that is right for you.