Spiritual practice as a path to inner peace
What is the meaning of spiritual practice?
I hear the term “spiritual practice” a lot these days but I wonder what it means to people.
When I was growing up we asked people what religion they were. As if we wanted to know their family origin. And if they answered “I don’t have a religion” or even “I am not anything. I don’t go to church,” it felt a bit as if they didn’t have a family.
That would be like saying of someone whose name wasn’t Smith, or Jones that they didn’t belong somehow.
Even though I was raised in a particular denomination, today I consider myself ‘interfaith’, a term consistent with Thich Nhat Hahn’s ‘interbeing’, a concept that places humanity in the mix with all creation.
Religion is like medicine. It is a practice. Within the field of medicine, a doctor may practice surgery or optometry, or psychiatry.
Within the field of religion or spirituality, I have friends who practice as Roman Catholic, Buddhist, Wiccan, and Native American.
Then there is a large segment of people who are what research refers to as ‘Nones’ – people who answer ‘none’ to the religion question on a survey.
Talk about an identity crisis! Apparently, if you don’t align with a particular tradition you are a Nobody. But I digress…
How do you identify when it comes to religion or spirituality?
About fifty years ago I was admitting my infant son to a hospital for tests and the desk attendant was checking the form I had filled out. I had entered “Christian” where it asked for religion.
She looked up with annoyance. “Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish?”
I repeated “Christian.”
She grimaced and scribbled something I couldn’t see. It seems those were the only alternatives available. I don’t know what I would have put there if I were Hindu or Spiritualist.
In the end, it doesn’t matter what you put on a form unless you wish to see a chaplain of that particular cloth or who is at least comfortable with interfaith ministry. What does matter is your own sense of identity.
Are your choices a result of generational tradition?
If great-grandma was a Baptist she might roll over in her grave if her descendants left the church. Familial roots can be very grounding, and at the same time restricting.
Have you chosen to study world religions and align yourself with the one that makes the most sense for your life circumstances? Deep reflection about the purposes of life and how we celebrate it can be life-changing.
Perhaps you were raised in one tradition and married someone from another, opting to follow their practices. This is a path that can strengthen a relationship and be good. Or not.
Perhaps you have felt wounded by a person or group and divorced yourself entirely from any organized religion. Of course. Why would you submit yourself to the possibility of more trauma?
The bottom line is not how you got where you find yourself today, but where are you going?
How to stay nourished on your spiritual path
We are all created with a body, mind, and spirit and all these parts get hungry.
When my body is hungry— I eat. Food is the only thing on my mind. And when I go long periods without reading a book or listening to a podcast I begin to thirst for knowledge and you may find me hunkered away in a library.
You and I have different appetites. I like fish and you may be a steak person. I enjoy non-fiction and you are strictly into mystery stories. We don’t have a problem with this and often go out to eat or to the movies together.
But if our hunger is for inner growth, or connecting with the Divine there sometimes arise all manner of debate and prophecies of the dire consequences of partaking of the ‘wrong’ spiritual food.
I was told as a young person that if I went to a certain church I would go to hell.
Funny thing though. My friend went there every week and she was told the same thing if she were to come to church with me.
It took me years of study, prayer, miracles, and love to discover that there is nothing wrong with any particular spiritual path.
What is wrong with different spiritual paths?
What is wrong is when there is an absence of love on the path. And with a lack of love, we have a toxic experience, and we naturally reject what has made us ill.
I have a friend with celiac disease who can not eat anything with gluten or wheat.
I have another for whom mushrooms make her quite ill. Clearly, not all food nourishes every person equally. The same can be said for spiritual practices or religious choices.
A contemplative or a mystic is going to have a very different practice than a person called to make soup for the hungry.
A musician will express gratitude totally different than a gardener, and the way a child hears a story of faith and says a prayer will not necessarily bear any resemblance to their understanding and practice as an adult.
I have been exploring these thoughts out of a concern that we seem to be able to feed ourselves physically and mentally but struggle with spiritual nourishment because of unchallenged ideas about religion.
In these last couple of years, we have found a way with technology to have “take out” for our spiritual practices, the same way we bring food home from a restaurant or books home from the library.
I wonder if there are as many places to partake of spiritual practices as there are libraries and restaurants and how do we find them.
Perhaps a topic for another blog post.
[Photo Credits from Unsplash: religious-symbols-by-noah-holm; line-of-people-with-open-hands-by-pedro-lima; library-by-guzel-maksutova; fork-in-path-by-caleb-jones; restaurant-by-alex-haney]
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